Building Influence Across the Great Lakes: Inaugural Lessons from the Joyce College and Career Readiness State Advocacy Network

The Joyce Foundation is a private philanthropy that strategically invests in policy research, development, and advocacy to promote racial equity and economic mobility for young people in the Great Lakes region. The Foundation’s Education & Economic Mobility program area is explicitly focused on closing income and race disparities in college and career success through a three-pronged strategy: expanding access to effective educators, promoting college & career readiness in high school, and supporting post-secondary success.

In 2024, the Foundation sought support from Education Strategy Group to launch a College and Career Readiness (CCR) Advocacy Network across the Great Lakes region. The network seeks to engage ten unique Joyce grantees in a unifying learning experience. The hypothesis? By bolstering connectivity, content knowledge, and strategic dexterity among ten leading advocacy organizations operating at the state level, the network will – collectively – accumulate influence in CCR policymaking in the Great Lakes. 

A Three-Pronged Approach: Relationships, Knowledge, Tactics

To pressure test the network’s hypothesis, ESG and the Joyce Foundation sought to augment members’ positionality in their respective CCR policy ecosystems through three prongs of learning and engagement:

Relationships: As a nascent network, community building took priority at every turn, providing a foundation for all other activities to grow from. Members gathered at the Joyce Foundation’s Chicago office twice, taking advantage of unstructured time to connect with one another – and other Chicago-based colleagues – between prescribed agenda items. Informal coffee chats, peer consultancies, and informational interviews with external experts allowed for forward momentum between gatherings.

Knowledge: In preparation for the 2025 legislation session, network members had identified distinct policy issues of interest, including high school graduation requirements, direct admissions, dual enrollment funding models, automatic acceleration mechanisms, and more. ESG shared a number of policy frameworks (e.g. Accelerating All Students; Aligned Advising) to spark comparisons among Great Lakes states. Identifying specific model policies (e.g. Illinois’ Postsecondary and Workforce Readiness Act) spurred illuminating conversations exploring the idiosyncratic facets of state-level policymaking, messaging, and innovation.

Tactics: Taken together, network members boast experience deploying nearly every advocacy tactic imaginable: coalition building, public polling, model policy development, litigation, messaging campaigns, and more. However, identifying the right tactic for the right target at the right time has only become more challenging in a policymaking environment marred by polarization and resource scarcity. With an eye toward the 2026 legislative session, network members embarked on a step-by-step power mapping process, starting with problem definition, and ultimately informing a campaign implementation plan. 

Lessons in Cross-State Networking

One year in, a number of key lessons have emerged from the Great Lakes CCR Advocacy Network. Certainly, these lessons will be instructive for the future of the network from which they came, but they also offer valuable considerations for any collective impact effort navigating the realities of the current moment in state and federal policymaking:

Great Lakes States Lead in Different Lanes
As we compared and contrasted CCR policies and outcomes across our member states, “glows” and “grows” were not concentrated within individual states. Rather, bright spots appeared scattered across the map. For example, Michigan’s Early/Middle Colleges are some of the most advanced accelerated school models in the country, yet the state continues to grapple with expanding access – and funding – for dual enrollment. Or, consider Ohio’s expansive frameworks for career exploration in advising, which stand in contrast with the state’s historically lackluster college-going rates. From an optimist’s lens, these peculiar pockets of inspiration suggest that, in some cases, precedent is not a prerequisite for innovation.

For Political Viability, Policy Matters, But So Does the Packaging
During our very first convening as a network, we set aside time to dissect CCR nomenclature in each of our five member states. Consider the differences in both title and substance of related terms like “Postsecondary Enrollment Options” in Minnesota, versus Ohio’s “College Credit Plus” program, versus “dual credit” in Indiana. At first glance, this direct comparison confirms that, despite incongruous language, most states are tackling college and career readiness with mirrored approaches. Yet, our conversations around language only underscored the growing importance of messaging in today’s policymaking climate. As pressure mounts nationwide to build closer ties between education policy and workforce development, advocates can continue to leverage one another as sounding boards – experimenting with refreshed, reframed language to ensure that CCR initiatives remain top of mind for policymakers. 

In the Current Moment, Advocates – and Philanthropists – Can Strengthen Statewide Strategies
In May, four months into the new Trump administration, our network gathered in Chicago to take inventory of rapidly changing conditions in federal funding and state spending flexibility. Anne Hyslop, Director of Policy Development at All4Ed, joined us to offer tips for cutting through hyperbolic hypotheticals in the media, and shared practical tools, such as All4Ed’s ESEA Waivers Guide for Advocates. Among peers, network members found a space to candidly consider new, unfamiliar lanes for their work to operate within – namely, emerging as trusted advisors to state officials attempting to proactively diagnose and prepare for incoming funding vulnerabilities. Simultaneously, as advocates continue to navigate uncharted waters, the Joyce Foundation is actively embracing its own capacity to invest in new policy and research efforts aimed at sensemaking.  

The Most Valuable Case Studies Include Policymaking “Hows” in Addition to “Whats”
To deepen subject matter expertise and exposure to landmark policies across the region, we spent time as a network digging into the details of programs like the Indiana College Core, the Minnesota North Star Promise Program, and the Illinois Dual Credit Quality Act. Quickly digesting the machinery of model policies themselves, network members immediately began inquiring about a different sort of machinery – the collective action necessary to see model policies through. Replicating model policies in new contexts and geographies requires more than just the right language, or even the right bill sponsor. Advocates have a crucial role to play, and case studies from states with comparable policymaking conditions can be informative for organizations preparing to allocate precious time and resources across various campaigns. 

Once You’ve Inventoried Your Power, You Can Augment
In a thought exercise that evolved into a practical framework for campaign planning, we asked advocates to inventory all of the stakeholders influencing a specific set of CCR policies in their state (e.g. high school graduation requirements in Illinois). We leveraged these inventories as mirrors – an opportunity to consider the power and influence that each member organization wields in relation to the various policy ecosystems they operate within. Power maps produced clear answers to questions like: Who are your top 2-3 strongest allies? Who do you need to forge stronger connections with in order to enhance your own influence in this space? With answers in hand, advocates are empowered to make the leap from understanding where the power lies, to actively brokering for power.

Year Two: The Experiment Continues

This Fall, the Great Lakes CCR Advocacy Network will reconvene to kick off another year of co-learning and engagement. With a foundational layer of trust to take confidence in, the Network will embrace a renewed focus on exchanging tactical strategies for campaign execution and stakeholder engagement. So far, the Network has produced a compelling case for inter-state advocacy conversations. We’re eager to add depth and longevity to this case study over the coming months.