What IF?

What IF you could help design the future of public education?

What IF your conversations with your colleagues over coffee in the staff lounge, or your ideas during an energizing union meeting, could be turned into a reality?

What IF you could receive money for projects to boost your students' achievement-projects you could only dream about until now?

IF you can imagine it, the AFT Innovation Fund can help you design and develop it.

The AFT Innovation Fund is a groundbreaking plan to seek and share successful local educator- and union-led reform efforts in public schools across the United States. This initiative is based on the AFT’s extensive experience with successful reform ideas developed and nurtured in classrooms—by the educators who work with students every day.

• Read the overview.

• Replay the Innovation Fund Webinar held on Tuesday, May 5, hosted by AFT president Randi Weingarten and AFT vice president and Innovation Fund executive director Adam Urbanski.

The AFT Innovation Fund has received support from several major foundations that are excited by the opportunity to tap into the collective wisdom of educators and their unions. In addition, the AFT has gathered a diverse group of leaders and thinkers to provide us with guidance and counsel on this new venture as part of the AFT Innovation Fund's advisory board.

From left, Innovation Fund executive director Adam Urbanski, AFT president Randi Weingarten and advisory board chair Barbara Byrd-Bennett. Photo by Michael Campbell.