Frequently Asked Questions

Blue Meridian was created to advance economic and social mobility and access to opportunity for all. Poverty persists from generation to generation because opportunities for people to improve their life trajectories remain scarce. We know that solutions exist, but without significant, long-term funding and tailored support, even the most promising strategies are often unable to reach enough people, in enough places, to drive meaningful change. In response, Blue Meridian seeks to meet scale with scale— providing transformative, right-sized investments designed to foster the conditions that support individuals in reaching key milestones from cradle to career and remove barriers to success along the way.

Blue Meridian Partners was founded in 2016 and incubated by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) until 2018 when it became an independent philanthropic platform. Informed by the EMCF’s decades-long track record of philanthropic innovation, Blue Meridian builds on the foundation’s performance-based investing approach, leadership in aggregating capital, and strong co-investing relationships. Our name, Blue Meridian Partners, reflects our belief in a pathway to a bright new future, driven by the faith and optimism that we can and we must work together to improve people’s life trajectories from cradle to career.

Blue Meridian is establishing a new normal in the philanthropic marketplace through our unique structure and approach. We are legally classified as a 501c3, but our operations differ from a traditional foundation in important ways. Chiefly, we do not have an endowment—instead, we continually fundraise from philanthropists who are willing to pool their resources to make significant, long-term investments in the most promising solutions to propel economic and social mobility for America’s young people and families. This approach frees our Partners to test ideas and target specific issue areas based on their goals and interests, enabling them to invest more effectively and efficiently than any single funder could alone.

For these reasons and more, Blue Meridian offers an investment platform that streamlines social sector funding for both investors and investees. Our management team provides best-in-class expertise, leverage, and opportunities to amplify impact for philanthropists through our performance-based model. At the same time, social sector leaders gain access to flexible, long-term capital while benefiting from Blue Meridian’s collaboration and deep experience—empowering them to dream big and focus on execution and growth.

In philanthropy, the average grant size is around $35,000—which forces visionary social sector leaders to focus on chasing the next funding stream to sustain their organizations, rather than scaling the impact, reach, and influence of their work.

Our platform brings together philanthropists seeking evidence-based solutions and social sector leaders in need of flexible funding and strategic support. By leveraging pooled capital from values-aligned philanthropists, Blue Meridian and its Partners are redefining expectations for what’s possible when philanthropy is effectively deployed. We provide flexible, upfront, long-term funding across portfolios—to embolden visionary social sector leaders to meet the scale of the problem.

Together we are shaping a model for driving impact: one that combines performance-based investment, trust in leaders, and the scale of resources needed to match the scale of the challenges we face. By establishing a new normal in the philanthropic marketplace, Blue Meridian aims to transform life trajectories for generations to come.

To create pathways to mobility, Blue Meridian invests in scaling solutions that enable America’s young people and families to overcome critical impediments and reach key milestones from cradle to career. We recognize that certain life events—such as entering kindergarten with adequate preparation, learning to read and write, graduating from high school, and beginning a career—represent turning points that largely determine a person’s economic and social mobility. But too often, people’s ability to reach these milestones is hindered by impediments like unplanned pregnancy, early exposure to violence, involvement with the criminal justice system, and poor mental or physical health. Factors like personal networks, access to housing and transportation, and the economic environment also affect access to opportunity.

As a result, Blue Meridian targets strategies across different domains that help individuals reach key success markers on the way to transforming their life trajectories. For example, investee HealthySteps integrates a child development specialist into the primary care team to improve developmental outcomes for children ages 0-3, while Per Scholas upskills workers around the country so that they can obtain sustainable careers in the tech industry.

Blue Meridian invests in a wide range of promising solutions that propel economic and social mobility for America’s young people and families. These include projects that address critical impediments, such as mass incarceration, foster care, and unemployment, as well as key success markers, like school-readiness and post-secondary training. To help advance long-term change, we provide social sector leaders with flexible funding and strategic support, which some use to influence public policies and build infrastructure that will help sustain mobility over time.

