Men of Color Initiative

The Men of Color Initiative officially launched at the end of 2022, in response to the underrepresentation of this population across higher education, where they comprise just under 44% of all male students enrolled at institutions of higher education, as well as the racist stereotypes and implicit biases that continue to bolster negative narratives and persistent challenges for men of color in higher education. The initiative’s first year included extensive structuring and strategizing, even as we began funding innovative new projects to promote greater degree completion for men of color. With support from ECMC Foundation’s Learning and Evaluation (L&E) team and external evaluators and partners, we identified the target student populations for this initiative, which is inclusive of Black, Latino, American Indian/Alaska Native, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander males.

The initiative aims to strengthen programs and improve student outcomes, promote culture change in higher education institutions and advance field-building efforts to inform and address equity gaps. We also began to develop an evaluation plan, which details the initiative-wide outcomes we expect to realize over the next five years. In line with this strategy, we identified eight initial grantee partners in 2023, with grants totaling more than $3.8 million. 

One of those is Takeoff: Institutional Innovations for College Men of Color ($250,000 granted in 2023 after an initial grant of $1,839,180 in 2022) with the University of Southern California Race and Equity Center (USC Race and Equity Center). The initiative’s signature project, Takeoff, focuses on support systems at community colleges, representatives of which join a cohort to imagine, test and evaluate strategies to improve the outcomes, experiences and lives of males of color in their respective campuses.

The cohort kicked off with an in-person convening in August, and teams have since begun working with experienced coaches on projects that include offering trainings to faculty and staff on how to better support men of color and targeting supports to specific groups such as undocumented, Alaska native or Black men—rather than the all-too-common monolithic approach. Along the way, the Foundation aims to continue to build data infrastructure and usage practices to allow institutions of higher education (beyond our current cohort) to better understand and address systemic equity gaps.

In May, ECMC Foundation also joined the California Funders for Boys and Men of Color, a CEO-driven network that strives to radically transform systems and policies to address opportunity gaps and create pathways to success, and we also promoted the initiative at the Student African American Brotherhood Conference in March and at the California State University Young Males of Color Consortium Conference in April.