Equity
Can’t Wait
A bold fundraising campaign for social justice, economic opportunity, and community recovery.
Campaign Overview
Our region will add hundreds of thousands of jobs in the next five years, and according to an estimate by the Washington Roundtable, 75 percent will require some sort of post-secondary credential — an associate degree, a bachelor's, a professional certificate, or an apprenticeship. Yet, at present, only 41 percent of Washington's high-school grads earn such a credential by age 26. The implications for social and economic mobility — and community prosperity — are immense.
The Seattle Colleges — South, Seattle Central and North — educate nearly 34,000 students a year, including the great majority of the city's first-generation college-goers. The four-year, $50 million Equity Can’t Wait campaign successfully culminated in early 2025. Resources from the campaign are now hard at work helping to support students, power innovation, and strengthen capacity.
Thank you to the more than 3,000 contributors who played a part!
Is there more to do? Yes! Read on.
Support Students
Affordable tuition can open the door to college, but walking through and succeeding often takes added support. Many students manage school, parenting, and work, a precarious balance with challenges like food insecurity, housing insecurity, and homelessness.
Though the campaign has concluded, you can still help students unlock their potential, learn new skills, and better prepare for the demands and opportunities in today’s workforce.
Top priorities:
- Deliver fully on Seattle Promise, a program that — partly with help from Seattle residents — provides two years of free tuition and wraparound services to new grads of Seattle public high schools
- Expand availability of scholarships, including Stay in the Game scholarships, and safety-net grants
- Bridge the graduation gap with targeted programs
- Enhance staffing of student services
Power Innovation
The Seattle Colleges are a national leader in community college education. Over our five decades the colleges have nimbly adapted to our region’s ever-evolving economy and demographics and prepared tens of thousands of Seattleites for productive, contributing lives. People who started with us occupy almost every social role, including those that hold our community together in its hardest days: nurses, respiratory therapists, electricians, big-rig technicians, aviation mechanics, institutional chefs, early childhood educators, and more.
Today new and unpredictable forces are bearing down on the community. With your help, the Seattle Colleges will be there to help our city’s people meet the moment — whatever the future holds.
Top priorities:
- Keep programs and curricula responsive to employer and community needs
- Create flexible learning options, including micro-credentials and short-term training
Strengthen Capacity
At the beating heart of our schools are our instructors, who cherish the role of teacher and take the personal interest in students that's seldom possible at institutions with bigger classes and other agendas like research. [Class sizes at the colleges average around 20.] Our future success will require recruiting and retaining more of these great teachers, as well as the committed staff who play equally vital roles as advisors, mentors and tutors.
It matters, as well, what kinds of facilities we have for instruction and student services. Many of our classrooms and buildings are outmoded, and ill-suited to emerging instructional needs, including simultaneous online/in-person teaching. With your help, we can strengthen our capacity to deliver a top-notch educational experience for every student.
Top priorities:
- Support the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty and staff through professional development funds and teaching and service awards
- Create the physical infrastructure for future-facing education
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