In Trust Center
The In Trust Center podcast is hosted by Matt Hufman. Walk alongside theological school leaders and innovators as they explore issues relevant to North American seminaries, all while helping institutions live out their missions more intentionally. Find more at intrust.org/podcast.
In Trust Center
Ep. 82: Lilly Endowment's expanded Pathways Initiative
Lilly Endowment Inc.’s expanded Pathways for Tomorrow initiative will offer up to $325 million to help theological schools accredited by the Association for Theological Schools collaborate and innovate. The Rev. Dr. Jo Ann Deasy of ATS, who oversees the Pathways coordination work, offers insights on what Pathways has accomplished so far – including help for underserved communities, new partnerships, and trauma-informed pedagogy – and what could be ahead. With grants for individual innovation and large-scale collaborations, the initiative prioritizes sustainability and partnerships and offers funding for shared endowments. The goal of the initiative is to help schools prepare ministers and lay leaders for the church.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Lilly Endowment's Pathways for Tomorrow page.
The Pathways Coordination page with contacts and dates for information sessions.
The In Trust Center's Pathways for Tomorrow page.
ATS' Pathways for Tomorrow page.
Hello and welcome to the Interest Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological school leaders. Thank you for joining us. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. It's early December 2024 as I record this, and just before Thanksgiving, Lilly Endowment Inc. announced a new round of funding in its Pathways for Tomorrow initiative. The endowment announced the original initiative in 2020 and funded more than 100 schools in 2021 and 2022. In the new announcement, the endowment said it would provide up to$325 million to help institutions accredited through ATS, the Association of Theological Schools. The initiative is designed to help theological schools strengthen their ability to prepare and support ordained pastors and lay ministers for Christian churches. The new funding is to help schools assess and strengthen their financial operations and educational programs, and design and launch efforts to enhance their capacities to educate and support leaders for Christian churches. Now the new funding includes a couple of opportunities. First, there's a grant for compelling large-scale collaborative projects in which schools work together and with other organizations to strengthen their collective educational and financial abilities to prepare and support pastors and lay ministers. These projects should provide sustainable models or strategies that could be adopted by others. Now the grants on this opportunity can be up to$10 million each. Second, schools that did not receive a Pathways Implementation Grant in 2021 or 2022 can apply for a competitive grant of up to$1 million each. That's to strengthen their individual schools' financial and educational capacities to prepare and support pastoral leaders. Eligible schools in that may request assessment and planning grants, which are non-competitive, of up to$50,000. This is so they can engage in the needs of congregation, design their capacity building projects, and plan grant proposals. So it's a really exciting project as Lilly continues to support this initiative. There's plenty more about this on Lilly Endowment's website and the coordination page, which is pathwayscoordination.com. And the links will be on our website, intrust.org slash podcast. Now that said, we're going to talk a little bit about what's learned, what has been learned through the Pathways Initiative and what's coming up. And we're going to discuss all that as well as where to get more information. And I'm grateful now to be joined by the Reverend Dr. Joanne DC, the Director of Institutional Initiatives at ATS and the coordinator of the Pathways for Tomorrow initiative. ATS is leading the coordination work in cooperation with the Intrast Center. And Joanne, it is always great to chat with you. Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks, Matt. It's good to be back here again. So we've been involved in this work now for several years. And when Pathways originally rolled out, I mean there's great excitement, as there should be, and has been great work done through the first few years. So I want to start by looking backward. I think there's a lot to be learned here. And talk and I want to start by talking a little bit about what the intent of the you what you saw, the intent of the pathways initiative, and then how you see some schools uh working through that. So let's talk about this. The the intent was to create pathways, literal pathways for people to get some form of education, theological education, so they could go serve in the Christian church. And that included some interesting things. I mean, looking at enrollment data of this the new semester, we're seeing more non-degree students coming in. Uh, we're seeing some enrollment increases, and we're seeing some of that associated very closely, it would appear, to the Pathways program.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, some of it certainly tied to that. And I think one of the beauties of pathways, and what I'm so excited about in this new round of the initiative, is uh in some ways, the first round of pathways highlighted things that all of our schools were doing, not just those that received grants. And so um you can see uh through pathways, we're able to hear the stories and see what theological schools have been doing in order to um remain uh relevant, to continue uh to effectively serve, particularly regarding pathways, uh pastors and congregational lay ministers and denominations. Um through pathways, we've really highlighted that, but it's been happening across the board, and that vitality is really amplified by the funding from the initial round of grants. And I look forward to seeing how it'll continue to amplify all of that good work through this next round, uh, which of course you mentioned one of the major trends we've seen is this emphasis on non-degree programs and um and trying to either increase pathways or uh maybe lengthen the pathways of preparation and support for pastoral leaders, right? So um some of it is is opening the door at the front end, some of it is finding ways to um repackage graduate theological degrees in ways that are um accessible and helpful to those um who could not afford it, uh whether time or money-wise. Um but then also recognizing, I think um theological schools, understanding that they're they're one space, graduate degrees are one part of a lifelong uh learning approach to pastoral ministry. Um, if the pandemic taught us anything, uh, we already knew that we had to retool our careers over and over, but boy, did people have to do that fast. And so um creating more of an infrastructure of lifelong learning and support, um, care for the caregivers became a big part of what's happening. Uh and the endowments funding of Pathways for Tomorrow came at at just the