With a new $2.77MM funding round, Edquity is ready to help colleges and government get federal emergency aid to those who need it
By: David Helene
Tags: Covid 19, Higher Education, Emergency Aid, College, Coronavirus

With a new $2.77MM funding round, Edquity is ready to help colleges and government get federal emergency aid to those who need it David Helene Dec 23, 2020·4 min read

Less than a year ago, we announced that we’d raised an oversubscribed seed round to ensure we could bring our emergency cash grant solution to the millions of college students who struggle with hunger, homelessness, and financial insecurity every day. That was before COVID-19 struck, devastating the economy and derailing many students’ lives.

The underlying structural challenges that students must grapple with — racial wealth gaps, decades of underfunding higher education, rising costs of living, and widening inequality in the labor market — have only been exacerbated by the pandemic. And while this is the case for all students, it is especially the case for Black, Brown, and Indigenous students.

I’d be lying if I said Edquity had been fully prepared for the scale of need we saw in the wake of COVID-19, but I’m extremely proud of how the Edquity team has lived our value of moving fast to fix things to step up and support students and our postsecondary partners over the past six months.

Since June 1, with the support of partners like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, we’ve scaled rapidly from having administered $150,000 in emergency grants to over $7,500,000 today — while getting funds to students in an average of 24 hours flat. We’ve moved from serving one partner representing seven colleges and 90,000 students to 17 partners representing 27 colleges and over 1,000,000 students, and at our busiest processed 8,000 applications in a single day. Our team, the majority of which is now non-white identifying, has grown from 9 to 27. And we’ve done all of this while doubling down on our commitment to be anti-racist — which is inherent to our mission — and while having served a disproportionate number of Black and Latinx students relative to the overall student populations of our partners.

Far more needs to be done, though.

With its unprecedented though still insufficient $6 billion investment in student emergency aid, the CARES Act showed that policy is slowly catching up to the needs of students — and to normalizing emergency aid as a policy tool. The Emergency Coronavirus Relief Act (ECRA), which was passed on Monday by Congress (and is pending President Trump’s 11th hour tantrum), builds on this and would provide at a minimum an additional $6 billion in emergency aid for students — and likely more. These dollars would be a start — and hopefully the first of more to come — but how these dollars would be distributed to students is as critical as the money itself.

Over the past eight months, we saw firsthand the tremendous challenges that postsecondary institutions faced in trying to distribute the first wave of federal funding, challenges that included:

Slow response times due to unprecedented application volume, leaving students waiting weeks for funding rather than the 48 hours that is optimal;

to unprecedented application volume, leaving students waiting weeks for funding rather than the 48 hours that is optimal; Approaches to decision making that unintentionally increase racial inequities, such as first-come, first-serve, equal payments to all students , and overly complex applications to try to comply with convoluted federal guidance ; and

such as first-come, first-serve, equal payments to all students and overly complex applications to try to comply with convoluted federal guidance and Failure to create a culture of caring due to fragmented and siloed communication to students, leaving students confused and frustrated that the support they’d heard about in the news wasn’t making its way to them.

These are issues Edquity can and has helped partners address, and I’m proud to say in the wake of this new likely federal stimulus: this time we are ready to support as many partners as may need our help.

I’m grateful to the Lumina Foundation, ECMC Foundation, Spring Point Partners, American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact, Strada Education Network, and WGU Labs for reaffirming their belief in our mission and ability to execute on behalf of students, and for supporting us in an oversubscribed $2.77MM seed extension to help us meet the moment and scale our impact. I’m also thrilled to welcome the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to our team of highly aligned, highly proven investors.

I’ve never been more optimistic for Edquity’s ability to move the needle on helping students achieve transformative outcomes in postsecondary education and to grow to support millions of Americans beyond — not merely because of how we’ve proven our ability to move fast to get assistance out quickly, equitably, and with high impact to students but also because of how the emergency aid and cash transfer policy landscape is shifting to ensure more students and more Americans can get access to the critical support they need, including around rental assistance.

Edquity has proven that we are best-in-class at facilitating this critical anti-poverty instrument. Now, we’re ready to sprint into 2021 to prove that we can do this for millions of students — and Americans writ large — who have been left behind by both policy and the pandemic.

As we do this, we remain committed to using our work to continue to advocate for the policies that will address the underlying conditions that cause financial hardship for both students and millions of Americans in the first place.

If you’re a college or university president, administrator, or staff member interested in how Edquity can support your institution in distributing your emergency aid, we’d love to help.

If you’re a member of a state agency or community non-profit organization needing support in distributing rental assistance to individuals facing housing challenges, we’d love to help.

For anyone else who believes in what we do and wants to be a part of our journey in making our world a more equitable and prosperous one, we’d love for you to join us.

Please email me at david@edquity.co