RFP: Transfer Innovation Impact Model (TIIM) – Household Wealth

Background

The Transfer Innovation Impact Model (TIIM) initiative creates a learning community for grant recipients to participate in opportunities to share data and best practices to learn from each other in pursuit of improving student outcomes. TIIM is led and supported in part by Bridges to Brighter Futures, a collaboration between the Kinship Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust funded through the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust.

The TIIM RFP invites organizations to apply for a one-year planning grant to develop and advance a transfer model that dramatically improves the bachelor’s degree completion of Chicago community college students. This model will be driven by innovation, research, reporting, and supporting partnerships to create intentional learning communities.   

Successful partnership models will:

• Uncover and address the needs of specific populations of Chicago students, including the most underserved populations and underinvested neighborhoods.
• Collect and share data to understand barriers on individual campuses and demonstrate the effects of interventions over time.
• Create bold, innovative practices that have the potential to improve outcomes for students.

Need/Opportunity Statement

While middle skills certifications provide access to quality jobs, degree attainment remains the strongest pathway to economic mobility, particularly when students pursue college majors related to in-demand fields. Given the diversity of community college students, effective transfer practices have the potential to diversify the bachelor’s degree institutions where community college students enroll after transfer, an even more important strategy for equity now that the U.S. Supreme Court has eliminated race-based admissions strategies.

Currently, 79 percent of students who start at community college in hopes of a more affordable pathway to a bachelor’s degree get their plans derailed by a fragmented system full of unexpected costs and administrative burdens that deter many students from completing the transfer process.

Goals & Outcomes

The goal of the TIIM initiative is to identify and promote strategies that improve bachelor’s degree completion within two to three years of transfer from community college programs for students who traditionally have had lower rates of completion, including Black, Latine and low-income students in Chicago. 

Priority Strategies & Activities

Applications must be submitted by a bachelor’s degree-granting institution in the Chicago area and require a partnership with an individual community college in Cook County. Applications must also include at least one community or nonprofit partner as part of the student support effort.

The planning program model should include an outline of the three-year implementation plan, including the specific roles for partnerships with a community college and a nonprofit student support organization that together drive improved student outcomes.

Bachelor’s degree granting institutions can submit no more than TWO applications for this planning RFP, each with a different community college. Each application will be considered independently as part of the grants cohort chosen through the RFP. Funded institutions will be required to share data, disaggregated by race and gender for all key metrics above throughout the application process and reporting. Data will be gathered, analyzed and shared in an annual public report.

Grant Type

Project Specific

Grant Amounts Available & Grant Term

This grantmaking opportunity will occur in two phases. In Phase 1, the TIIM initiative will award five one-year planning grants of $300,000 each. Successful Phase 1 grant applicants will be invited to submit an Implementation application during the planning grant phase. TIIM Phase 2 Implementation grants of up to $1,700,000 over three years will be awarded to support the plans created during the planning process. The number of implementation grants awarded will be dependent on funds raised.

Please Note: Phase 2 Implementation applications will be invited and submitted in the Winter/Spring of 2026 and will be evaluated competitively among all applying institutions. TIIM will look for plans that set dramatic targets and clear plans for improving the key program outcomes.

How to Apply

The Trust awards grants to organizations whose work is consistent with our mission and our current priorities. Learn about the application process and eligibility.

How to Apply

What We Fund

Our grants are not just checks, not just points on a map. Our grants are lifelines, connecting individual donors with people and families striving for a better life.

What We Fund