The Rise Report | Issue 3 | Why We Care About Evidence

One of the questions I get most often about FutureRise is some version of: How do you decide what to fund?

The honest answer is that we start with evidence. Not evidence as a buzzword or a compliance checkbox, but evidence as a discipline – a provider's commitment to understanding what actually works for learners and what doesn't, and to being honest about the difference.

In postsecondary education and workforce development, we have a long history of funding programs based on compelling narratives, political momentum, or institutional relationships. Those things aren't unimportant. But when public and philanthropic dollars flow without a clear-eyed view of outcomes, we end up with a system that feels busy but can't answer the most basic question a learner deserves to have answered: Will this credential open a door to economic security — not just a first job, but a durable path forward?

FutureRise was designed to operate differently. We set clear targets for our grantees: an 80% completion and employment rate and a $45,000+ median wage. And we ask every grantee to generate proof points — credible data and real-world implementation lessons — that can inform public policy and broader adoption. We set these bars not because only "evidence-based” programs deserve investment, but because the learners FutureRise serves deserve programs that have done the work to understand whether they're delivering — and because what we learn should help Colorado's public systems get smarter about where to direct resources.

That's the thread I want to pull on today: the relationship between evidence at the program level and transformation at the system level.

Colorado is one of a handful of states where evidence isn't just a nice idea in workforce development — it's becoming the actual operating logic for how public dollars flow.

A lot of the credit for that belongs to the Colorado Equitable Economic Mobility Initiative, or CEEMI. Since launching in 2021, CEEMI — led by Roger Low — has done something deceptively simple but remarkably hard: they advanced and helped operationalize a shared framework for what "evidence" means in Colorado's workforce ecosystem . This framework is built around the Colorado Evidence Continuum, developed back in 2018 by the Colorado Evidence-Based Policy Collaborative, which included current leadership at CEEMI and the Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab at the University of Denver. The continuum has since been adopted by the Colorado Workforce Development Council and lays out five clear steps — from pre-preliminary program performance data all the way up to strong evidence backed by multiple rigorous evaluations like randomized controlled trials.

What makes the Continuum powerful isn't its sophistication. It's its accessibility. Any training provider in the state can look at it and understand where their program falls — and what it would take to advance. To help make that possible, CEEMI built a toolkit for providers, partnered with evaluators, helped launch the Colorado WORC dashboard to make wage outcomes transparent at the program level, and advocated relentlessly for evidence standards in state legislation.

That advocacy bore fruit in Opportunity Now — the $89.5 million workforce grant program enacted through HB22-1350, which CEEMI helped shape from the beginning, working with legislators from both parties to embed evidence standards into the program's design, including prioritizing stronger evidence for its largest grant tier.

Now in its final phase, Opportunity Now has awarded 96 grants across all 14 regions of Colorado, with more than 8,000 Coloradans already placed into jobs in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and advanced industries. And the Colorado Evaluation & Action Lab is conducting a pretest-posttest evaluation of the program — connecting grant data to labor market earnings through the state's LINC data infrastructure, with grantees expected to begin receiving earnings trajectory data this summer and the full evaluation due in late 2027.

That's worth pausing on: Colorado is building toward a system where you can follow a learner from a workforce training program into the labor market and see whether the investment paid off — not in anecdotes, but in wages.

FutureRise operates inside this ecosystem, and we think philanthropic capital should speak the same language about outcomes that the public sector is learning to speak. But we're also doing something public grant programs often can't: using what we learn from our grantees to build the case for systems change. Every grant FutureRise makes is designed to work twice — once to expand opportunity for learners, and once to generate insights that inform how Colorado invests, regulates, and scales workforce and postsecondary programs.

Evidence isn't the whole story. But it's where the story has to start.

If your institution or organization serves non-traditional learners pursuing credentials in high-demand fields, tomorrow February 19, is the last day to express interest in applying for Boundless Opportunity Scholarship funding through FutureRise. 

Don't let this one slip by—we want to hear from you. Express interest now.

Full applications are due March 27 at 5:00 PM MT. 

Questions? Review the full Call for Proposals or reach out to us directly.

A new report from the Stanford University-anchored Learning Society draws on interviews with 15 C-suite HR and talent leaders at organizations including Walmart, IBM, and S&P Global to document a major shift: employers are becoming education providers in their own right. The leaders describe a move away from reliance on four-year degrees toward internal capability systems — micro-credentials, AI-driven talent matching, rotational programs, and high school pipelines — built to keep pace with rapid technological change. They also point to lengthening working lives as a driver of more flexible, non-linear career models. Related: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and ETS are working on the supply side of this problem — releasing their first research-based Skills Progressions for collaboration, communication, and critical thinking as part of an effort to build common skills standards across K-12 and the workforce.

New CBO projections show the Pell Grant program faces a $5.5 billion shortfall by the end of this fiscal year, ballooning to $11.5 billion in FY2027 — even after last year's $10.5 billion infusion through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The structural gap between program costs and appropriations isn't new, but the scale is: cumulative shortfalls could reach $97 billion or more over the next decade. For states gearing up to implement Workforce Pell this July, the timing raises uncomfortable questions about whether the program's financial footing can support a major new expansion — and what Congress might cut to close the gap. Related: the Department of Labor just announced $65 million in Strengthening Community College Training Grants explicitly focused on helping community colleges develop short-term programs that qualify for Workforce Pell — a signal that the federal implementation process is moving forward even as the fiscal foundation remains uncertain.

​​The Homegrown Talent Coalition (HTC) is hosting a Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness Day at the Capitol on February 23 from 8-10am in the Capitol Rotunda. HTC is a statewide coalition of 20+ organizations committed to ensuring every Colorado student graduates high school with access to college credit, in-demand industry credentials, and high-quality work-based learning experiences. PWR Day at the Capitol will bring together leaders from education, business, and policy to highlight the importance of career-connected learning and expand opportunities that help Colorado students succeed. RSVP for PWR Day at the Capitol here; sign up for email updates about the Coalition here; or reach out to Sarah Swanson if you want to learn more. 

The Rise Report welcomes updates from our colleagues across Colorado. Think of this as your one-stop-shop for conference updates, new research + reports, job postings, and career moves.

The Scrivner Policy Roundtable at the University of Denver will feature The Colorado Project, a program convened by the Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs to address some of Colorado’s most pressing policy challenges. The Colorado Project 2.0: Rural Renaissance focuses on elevating the experiences and perspectives of rural communities. Registration and detailed information about the in-person session on Wednesday, March 11 can be found here.

Arnold Ventures is accepting letters of interest through March 6 for its Building Evidence RFP, which funds rigorous causal research using quasi-experimental methods in areas directly relevant to Colorado's transformation work — including career pathways, higher education, and public finance. AV is particularly interested in research on high school CTE, career-connected learning, and postsecondary pathways beyond the traditional four-year degree.

C-BEN's CBExchange — the national convening for competency-based education, workforce alignment, and credential quality — is now accepting session proposals for its 2026 conference, September 30–October 3 in Florida. The conference brings together higher education, employers, workforce systems, and policymakers around shared questions about how learning is recognized and valued. If you're doing work on CBE, credit for competency, skills-based hiring, or enabling policy infrastructure, consider submitting a proposal.

With FutureRise Fund applications open through the end of March, next week we'll profile one of our first cohort grantees — what their program looks like, what outcomes they're delivering, and what made them a fit for FutureRise. If you're considering applying, this is the issue to read.

What are you seeing in your corner of Colorado? I'd love to hear what's working—and what questions you're wrestling with. 

Hit reply and let me know.

With gratitude,

Alison