resources
The Multiplier Effect of Impact Investing
How the Community College Growth Engine is Scaling Skills-Based Pathways
June 2025In 2021, Education Design Lab launched the Community College Growth Engine (Growth Engine), a first-of-its-kind design accelerator aimed at scaling a new type of skills-based, stackable credential called micro-pathways.
While the Lab will continue to uncover the rippling impact of micro-pathways, we have learned there is a growing multiplier effect of impact investing in the program. This has helped colleges secure additional resources and design pathways to access major public funding streams, including federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or WIOA, and the upcoming workforce Pell grant.
Our first Impact by Design brief — The Multiplier Effect of Impact Investing — revealed that for every $1 of seed investment by philanthropies to the Growth Engine, participating community colleges were able to unlock $8 in public and private funding to advance micro-pathways.
Micro-Pathways, Macro Impact
How the Micro-Pathways Design Process Transforms Community Colleges
July 2025Micro-Pathways, Macro Impact offers a meta-analysis of four independent evaluations of Education Design Lab’s Community College Growth Engine program between 2021 to 2024, showing how the micro-pathways design process is leading to a ripple effect of institutional changes that better align education toward the future of work.
The Lab’s human-centered design approach drives four key types of change:
1. Innovation and change capacity
2. Policies and practice changes
3. Deeper relationships
4. Mindset shifts
We highlight how each of these types of change plays out at a few of our partners in the Growth Engine program, including Bunker Hill Community College, Community College of Philadelphia, and the Colorado Community College System.