right time to allow our graduate uh schools to really lean into that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we'll talk about what this new round of funding looks like. It's the endowment is clearly seeing some things, and I'm not going to speculate about what they're seeing or not. Uh, but I but I it it's interesting in the you know what they're looking at is they're giving schools opportunities to do what what many schools had the opportunity to do a couple of years ago. And and let's talk about that because we've we've chatted about some of the non-degree programs and lifelong learning. We've seen there's been an increase. The initial numbers that uh Chris Meinzer at ATS has has shared uh recently in Colloquy, uh, the ATS newsletter in in both October and November. I'll put those links on the podcast page, uh, show that non-degree enrollment is up. Now, I I know even when I went to seminary, which wasn't too too long ago, uh that was a minuscule, very minor space because theological uh higher education, graduate education kind of lived in a different space. You went and got a college degree and then you came. Pathways helped, I think, break through that, it would seem to me. And and that's good in, I think, a couple of ways. One, it gives a there's a new business model perhaps for this. There's also a new way to help the church in terms of giving education. I was just at a seminary that said their denomination is now starting to send people who may need a little more time or strength in certain areas to their non-credential programs or their non-degree program. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then it also gives a chance for people who say, hey, I really like this, a way to get into this. Um so that there that's one piece of it. But we've also seen outreaches in uh bad in underserved communities of of schools finding ways to bring people who are non-traditional students, maybe didn't finish a bachelor's, maybe didn't even start a bachelor's, uh, but have some ministry experience. There's a lot of themes that came out of these earlier projects. Tell me, and and then of course there's the business model. So let's start talking a little bit about this. Some of the themes that you've seen, obviously, non-degree education, continuing education, what else is sticking out to you?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh certainly the reaching underserved communities and um and the the implications of having to really think about context. So whether it's revamping contextual education, field education programs, moving towards competency-based theological education, which really requires an integration of wherever somebody is serving while they're going through their the educational process, um, or just recognizing that some of our education has been from one particular cultural perspective and the need to really rethink that and think about how to best prepare students to serve in all of the various cultures and communities and contexts where they are heading out to. Um, so that's been uh that's been one of the major themes is that that attention to context. Um, I think one of the really exciting pieces that has come out, um we've seen a lot of leaders from the church coming in to lead these projects. And so we're seeing these connections between church and academy that um that had been strained or or there had been sort of a separation happening over the years, whether intentional or not, um, but to see all uh all of those people that are in the ecology that supports pastoral leaders, uh educating, supporting, um, forming, um, trying to come together with with the the um the needs of these pastoral leaders and the congregations they're serving and the needs of the world, who needs these leaders coming together. That's been another piece. Um the collaborations that have been happening have been pretty uh amazing to see. Um and also probably one of the biggest challenges that that we've seen as well, right? Um it's taken people a lot longer to make uh to develop uh lasting collaborations. Um, we're having to figure out how to collaborate in a very uh in an ever-shifting sand. Maybe that's the right way to say that. So as leaders are are moving in and out of um positions at theological schools and denominations and churches, um, how do you create lasting collaborations? And so um, how do you create layers of relationship and partnership that are not based on individuals but are getting to sort of core mission and common mission and uh things that might outlast a single leader who has a friend that they're working on to do this collaboration? Um, so that's that's been a part of it as well. Uh and the I think we're learning that collaboration, how do I how do we say this? You know, you have you have your mission and you have your vision and you have your project and you invite people to come be a part of that. Well, what we're finding is that's what the planning grants are so important for, is it can't be we have a project and we have a vision and we're inviting you to come join us. It has to be what is our vision together? How do we develop this project together? Um, how do we develop uh sort of these relationships at the beginning so we can co-design the future, not design the future and invite people to join us on this journey. And so um I think that's one of the pieces that these large-scale collaborative grants are pushing for is um is those deep collaborations that where we're we're changing one another as we're moving through this in order to find a common way forward. Um so really exciting. I do think uh the one other thing I'll say, you mentioned business models. And I think the exciting thing about pathways is we're making progress. Um we've been working on business models and trying to figure out um financially uh effective and educationally effective models, um, financial and organizational at ATS for decades. It's kind of been at the right the heart of it. It is a big part of accrediting as well, right? Creating good financial models and good financial stewardship in trust center, works on good governance and stewardship uh for for decades as well. So um, but we found it's very hard to break through this financial model of higher education based on tuition, usually full-time tuition of graduate programs. Um very few schools can can sustain themselves with that singular model. And and I think um we keep coming back to that model and we keep trying to just raise money and increased uh increase enrollment in graduate programs. But now that we've sort of shaken up the model of the education we're offering, it shakes up the whole business model, which eventually shakes up the whole organizational model because you have different kinds of staff and different paths for faculty and different roles for people within the organization. Um, and so uh we're seeing some progress, and you can see that in these new grants. So, as you uh you mentioned, we've seen the business model piece, but um, in the new RFPs, there's even more about the financial and organizational models that are needed to sustain this going forward.
