Member Services

NCAN ended 2021-22 with 546 organizational members, our second-highest membership ever. This followed last year’s record-setting 625 members, a feat made possible through funds provided by Ascendium Education Group. We saw particularly strong growth among K-12 schools, which now represent about 22% of NCAN’s membership.

This fiscal year, with support from the Kresge Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we provided more than a quarter-million dollars in regrants, memberships, and conference scholarships, helping NCAN members re-engage the high school classes of 2020 and 2021 and strengthen college and career readiness work at the state level. We responded to perennial and evolving programming needs with new content around important topics such as equity, diversity, inclusion, meeting students’ basic needs, and mental health and wellness. With support from the Scheidel Foundation, we began rolling out a new series of webinars and blog posts sharing effective practices from NCAN members on the career advising services they are providing to students enrolled in college.

We provided 32 professional development webinars to a combined total of 3,245 attendees. Topics featured in the webinars included “Training for Equity: Staff Development as a Foundation for Student Success” and “Working Within Your Program Model to Support Students’ Mental Health.”

In late April and early May, we delivered another successful Spring Institute event, titled “Building Communities of Care for Students and Practitioners.” Partnering with the Steve Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the mental health and emotional well-being of young people of color, we hosted a two-part series designed to encourage attendees to think deeply about the emotional and mental well-being of their students, as well as their own. In addition, this year we doubled our e-learning course-taking, with more than 700 learners from 235 different organizations completing more than 7,500 individual courses. In October, we produced our second virtual national conference, which featured more than 1,000 attendees. With excitement, we decided to resume the conference in person in Atlanta in September 2022.

NCAN also continued to expand our reach. Over the last year, we produced 48 issues of Success Digest Weekly, an e-newsletter received by more than 5,900 members. Compared to industry standards, the newsletter has a particularly strong readership, achieving a 32 percent open rate. An all-time high average of more than 10,000 unique individuals now visit NCAN’s website at least once per month to read news, sign up for events, or take advantage of other resources.

We would like to thank our Member Advisory Task Force for all their hard work, as well as Ascendium, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Scheidel Foundation for their financial support. 

Thought Leadership and Communications

With issues surrounding college access remaining at the forefront of the national discussion, NCAN’s thought leadership continued to provide valuable insights and context about college affordability, equity, enrollment declines, and innovative practices. We maintained strong representation in high-impact media outlets such as the Washington Post, Politico, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, and NPR. NCAN members and students were also quoted in national news articles about the ways the COVID pandemic continues to affect students' access to and success in college, the urgent importance of doubling the Pell Grant, and other issues central to the organization’s mission.

NCAN continued to lead the field in all things FAFSA, including by providing weekly updates to our often-referenced #FormYourFuture FAFSA Tracker for high school FAFSA completions and our FAFSA renewal data. Our FAFSA Tracker received more than 50,000 website visits, providing news media, institutions, policymakers, and the general public with valuable real-time information on this critical issue.

Meanwhile, NCAN’s new Pell Dollars on the Table report highlighted the staggering amount of Pell Grant funds not being utilized by learners who fail to complete the FAFSA. The report, made possible with the support of the Joyce Foundation, revealed that $3.75 billion in federal Pell Grants went unclaimed by the high school class of 2021.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

In January 2022, thanks to the generous support of UBS, we welcomed 12 rising leaders of color into our first Leading for Equity Fellowship, a one-year cohort-based program to increase leaders of color in the C-suites of college attainment organizations. The cohort meets virtually twice per month and considers topics ranging from emotional intelligence and change management to inclusive leadership and board development. Thanks to the exceptional work of consultant Kristen Crockett, the fellows are gaining new mindsets and skills that will support their professional journeys. Six months into the program, one fellow observed, “This has probably been the most influential professional experience of my career. Having a space for leaders of color to learn together, to talk about identity, leadership, community, is so unique. I am already a better leader and I am only at the halfway point.” 

The NCAN staff also co-created our first-ever values statement, which included a commitment to creating environments where all can thrive by bringing with them their unique identities and attributes, whether in an office, a workshop, a school, or on a college campus. We are grateful to the wonderful organizational development consultant Terri A. Johnson who supported our staff through many interesting and challenging conversations about what was most important to us collectively, given all our differences individually. The statement gives us a good basis for assessing ongoing changes to the ways we work, ensuring they reflect our shared values. We heartily endorse a similar process to any organization looking to build deeper shared understanding among colleagues. 

