For the 2025 funding cycle, projects should address at least one of the following focus areas:

• Systemic approaches and actionable strategies for higher education systems to address student housing and food insecurity. These can include but aren’t limited to:
  • Implementing and integrating policies, such as AB 79 (Basic Needs Implementation and Data Coordination) and similar legislation addressing student housing, food security, and financial stability
  • Innovative approaches that facilitate the transfer of public benefits, housing supports, and other resources when students move between institutions
  • Innovative and scalable financing and partnership models that address student housing and food insecurity
  • Policy advocacy efforts that systematically address housing and food insecurity

• Innovative approaches that strengthen equitable economic mobility and long-term student stability. These can include but aren’t limited to:
  • Expanding workforce development pipelines that promote economic mobility for low-income and first-generation students (including those that strategically leverage work study)
  • Supporting post-graduation housing and employment transition programs that extend basic needs support beyond college completion
  • Models that move basic needs operations from grant-based to sustainable, institutionalized systems with skilled, permanent staff (including innovative approaches that mitigate the impact of recent federal policy shifts)
  • Policy advocacy efforts that strengthen economic mobility and long-term student stability
  • Innovative and scalable financing and partnership models that strengthen economic mobility and long-term student stability
• Systematic approaches that address basic needs insecurity via innovative Emergency Student Aid models. These can include but aren’t limited to:
  • Evaluating and scaling emergency aid and direct financial assistance programs to assess and ensure their long-term impact on retention, degree completion, and post-graduation stability
  • Scalable Strategies to Support Students Ineligible for State or Federal Aid
  • Innovative financing and partnership models that help scale and sustain emergency student aid
  • Policy advocacy efforts that systematically address emergency student aid