As California lawmakers were assembling the most recent state budget, a strong coalition of nonprofits played a leading role in securing emergency aid for undocumented students facing unexpected costs that could derail their journey to a life-changing college degree. Over the past decade, the advocacy of the California Undocumented Higher Education Coalition has been instrumental in securing new state funds to help undocumented students find legal aid, basic needs support, and other vital resources.

Charitable foundations often shy away from supporting nonprofit strong coalitions to do advocacy work, based on concerns about who’s accountable for results, how to assess coalition effectiveness in complex and slow-moving policy environments, and how to ensure that coalitions aren’t creating too much controversy or political backlash. The preference is to support individual nonprofits with clear-cut missions and project goals.

But the work of the California Undocumented Higher Education Coalition has been essential in driving significant education reforms in California — and offers a window into the impact that nonprofit collaboratives can have. A new report explores why higher education coalitions in California have been so successful, and, critically, how funders can know when a coalition is primed for impact.

Signs of an Effective, Strong Coalition

According to the report, one of the strongest predictors of coalition success is a “well-defined and relatively narrow focus.” In other words, strong coalitions have a straightforward and clear mission. The California Undocumented Higher Education Coalition meets this standard by keeping its focus tight and its purpose unmistakable: improving access, affordability, and success for approximately 100,000 undocumented students enrolled in public and independent colleges and universities in our state.

“One of the things we’ve been able to achieve together is when it comes to supporting undocumented students in higher education, we are considered the official voice, whether we are talking with state agencies or campus systems,” said Marcos Montes, the policy director with the Southern California College Access Network, who co-leads the coalition’s work.

Other coalitions spotlighted in the report, which set out to map the landscape of higher education advocacy coalitions in our state, are similarly organized around distinct issues and student populations.

Read the full article about strong coalitions' potential for impact by Monica Martinez and Ria Sengupta Bhatt at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.