Overdeck Family Foundation Awards $10.7 Million in Grants in Q1 2026

In Q1 2026, our foundation awarded 29 grants totaling over $10 million.

Our first quarter grantmaking spans portfolio areas, from grants that aim to increase the use of high-quality instructional materials and Pre-K curricula to those that expand access to engaging out-of-school programs and explore innovative measurement of future-ready skills. As always, we place an emphasis on grantmaking and strategic support that unlock innovation, evidence, and growth for our grantees.

Below, we highlight just some of the direct impact and ecosystem organizations we’re proud to support this quarter as we begin our 2026 grantmaking.

Unlocking Innovation and Growth (Direct Impact Grantees)

NEW GRANTEES/PARTNERSHIPS

$500,000 over 18 months to support a pilot partnership across four schools between Modern Classrooms Project (MCP) and Zearn to test whether embedding Zearn within MCP’s mastery-based, self-paced instructional model can increase Zearn dosage and improve student math outcomes.

A $200,000 one-year pilot grant to HighScope, an early childhood instructional model that integrates curriculum, assessment, and professional learning to support children’s development. Highscope will use the funding to support the design and testing of asynchronous professional learning modules, with the goal of establishing a more scalable and cost-efficient delivery model to support thousands of Pre-K educators.

RENEWALS AND COMMITMENTS

$3,000,000 over two years to CommonLit to improve usage of its core curriculum, CommonLit 360, by strengthening implementation support and improving assessment alignment to drive deeper, more consistent use for its 1.4 million active student users in paid schools.

$3,000,000 over three years to Learn Fresh to support the expansion of its sports-based math programs to reach 525,000 students annually, following ESSA Tier 1-aligned randomized controlled trial findings that demonstrated meaningful gains in math proficiency for participants.

$3,000,000 over three years to Tools of the Mind to accelerate adoption of its Pre-K curriculum through streamlined and modular professional learning and improved curriculum design and usability. Over the grant period, Tools of the Mind expects to reach 250,000 students.

$1,500,000 (year three of a three-year grant) to TalkingPoints to enable product innovation, test new approaches for improving academic outcomes, and pursue curriculum-aligned partnerships that deepen impact for over 1.6 million Pre-K through third grade students.

$1,000,000 (year three of a three-year grant) to the National Inventors Hall of Fame to sustain access for over 145,000 underserved students in both in- and out-of-school programs.

$500,000 (year three of a three-year grant) to Changent, formerly the National Service Office for Nurse-Family Partnership and Child First, to strengthen infrastructure and scale impact across its national home visiting network, which reaches over 59,000 families annually.

$450,000 over one year to support scholarships for 75 students to attend Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) on-campus programs for summer 2026. CTY programs offer engaging and supportive learning opportunities for advanced students to accelerate learning, challenge themselves, and follow their curiosity.

$300,000 over one year to AppleTree Institute to support the growth of Every Child Ready (ECR), a comprehensive Pre-K instructional model, to an estimated 8,500 students in SY 2026-27 while continuing to reduce per-student costs and maintain strong kindergarten readiness outcomes.

$170,000 over one year to support the Governor’s School of New Jersey Program in the Sciences at Drew University, which will offer 60 students a three-week summer enrichment opportunity aimed at broadening their appreciation for and knowledge of the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the sciences.

Unlocking Evidence: RESEARCH and FIELD BUILDING

Ecosystem grants are designed to clear the path to scale for our direct impact grantees and strategies.

$651,000 over 18 months to Educational Testing Service (ETS) to develop and validate measures of future-ready skills, including collaboration, critical thinking, and cognition, for middle school students. Working in partnership with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, this grant will extend ETS’s existing high school measurement work into grades six through eight.

$600,000 (year two of a three-year grant) to the Research Partnership for Professional Learning (RPPL) to build rigorous and actionable evidence on artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled professional learning. Funding will support the launch of eight additional AI-driven professional learning studies, continued development and field-testing of shared measures and practitioner toolkits, and expanded communities of practice to sharpen the field’s understanding of which AI-enabled features and enabling conditions most effectively improve teaching and student outcomes.

$525,000 over two years to Mathematica to conduct a rigorous validation study of Fishtank Learning’s English language arts (ELA) curriculum in partnership with KIPP schools. This grant will fund the infrastructure and execution of a rigorous ESSA Tier II-aligned evaluation designed to identify the impacts of Fishtank on ELA learning, the facilitators and barriers to implementation, and implementation conditions most strongly associated with impact.

$150,000 over one year to Transcend to fund the pilot season of the “Ask the Kids” podcast, which centers student voice in the national conversation about how schools should evolve in the age of AI.

$125,000 (year two of a two-year grant) to the University of Nebraska Medical Center to complete the final phase of work needed to scale the Kidsights Data population-level measure of child development. This dataset aims to encourage data-driven decision-making by providing access to previously unavailable insights on children from birth to age five. More information about the study to date can be found on our Research Repository.