SPEAKER_00:Um, we'll talk about that in a minute. I think that uh, you know, part of this, the the excitement for me in pathways, and I saw that this summer at the pathways gathering, was there was a um gallery right of of people who had their programs out and and and just a hand, I mean, compared to the number of of schools that had grants, it was it was a nice selection. But there was everything from programmatic, there were programmatic efforts, people reaching uh doing con, as you mentioned, contextual education, there was competency-based, uh, there were folks reaching audiences they had never reached or reached well. Uh there were folks who had reworked whether curriculum uh or had done preparatory work to help students get to and into a program and succeed. Um so there's some great programmatic work and ways to create pathways potentially for sustainability, not just for the school, but also for denominations and churches. There was also a piece about, I think, uh the organization itself, as you mentioned, whether it was strategic partnerships, whether it was business models, there's the change initiative uh that has worked very diligently to find some ways to create uh economic efficiencies. There were a few, there are a few other projects like that. Um so I want to talk a little bit first about coordination before we get into the new round of funding, because one of the things about coordination is you have been reading reports. Uh we have had several conferences, uh, the Introst Center has done any number of whether facilitated conversations, webinars, uh things like strategic partnerships, board governance. Uh ATS has done a number of these things as well. There's a storytelling uh component as well. So there's a rich array of resources that already exist where I think folks who may be looking at a grant can see what's out there, whether that's through the pathways, directories uh that that you've produced or uh the storytelling components, podcast stories, uh short capsules, interviews, et cetera. Let's talk a little bit about coordination first and then the kind of work that happens in coordination that may be helpful to schools. Tell me a little bit about how you see that going out here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh for this round of coordination, we've coordinated a few different grants, but um for this round, I think I've been learning that there's kind of two two layers of coordination. And so one layer is really just coming alongside schools and helping them create good projects that they can learn from and um uh and that can have impact on uh with their students and their constituent and their institution. And so um we at Coordination have been working to support things like good storytelling, good report writing, good assessment and evaluation. Um, how do you develop things like key performance indicators? How do you think about sustainability? How do you create projects that uh that either are aligned with mission or help you realign mission based on what you've learned? Right. Um, so all of those pieces, and I think one of the things we've been learning uh about that, as all of those are such important tools for change management in an organization. And the interest center, I think, has really leaned into the change management aspect of it as well. And so all that we've been learning about that, we want to jumpstart this next round of schools that are coming through and help them uh create good proposals as a way to lead well and to do their work well, not just for the grant, but overall at their institution. Um so that's one area. And then the other piece uh really is we have the privilege at coordination of, as you said, Matt, you know, listening to all of the stories and reading all of the reports and seeing where the trends are and seeing areas um where we can either supplement where extra new learning is needed, um, seeing projects that we can highlight because they're doing something unique or new that might have impact on the future of theological education, um uh to see trends where we we can see that as an industry, we don't quite have enough capacity yet to do the work that we are dying to do. Like we just are we know we want to move into this area, but as as an industry, we don't quite have the capacity. And so I think one of the things uh in Trust Center has been so great at bringing in um consultants and outside experts to help expand what we know in these areas. Um, we've been working with an educational economist. Um, we're trying to bring in some research. Um, but how can we uh insert some knowledge from the outside or create communities that are learning together and figuring out together um how we might expand capacity? Um and so uh that's one of the things that that coordination is is trying to do. What we've done so far is generated so much information. So now we're going to work hard to um, there's been just so many great projects. So now how can we give uh create good pathways for you to access stories in ways that are helpful to you? Right. And so we are we're working on that. Um, the ATS website has some great directories that are tagged for all the current uh phase two projects, uh, the individual school projects and our phase three, which are the collaborative ones. There's short pieces on all of them. Those are great um intros. If you're just trying to figure out, let's say you're interested in applying for a grant and you're trying to figure out what kind of work you might want to do, this will give you ideas, which I think is one of the beauties of the community that we bring together as coordination. We gather regularly to sort of expand imagination and share learning and encourage one another, um, help uh help everybody know that this takes time. I think that's one of the things that the coordination program has been able to do is sustain energy through the um rough starts that some schools have had as they're trying to get going. It's taken longer than anticipated. Um, so we provide support with that. But our directory provides sort of that high-level sense of all of the projects. And then once you know which projects you're interested in, I think the Intrust Center um website uh with all of its stories and articles in the magazine and podcasts and capsule stories is a way to explore further and get more detail about projects that are of interest to you.
