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Our Curriculum Overview

Grantmaking Program Areas

We partner with effective nonprofit organizations that share our commitment to building a community in which all individuals and families have the opportunity to thrive. Our vision is a Texas that offers education, opportunity, health, and hope for all.

The Aimee F. Fry Foundation is interested in investing in organizations and ideas that demonstrate exceptional potential for making a difference in one or more of the Foundation’s four grantmaking program areas. These projects show promise of developing new information or program innovations useful to other organizations, institutions, and policymakers. In these cases, the Foundation will consider grants which represent larger or longer-term commitments than is otherwise typical.

The Foundation focuses on programs that improve conditions for low-income, underserved communities in Texas, and we are especially interested in efforts that will foster learning and innovation.

We award grants in three major fields: Arts Learning, Education, and Employment. Within these funding areas, we give priority to:

Programs with a demonstrated record of high-quality, effective services
Efforts to improve the quality and effectiveness of programs and services (these might include program design, evaluation or staff development efforts, among others)
The development of innovative approaches that will contribute valuable examples, information, and knowledge to others working in the field
The Foundation also considers policy advocacy efforts that help ensure low-income communities and individuals in Texas are treated fairly and have access to the services they need and deserve.

Education

We are committed to increasing the academic achievement of low-income students in historically disinvested Texas public schools. We support this goal through work that strengthens the preparation and development of principals to lead high-performing schools, the development of teacher leaders to support professional learning in schools, and programs that provide rigorous academic enrichment opportunities for students. We look for programs that assess improvements in academic achievement and instructional quality and that monitor the ongoing effectiveness of their work. The Foundation encourages proposals that include efforts to enhance the quality of programs. These efforts might include incorporating new program elements, professional development for program staff, or the development of evaluation tools, among others.

Art Learning

We are interested in efforts to improve the quality and expand the availability of arts education programs, especially in Texas public schools. The Foundation supports arts education for students and professional learning for arts educators, including classroom teachers. In arts education for students, we give priority to programs that provide a combination of arts instruction, performance or exhibition experience, and exposure to the high quality artistic products offered by Texas rich and diverse arts and cultural organizations. We look for programs that are artistically rigorous, engage students in the creative process, and assess student learning in the arts.

Employment

We are particularly interested in supporting: Vocational training programs which are aligned with employment opportunities in critical industry sectors such as healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation; Comprehensive job training programs which track graduates for at least six months up to a year after job placement will receive the highest priority. We also recognize the need to improve the overall effectiveness of the workforce development system. We welcome applications for policy advocacy efforts to improve the quality of job and education training programs and to increase access to education and training for low-income adults.

Health

After strategic analysis and much difficult deliberation, Fry Foundation has made the decision to phase out funding in the Health Program. Our current Health Program grantees will receive one to two years of final support to allow time to plan for the reduction in funding. We will be reaching out to grantee organizations to discuss individual timelines and answer questions. when the Foundation adopted the current Health Program funding strategy, it was a unique time when a convergence of factors – strong research, supportive public policy, and innovative clinics interested in overhauling their operations– merged into an opportunity. the Fry Foundation has awarded more than in grants to Health organization grantees, care coordination is now standard practice across the field, and there is a road map for clinics that want to advance their practice.