NAFSCE Awarded $440,000 for Planning and Stakeholder Engagement Initiative

The National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) announces that it will launch a planning and stakeholder engagement initiative with generous funding awards of nearly $400,000 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and $40,000 from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

“This is an exciting time for our young association,” said Vito J. Borrello, Executive Director of NAFSCE. “We intend to bring together the broad field of professionals and parent leaders impacting family engagement, to create a long term plan for the advancement of this new association and as the impetus for the creation of a national movement.”

Over the past three months, NAFSCE has raised more than $1 million to support the growth of the association.

“At the Kellogg Foundation, family engagement is a shared responsibility of families, schools and communities to help all students thrive, said Felicia DeHaney, Director of Education and Learning at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. “We support NAFSCE’s comprehensive initiative to build strategies beyond the traditional approaches to parental involvement that we believe can profoundly impact students’ academic achievement.”

According to Borrello, building a unifying entity to support the advancement of effective family engagement policy and practice is essential, if families are to receive the priority they deserve as a key strategy to promote child development, student achievement and school improvement.

“I am so pleased to see that the vision for a professional membership association to advance our field is being realized and that the funding community is embracing us,” said Susan M. Shaffer, NAFSCE Chair and Co-Founder.

NAFSCE will hire McKinley Advisors, a Washington DC-based association management firm. They will coordinate the stakeholder engagement effort to create a strategic plan and aligned business plan to support NAFSCE’s vision of a world where family engagement is universally practiced as an essential strategy to support children’s learning and advance equity. NAFSCE’s cradle to college constituency of early childhood providers, K-12 educators, policymakers, researchers, and community-based organizations will be recruited to participate in the initiative.

The National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) was launched in September 2014 to advance high impact policy and practice to promote child development and improve student achievement. For more information and to register for the listserv, go to www.NAFSCE.org.

Featured

  • Construction Begins on 100+ Acre K–12 Campus Designed for Lakota Culture

    The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST) and the Cheyenne-Eagle Butte School District in Eagle Butte, S.D., recently broke ground on a new K–12 campus that will cover more than 100 acres and serve students and families across 1,600 square miles, according to a news release.

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • ed tech conference calendar

    Upcoming Awards, Events & Webinars

  • Longwood University Hits Construction Milestone on New Music Education Facility

    Longwood University in Farmville, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of its new music education and performance facility, according to a news release. The university partnered with development and construction firm Skanska on the 63,800-square-foot facility, which began construction in August 2025 and has an estimated completion date of fall 2028.