SPEAKER_00:And we'll be putting some curated resources um out on websites soon. There's also a number of resources that already exist. And on our podcast page at intrust.org slash podcast on this episode, you'll find more resources. You'll find the link to the directories that Joanna's talking about. You'll also find links to some of those stories. And there'll be more to come. One of the one of the great things to think about uh coordination is there is there's really been a learning community. You know, we use that term in in grant work, but there's really been a I would I would characterize it as a very sweet-spirited community of folks across denominations that have been able to encourage one people. There's been great connections, and and I think those will continue. I want to move on real quickly to what uh what this new pathways uh initiative is looking for. And again, on the website uh at intrust.org slash podcast, or pathwayscoordination.com, you'll find uh information about resource uh or information sessions that Lily Endowment Inc. will be holding on uh December 9, December 13, December 16, and 17. It's all listed what those are for. You'll find you'll find a place uh for those who are looking at the individual grants of how to apply for a planning grant. You'll find contact information. There's plenty of information there. But Joanne, let's talk about it. You started to talk about it earlier. I rudely cut you off. Uh, so as try to package this together, uh, the what the RFP is looking for with Lilly Endowment. They're looking again for in the individual grants, much like that were funded in the the first part of this initiative. So those are schools looking to create new pathways essentially for leaders to get into uh theological to get uh theological education to help them lead or serve in the Christian church. And then this um large-scale collaborative grant. Um and all these are exciting because I think schools will have the opportunity to do some great things, but the large-scale collaborative grants, um, this is new. And these are grants that can be up to$10 million. Tell me a little bit about what you're seeing when you see this and start to talk about that um because this this looks like real ways to find connection points and find ways that's for sustainability moving forward.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think that there is a little bit of language in the individual grants that actually points a little more towards sustainability. The first round was very programmatic, um, very much about opening accessibility, but now we have to figure out how to be both accessible, affordable, and sustainable, all of those things together. And so that's where the individual grants are working. But the collaborative grants, um, I think it's the the same project, similar projects to what already uh were put forward are possible as well. But there, as you said, there's some new things that the endowment is pointing to, um, particularly related to uh mergers and and partnerships of different kinds. So um partnerships was already a part of it, but to name uh mergers, which has been a trend in theological education, either for multiple schools to merge together, uh, to form a new entity, for a larger entity to uh incorporate smaller entities within it, for a theological school to embed within a university, all of those pieces have been uh trends as schools have been looking to scale, particularly the support services and infrastructures around higher education. So all of that, um that piece is named. And uh then the other piece that I think was a surprise to many of us actually was the naming of the possibility of creating shared endowments. Um that is not something you generally see in these kinds of grant projects. And so um so exciting to see what it might might look like for schools uh that are in need of endowments as a way to create some long-term stability for their organization, um, to figure out how to do that in partnership with other organizations. Um there uh are some pieces to that, uh the need for some matching grants if you're doing that kind of work, uh, endowments for which can be for scholarships, for institutional infrastructure, for faculty. There's all sorts of ways you might use these endowments. Um, but uh and some matching grants that that are uh have that that there's a little bit of a sliding scale depending on where your school starts when it comes to this. Um, but uh I think that's particularly exciting. Uh the level of endowments at ATS schools varies widely from nothing to you know hundreds and hundreds, uh large, we'll just say large endowments.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but let me let me interrupt you right there, because that's a good point. About half the last time I looked and we did something magazine at Intrus Magazine on it, it was about half of these schools in ATS accreditation were a million dollars or less.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. If you ever thought that that graduate schools or theological schools were just sitting on a bunch of money, um, that is not true for half of our schools, right? Like they're raising money every year, they're uh bringing in tuition every year just to cover expenses. Um, there are schools where that where the faculty really live uh like missionaries, raising money or Very small salaries. And so um, and there I don't want to diminish the call to sacrifice or or make any judgment of whether that is good or bad, but I do uh appreciate um the ability for some schools to develop some endowments that will provide some security for a bit. Um, because so maybe I'll say one of the things you learn through these grant projects is we often think of them as uh risk capital, right? Like that it provides some sustainability for a period that allows you to experiment and try new things or to really assess things or to make some of the change that you might need to. Um we're learning a lot about trauma-informed pedagogy and trauma-informed decision making within the initiative. Um, and and one of the the pieces of that is trauma that's associated with living um with living without without financial means and trying to figure that out. Um and so uh it's exciting to think about the possibility of just a little bit of breathing space to be able to do the things that you feel called to, both for our schools and for the students that they're serving, right?