Our latest grant supports RiseKit, a technology platform that enables employers to recruit candidates from networks of community-based nonprofits. RiseKit’s software connects employers’ applicant tracking systems (ATS’s) with the client management systems of these community-based organizations, creating linkages between these overlooked candidates and unfilled jobs.

Code the Dream offers high-quality, free training in software development to people from diverse, low-income backgrounds. The ultimate aim is to create a unique win-win situation, in which coders gain real experience building apps that make the world a little better, and then use that experience to launch new careers providing significant opportunities for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Do you have a creative concept or project that uses AI to improve economic mobility? We’re excited to hear from all those with creative ideas across the education, training, and labor markets, including (but not limited to) those aiming to develop tools and services that improve economic opportunity across many applications: skill development, job matching, hiring systems, internal mobility, coaching, benefits access, debiasing systems, data analysis and use, job quality, etc.

Listen now to our CEO Ellie Bertani talking about education, technology and the GitLab Foundation in the latest episode of the Edtech Insiders podcast.

We are very excited to have recently returned from our first Horizons summit, an annual event that focuses on bringing together innovators focused on transforming the education and workforce systems.

Our initial grant of $272,000 is supporting the expansion of Generation’s Digital Freelancing Mentorship program, which supports young people to access careers as freelancers in jobs such as virtual assistants, audio transcription, data entry, and digital marketing.

Our latest grant, of $750,000 to Upwardly Global, will fund a program to expand access to online, self-paced training for recent immigrants, refugees, and asylees navigating the US labor market to secure skill-aligned, professional employment. This grant will also expand a technology platform that will provide this service to large-scale resettlement and immigrant support organizations, greatly increasing training access.

Our latest grant partners with the tech-enabled nonprofit FreeWorld to expand the reach of a pioneering program that not only addresses the challenges of employment for those who have been in prison, but does so by filling critical employment gaps in the US supply chain.

Ellie Bertani, President and CEO of GitLab Foundation, opens up below in a Q&A about her values, experience, and hopes for the GitLab Foundation.

We are excited to announce our first major grant of $2.9 million to Jobs for the Future (JFF), in collaboration with the Burning Glass Institute (BGI), to make sense of the rapidly growing market of short-term training programs.

In late 2022 and early 2023, our team devoted considerable time to developing an initial strategy for our giving. We met with dozens of experts in philanthropy, economic mobility, workforce development, international development, and impact measurement to help shape our thinking. We reviewed randomized controlled trial (RCT) data and other evidence to form a fact base that informed our strategy. We developed our first impact model and experimented with real and fictional data sets to help understand which interventions and investments types might maximize our impact.

The GitLab Foundation was launched in September 2022 with a mission to improve people’s lifetime earnings through access to opportunities, and a vision of a world in which one million more people can afford a better life.

With our origins rooted in GitLab, Inc, we looked to GitLab’s Tanuki logo for inspiration. The GitLab Tanuki (a Japanese raccoon dog) logo symbolizes the GitLab mission of “making it possible for everyone to contribute” with a smart animal that works in a group to achieve a common goal. This felt like a great starting point for the GitLab Foundation’s own brand development.