Single Mother Student Success Initiative

ECMC Foundation has been investing in projects to support single mother students since 2016, formally launching the Single Mother Student Success Initiative in 2021. Today, as the only national postsecondary foundation focused on this population, ECMC Foundation continues to serve as a leading philanthropic voice for single mother students. In 2023, we made 12 grants totaling $4.9 million, spanning various sectors, states and institutions. All the projects articulate a connection to the initiative’s driving goal of increasing the associate degree attainment rate for single mother students to 25% within six years of enrolling at a community college.

This goal remains vital for the 1.7 million students—nearly 10% of all U.S. undergraduates—who are single mothers. Nine in ten of them have incomes at or near the federal poverty level, and the nine hours they spend on average each day caring for their children and household leave little time or resources for other responsibilities, let alone persisting in postsecondary education. It’s hardly surprising, then, that just 11% of single mothers enrolled in an associate degree program complete their degree within six years. Moreover, 28% of single mothers have some college education, but no degree, making them more likely than all other women to have started but not finished a postsecondary degree. 

The Single Mother Student Success Initiative uses a multipronged approach to improve postsecondary outcomes for single mother students. Elements of our strategy include conducting research to better understand the experience of single mother students, building the capacity of community colleges to provide more comprehensive services, expanding partnerships with community-based organizations and building public will for single mother student success through increased awareness of supportive strategies and policies.

In keeping with ECMC Foundation’s work at the student, institutional and systemic levels, our 2023 grantmaking spanned projects from narrative changemaking to innovative cross-sector partnerships. Examples of our 2023 Single Mother Student Success grants include:

• Kids on Campus ($1,700,000): The Association of Community College Trusts, in partnership with the National Head Start Association, received both planning and implementation grants to advance Kids on Campus, a co-location model between Head Start centers and 60 new community college partnerships resulting from assessments of interest and promising practices to increase childcare resources for single mother students. The project's goal is to increase childcare availability to single mother students by demonstrating the viability of a replicable, sustainable and systemic expansion of this Head Start co-location model.

• Building a Coalition to Advance Systems Change for Student Parents ($1,500,000): California Competes, in partnership with Education Trust-West, is formalizing a student parent coalition, with the goal of solidifying it as the key source of information for California students, practitioners and policymakers. The coalition also will create resources for students and community college leaders and develop a policy agenda and communications strategy.

• Child Care for Community College Student Parents and Single Mothers: What’s Working, What Isn’t and How We Fix It ($1,400,000): New America’s Center on Education & Labor (CELNA) is conducting a landscape analysis to identify gaps and promising practices in childcare access for single mothers attending community college across five states with the goal of elevating more actionable childcare solutions for community college practitioners and policymakers. The center will select and work directly with five institutions offering various childcare options and hold three convenings with key stakeholders to disseminate learnings.