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's an exciting initiative in in many ways. I think the work that has been done since 2021 when grants were first funded, uh, is really showing lots of of growth. As you mentioned, the trauma inform piece is is one that has been uh just outstanding to watch. Um there are folks who have really taken a good pulse, I think, on the on the sense of the times and found ways to incorporate that and and as well as bring in people who may not normally attend a seminary or a seminary function. Um and then what with with what the endowment is doing now, I think there's such a richness of resources that are already here. Uh one of the things in the RFP for the uh the new funding is is that ways to even share that with other sustainability with other schools. It's it's it's in there, and I think that's a a good way to start to wrap this up, is that part of this is uh this program has been to help people learn from one another. Um so as I said, there are learning sessions, educational sessions that Lily and Dome and Inc. will be holding um in the next two, the the middle two weeks of December. Uh there will be more information coming about about other ways to connect with uh with ATS and with the Intrast Center in in terms of ways to uh learn from what's already been done and also to learn and how to hone uh ideas and projects and and even to find conversation projects and partners. Um so as we we start to wrap this up, Joanne, other things that have come, other things that you think people ought to know at this point in the project, and either about where we've been or about where things may be going.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think one of the uh one of the things about where we're going is is that the interest center and ATS are uh thinking and planning. We had a little bit more warning than the schools, but not a lot. And so we're still putting together a few of our plans, but we hope in the new year to have some uh conversation spaces where you can come and explore with other people how you might want to collaborate or what types of large-scale collaborative projects you're interested in. We'll provide some support for writing good proposals for individual grants as well, um, but really wanted to make sure people knew that that we do want to be available to help convene spaces and conversations if you're thinking about who you might collaborate with or what that what collaboration might look like. Um, we're, I think, particularly thinking about people that are new to grant to uh grant writing and how we might be able to support them. Um, and then in the collaborative space, um connecting people that might be exploring things like mergers and shared endowments with those that might have some expertise to contribute to about how you might structure a grant in order to get that kind of work done. Um so we that's one of the things, uh coordination coming in early to be a community and a support uh for you all, even through the the grant writing phase. Um and then we will be with you throughout the life of the grants at your schools to provide support as well.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this has been a great conversation, Joanne. There's there is so much to this, as you mentioned. There is so much information out there. Uh in coming in the coming months, people will see more curated resources. Uh, they can reach out to both uh ATS and to the Intrust Center for help. Absolutely. Uh, contacts are on pathwayscoordination.com. Again, that will all be uh put together on our podcast page, intrust.org slash podcast. Um, any closing thoughts, Joanne?
SPEAKER_01:Only continue to be grateful for the um the confidence that Lily Endowment has in graduate theological education and the role it plays in preparing pastors and lay leaders for congregations. Um, so grateful for their support and for uh and for the vision and energy of the schools. Uh it's just so exciting to see, and I'm I can't wait to see the new projects that will emerge.
SPEAKER_00:It's really been one of the pleasures recently to go to uh one of these pathways gatherings and to feel the the excitement, the energy, and the freshness with which these projects are bringing. So Joanne, my thanks to you as uh the leader of the coordination program at ATS. Uh of course, you've been working with our team at the Intrust Center in this effort, and it's really been a pleasure to do so. So thanks for joining today.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you as always for your partnership. We're so grateful to be able to collaborate with the Intrust Center in this work, um, and and uh grateful for my team at ATS supporting this work as well.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, and we're grateful for uh the folks at the Lilly Endowment, which has been uh just an incredible support and has done such great things to help theological schools. You'll find more information about those those sessions that are coming up, as well as curated resources at intrust.org slash podcast. Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.org.