Through community engagement and strategic support, The Gates Foundation Horizons Program works to equip local partners with the tools, training, and data systems they need to drive meaningful change and create better opportunities for youth in the state of Washington. 

This looks like advancing local partnerships to better support high school students in their transition into post-secondary education with an intention on students who are from Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, and rural and low-income areas. There are four Horizons regional partnerships across the state, made up of different teams and a unique set of goals tailored to the needs and priorities of their local communities.

South King County - Puget Sound ESD 
Southwest Washington - ESD 112 Postsecondary Readiness Partnership
Palouse Region - Elevate / United Way of the Blue Mountains
Kitsap County and Olympia Peninsula - West Sounds STEM Network

Scholar Fund, along with CARA, Washington STEM, and Sankofa Consulting, are technical assistance providers working with these regional partnerships to improve postsecondary pathways and continuous improvement. Our team actively collaborates across these regions to support goal setting, drive implementation, and ensure progress toward shared outcomes.

Scholar Fund does this by partnering with schools, districts, and communities to strengthen college access by offering coaching, facilitation, and tools that support continuous improvement and elevate student, family, and community voice. We also provide data analysis and custom dashboards to help inform strategy and track key indicators. An example of this is Scholar Fund partnering with Elevate to launch the “College and Career Ecosystem,” a model that brings together school teams from each high school in the region. The model includes ways to work towards increasing student voices, family voices, educator voices, utilizing surveys, hosting listening sessions, providing financial aid support, family engagement workshops, and more. Scholar Fund is coaching and leading facilitation for schools, districts, and communities. 

“Scholar Fund’s partnership has significantly strengthened the Elevate team’s capacity and impact by providing tailored professional development, strategic thought partnership, and critical data tools like FAFSA completion run charts. They have spent a significant amount of time in our region getting to know our schools and community. Their support in building and facilitating school-based postsecondary ecosystem teams – and convening them regionally – has fostered alignment, collaboration, and shared learning across schools. By helping us set meaningful goals for continuous improvement and amplifying student and family voices through surveys, they’ve deepened our effectiveness. Most importantly, Scholar Fund has helped cultivate a sense of community, trust, and shared purpose that energizes our work every day.”

— Amy Ly
Director of Postsecondary Access
United Way of the Blue Mountains/Elevate

Our team members are deeply committed to working alongside these partnerships making education accessible for all, driven by a shared dedication to creating lasting change for students and families from an array of backgrounds and experiences. 

"Our Education Strategy work takes us across Washington state supporting 26 regional partnerships with Limitless and 4 regional partnerships with Horizons. We are thrilled to be working closely with schools, districts, and regions to help them build school-based teams, track predictive college access data, implement continuous improvement, center student and family voice, and lead with racial equity."

—Roslyn Nambo Kagy Co-Director Education Strategy
Scholar Fund

Scholarship Junkies has free essay reviews! If you need a second pair of eyes on your personal statement or a scholarship essay, look no further! The SJ team will get back to you within 5 business days! Submit your essay today. 

The Study Zone at the Skyway Library is hosted every Wednesday from now until December from 5:00-7:00 PM offering tutoring support for anyone in K-12. They provide language support as needed.

Get your youth healing project funded! You can apply if you are between the ages of 14-24. The Youth Healing Project will fund 25 projects with each project receiving $10,000. Applications are due July 17, 2025.

Northwest Education Access is hosting a job-prep bootcamp on Thursday, July 10 from 5:30-7:00 PM via Zoom. Learn from the best on how to build a meaningful professional network with guest speaker Emanuel Wilder. Register today!