We formed a strategic partnership with other funders for and helped to lead the design, incubation and scaling of CollegePoint – a coalition of nonprofit organizations helping high-achieving, low- and moderate-income students gain admission to top-performing colleges and universities nationwide. CollegePoint has already advised over 67,000 high-achieving, lower-income students across the country. Over a five-year period, over 30,000 CollegePoint students from the classes of 2015 to 2020 were admitted to match colleges and universities, often accepting financial aid packages that make those institutions less expensive than open-access colleges, forever transforming their own lives and the lives of their families.
While CollegePoint is a prime example of our venture philanthropy approach in its achievement of broader impact through collaboration, it nevertheless highlights the limits of remote college advising. An evaluation of the CollegePoint program found that 51.4% of students with access enrolled in high-graduation-rate colleges, compared with 50.1% in a control group. The study is significant for its contribution to the field – providing proof that remote college advising is of limited value in effectiveness, particularly for a scalable model.