In 2023, MetLife Foundation launched the Accelerating Commitment to Equity Innovation Fund (ACE Innovation Fund), a forward-looking two-year grantmaking program designed to confront the persistent income and wealth divide in the United States. This report offers lessons for designing and structuring philanthropic investments towards inclusive economic mobility—distilling lessons from a two-year model across 24 organizations that demonstrate how investing in community-based organizations can help them innovate, scale, and persevere. The ACE Innovation Fund isn’t the first learning-cohort-based program supported by corporate philanthropy, but it was notable in its grantee-centered design and its emphasis on emerging and innovative pilots and initiatives. Its blended model of evaluation, peer learning, and technical assistance also offers lessons on how these important and intersecting features can enable grantee success.

Key Takeaways

With support from the ACE Innovation fund, community-based organization grantees were able to serve more than 4,000 clients, helping them find jobs, increase revenue for their small businesses, access credit and decrease debt, pursue homeownership, and share their stories to change narratives about their communities. Many grantees reported that the ACE Innovation Fund grant announcement and their partnerships increased their visibility, strengthened their credibility with their own partners and funders, and helped them better articulate their impact in pursuit of other opportunities.

The ACE Innovation Fund also offers lessons on how to design and structure giving, provides a programmatic model to build from, and demonstrates the impact of financial and other investments on community-based organizations and those they serve. Whether you are interested in increasing your support for nonprofits through direct investments or exploring a cohort model like the ACE Innovation Fund, the recommendations below can inform or guide your work:

• Invest in community-based organizations focused on improving economic mobility, strengthening economic opportunity, or closing income and wealth gaps.
• Design funding opportunities that encourage the development, testing, and scaling of innovative ideas and approaches.
• Build a shared vision for your programs and their intended outcomes and help community-based organizations see how their work in one domain aligns with that vision.
• Offer a grant structure that is flexible and reduces administrative burden for grantees.
• Design programs that are learning-oriented and grantee-focused.
• Complement grant funding with access to evidence-based research, experts and practitioners, and other capacities.
• Ensure grantees are prepared to take full advantage of the resources offered through intentional program design and setting expectations.
• Learn from the experiences of other funders and experts.

How We Did It

The Urban Institute served as the lead evaluation partner to support grantees and the MetLife Foundation in measuring and describing grantees’ project outcomes, their progress over the grant term, and the impact of their work on their communities. The evaluation approach was designed to ensure the data collected would be useful to the grantees for documenting their progress and impact on their stated goals, amplifying their successes to existing and new audiences, and positioning their organizations to be competitive for future funding opportunities. Urban also worked closely with MetLife Foundation to create and manage the program’s learning community that featured evidence-based sessions informed by subject-matter experts and peer-learning spaces where grantees could connect and discuss shared challenges, experiences, and lessons learned. Community Resource Exchange offered complementary technical assistance to grantees to support their organizations’ growth and sustainability.