In May, we released a paper on equity in community foundation scholarship programs. Throughout the year, we provided consulting to several organizations, including the Central Valley Community Foundation, Hawaii Community Foundation, and the Kern Community Foundation. 

Policy and Advocacy

It was a significant year for many of the NCAN’s signature policy issues. President Biden called for doubling the Pell Grant by 2029, and Congress passed the largest Pell Grant increase in more than a decade. Our #DoublePell proposal has been integral in driving this policy conversation. Online campaigns such as #Thankful4Pell and #PellTurns50 also helped spread awareness and grow support. Many thanks to all members who participated!

We also successfully advocated for a second year of temporary FAFSA verification waivers, and, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we continued working with the Office of Federal Student Aid to design and implement the simplified FAFSA legislation. The legislation, which was passed last year and will go into effect in October 2023, reduces the number of questions on the FAFSA from 108 to roughly 36.

In April, our Virtual Advocacy Week brought together NCAN members, students, alumni, and board members for a coordinated opportunity to meet with members of Congress and their staff to share their stories and our field's policy priorities. Leading up to the event, NCAN provided advocacy-related professional development to the participants, including direct assistance, resources, and training.

When asked what they value most about NCAN, one member told us that they most appreciate the way we center “underrepresented students in [our] advocacy and support of organizations who also center underrepresented students.” 

K-12 Engagement

NCAN continued to produce resources designed to assist K-12 district and school practitioners with improving college and career readiness outcomes. NCAN provided direct technical assistance to state-level member networks in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi, and Missouri, as well as 11 high schools. This technical assistance drew on lessons learned from the To & Through Advising Challenge, the conclusion of which saw NCAN provide technical assistance to more than 30 districts, schools, and charter management organizations.

In July, NCAN was awarded a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for our work aiming to advance college and career readiness-related practices and policies at the state level. NCAN is partnering with 15 state-level members to provide resources and training to their audiences. These members are advising NCAN about the highest-impact state-level policy levers currently in use, and NCAN is conducting landscape analyses to understand the nature of states’ progress with these policies across the country. Additionally, we recruited a cohort of 15 College and Career Readiness Fellows who will receive training from expert coaches about how to level up their districts’ work over the next two years.

As part of our strategic efforts to strengthen college and career readiness efforts in K-12 schools, we launched a FAFSA reminders email series to help practitioners stay on schedule with the critical milestones related to increasing FAFSA completion in their communities. 

NCAN Organizational Health

NCAN remains in a healthy financial position, thanks in part to the general operating support of the Kresge and ECMC Foundations. Project funders Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ascendium, UBS, Joyce Foundation, Trellis Foundation, and C.S. Mott Foundation are also owed our thanks. This marked NCAN’s 12th straight year of positive net revenue, reflecting success in fundraising and prudent financial management.  Notably, 35% of NCAN’s income was “earned revenue” from consulting contracts, conference sponsorship, and membership dues.

After months of pandemic-induced telework, we finally reopened our downtown DC office—and in a new location. We now work at the office two or three days per week, teleworking the remaining days. The health and safety of our team remains our priority, and many of us have been out of the office at times due to the continued challenges of COVID-19. We are grateful for the support and flexibility of our colleagues and members.

To further support our infrastructure and capacity, NCAN staff has expanded and reorganized positions to meet members' needs and be more effective as a national organization. Our new Chief of Staff Nancy Washington is helping NCAN improve our talent management while bringing a fresh perspective to our diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Other new faces at NCAN are Johanne Belzor, Catherine Brown, Caroline Doglio, and David LaNore. We have enjoyed the contributions of another outstanding group of interns, Stephanie Breen, Jalen Moore, and Maira Ramos, who worked on communications and research. We welcomed Jarian Kerekes of Equitable and Caroline Altman Smith of the Kresge Foundation to our board. And we said a reluctant goodbye to our term-limited board member, National Student Clearinghouse CEO Rick Torres, who served for a remarkable nine years. We miss his foresighted thinking, passion for data, commitment to students, and good nature.  

Finally, NCAN ended the year by starting to develop our next strategic plan. We are now in the midst of our strategic planning process, supported by Bellwether, building the roadmap that will guide NCAN through 2025. We are grateful to all our friends and members who have brought us this far and look forward to our continued journey together in support of students.