Kentucky Student Success Collaborative receives grant to increase student basic needs support

December 18, 2023

The Kentucky Student Success Collaborative (KYSSC), an initiative of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), has been awarded an $1.5 million grant from ECMC Foundation. The three-year grant will support increasing childcare solutions for adult learners and workers with dependents; communications for basic needs resources; creating a national model for a basic needs data dashboard; and building backbone support to drive the basic needs agenda.

"Our Student Success Collaborative is the first in the nation to bring together all sectors to address students holistically," CPE President Aaron Thompson said. "I am very thankful to ECMC Foundation for recognizing Kentucky's work and am excited to see how this program will improve student outcomes, especially among those from rural areas or have low incomes."

Approximately one out of three undergraduate students attending a Kentucky public institution qualifies as having low income, which can often lead to stressors that affect retention and graduation rates. The KYSSC previously released a report outlining eight recommendations to assist these students with basic needs insecurity, which includes a lack of affordable food, housing and other necessities.

“We are privileged to fund this ambitious effort to comprehensively support students across Kentucky and believe it will create a model to demonstrate how states can reimagine how they meet students’ basic needs,” Jacob Fraire, president of ECMC Foundation, said. “We look forward to the learnings that will come from this innovative collaboration.”

Funding for the grant begins in January 2024 and goes through the end of 2026.

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The Kentucky Student Success Collaborative (KYSSC) is made possible through a partnership and financial investment from the James Graham Brown Foundation with the goal of engaging Kentucky’s postsecondary partners with nonprofit, workforce and governmental stakeholders to address the state’s most pressing challenges and barriers to student success.