While Blue Meridian’s earliest investments focused on solutions with the potential for nationwide scaling, we have evolved to include region-specific strategies through our Place Matters portfolio as well as accelerating organizations’ readiness for scaling through The Studio @ Blue Meridian portfolio.

Research shows that where someone is raised and lives impacts their life outcome. In response, our Place Matters portfolio aims to improve economic and social mobility in communities across the US through place-based partnerships—which employ a community-driven, outcomes-focused approach—and catalytic supports. This portfolio creates local alignment with Blue Meridian’s overall investing strategy, compounding the positive impact of separate interventions so that residents can access support from cradle to career, shape their own destinies, and create opportunity for all.

Meanwhile, The Studio @ Blue Meridian provides social sector leaders with flexible resources—both coaching and capital—that help accelerate their organizations’ readiness to significantly scale their impact, reach, and influence. Blue Meridian launched The Studio to fill clear gaps in the social sector funding market that restrict leaders looking to test innovations and iterate on their existing models. To that end, The Studio invests in the implementation of multi-year action plans to overcome barriers to expansion. This portfolio reflects Blue Meridian’s commitment to innovation and experimentation in pursuit of propelling the economic and social mobility of America’s young people and families.

Blue Meridian operates with an investor mindset to provide transformative capital and scale solutions that expand opportunity and combat challenges that limit mobility. We invest in visionary social sector leaders, with whom we develop scaling plans and performance-based milestones to track our progress. Our investments span many years—in some cases up to a decade. In the meantime, we are actively refining our approach to impact measurement, including tracking population-level outcomes, dollars leveraged, and influence on policy and systems that contribute to economic and social mobility. Investees can also use the flexible capital we provide to build their measurement and data collection capacity, as well as undergo rigorous evaluations—helping them better assess their impact and identify areas for improvement. This learning mindset is reflected within Blue Meridian as we strengthen our own systems to capture and understand impact over time.

Blue Meridian conducts its own research to identify investment opportunities. We begin by casting a wide net, looking for promising strategies poised to achieve national impact on social problems confronting young people and families living in poverty. Through a rigorous selection process, we vet all prospects against the following six criteria: 

Compelling Vision

Strong Leadership

Track Record of Performance

Evidence of Effectiveness

Pathway to Scale

Sustainable Economic Model

To learn more about the selection criteria, visit the Blue Meridian Selection Criteria. 

Our Partners are united by a shared commitment to finding, funding, and scaling solutions that propel economic and social mobility for America’s young people and families—ultimately transforming life trajectories. We offer different investment opportunities that align with specified goals, focus areas, and regions of interest along with our intentional and immersive learning community. For instance, General and Impact Partners make initial commitments of $50 million and $15 million, respectively, contributed over time and invested across all portfolios. These two Partner types make collective decisions on new investing streams and performance management, while Regional Partners anchor investments in communities. To learn more about becoming a Partner, please visit the “Our Partners” page.

Blue Meridian does not accept unsolicited proposals. Instead, we conduct our own extensive research to identify and vet organizations and strategies that significantly improve and sustain economic and social mobility for young people and families in the US. Additional information about our process and selection criteria can be found on our “For Grantseekers” page. If you think your organization is a promising fit after you have reviewed this information, we welcome you to complete the Interest Survey.

The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation was one of the first philanthropies to pool funding from philanthropic partners and invest in evidence-based approaches that had the potential to expand their impact at a national level. Blue Meridian’s approach builds on this track record, honed by EMCF’s nearly two decades of work in developing practices to identify and fund the most promising youth-serving nonprofits, and bringing philanthropic partners together to pool resources and amplify the impact of their investments. Blue Meridian leverages EMCF’s experience in an effort to further transform the philanthropic marketplace, expanding the EMCF model through larger, more diversified investments over longer periods of time. EMCF incubated Blue Meridian Partners for three years and is also a founding Partner. As part of EMCF’s limited-life strategy, which it announced in 2016, its staff and operations have transitioned to Blue Meridian Partners. Now, Blue Meridian is helping EMCF fulfill its commitments to its Youth Development Fund grantees. Over the next decade, EMCF will continue to invest all its assets in making an enduring impact on the lives of children and families trapped in poverty in the US.