What’s new
Now Accepting Proposals! Community Learning Fund
In June 2019, the Foundation for Tacoma Students announced a one-time investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to deepen the capacity and capability of the Graduate Tacoma community-wide movement. This investment presents an opportunity to elevate our collective action through sub-grant funding in three investment areas and, most importantly, strengthen our ability to improve outcomes for all students. Honoring our shared learning agenda, we are calling this initiative the Graduate Tacoma Community Learning Fund.
This portal includes everything grant applicants need to successfully submit a proposal […]
Request for Proposals: Postsecondary Access Intermediary
The Foundation for Tacoma Students seeks a community based organization or institution to serve as a community intermediary to help lead and coordinate efforts to improve postsecondary pathways for Tacoma students, with a focus on system-related interventions and programs that directly impact postsecondary access and enrollment.
Background/Introduction
The Foundation for Tacoma Students (FFTS) is the organizational backbone of the Graduate Tacoma community-wide movement. In pursuit of our mission to help every child achieve success from cradle to college and career, we have spent the last nine years working to build a community that honors partnership […]
Meet the Staff: Ben Mitchell
From President & CEO Eric Wilson: In Gratitude
Transitions for President & CEO Eric Wilson
Community Leader Spotlight: T’wina Nobles of Tacoma Urban League
Excitement poured out from the group of teenage girls as they each took turns holding different animals at the Tacoma Urban League office during a visit from Point Defiance Zoo. Bursts of nervous laughter fill the room as they each get ready to touch the soft, gray shelled crabs.
Standing beside them, their mentor, T’wina Nobles, joins in the awe and curiosity of it all.
“There’s so much in life that I don’t know that these experiences are mind-blowing to me,” says T’wina. “I’m not just teaching girls, I’m out there learning myself.”
The girls are […]
How Fab-5 is Creating Space to Celebrate Diversity
Tiffanny Hammonds, 22, works as the Fab-5 Space Manager and Visual Arts Teacher at their HQ in Hilltop, Tacoma. Tiffanny has been with Fab-5 for over 10 years and can even recount her first interaction with Fab in her home.
“In essence Fab saved my life, because I never really knew that I could be an artist, you know?” says Tiffanny. “I never saw this for me, I never had that future planned out. I loved art but I never knew that I’d be an artist, and I didn’t figure […]
Tacoma Teens Win Regional Apollo Landing Challenge
Space is only 50 to 62 miles away depending on the measurement one uses. The cosmos is infinite and ever expanding. And yet, despite its size and relative closeness, the universe feels out of reach for many, a thing belonging to daydreams and childhood fantasies.
In the run up to the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the NASA-funded Northwest Earth and Space Sciences Pipeline, organized the Apollo Next Giant Leap Student Challenge (ANGLes). Among the project’s goals, “to increase pathway for students towards careers in STEM, particularly in underserved […]
Investing in Tacoma: Designing with Community
Friends and Colleagues,
As we roll out an important investment in the Tacoma community, we have already learned so much from leaders in the Graduate Tacoma movement who bring a wealth of expertise working with young people every day.
Last month’s info-sessions helped us further refine key components to the grant and subgranting process. We recorded a number of your questions, so that you can revisit our responses here. In a brief community survey, you also helped us better understand Tacoma’s greatest funding […]
Meet the Staff: Joseph Colón
Joseph Colón is the Assistant Director of Collective Action at the Foundation for Tacoma Students. A Tacoma native, he is a collective action leader and anti-racism activist with a passion for social justice, equity, and systems change. His extensive cross-sector experience spans local, grassroots organizations to institutions of higher education.
Joseph brings a unique situatedness to his role at the Foundation for Tacoma Students, as a first generation, biracial, latinx scholar who took a circuitous, non-traditional path to and through higher education.
His primary role at the Foundation is […]