Grant Investment Memo · Draft
Bunker Hill Community College
The Nursing, Allied Health, and Life Science Degree Apprenticeship Accelerator
Grant Amount
$1,245,000
Grant Type
Three-year, 2026–2029
Strategy Area
US Economic Mobility
Funding Role
Sole funder
We tour the Charlestown campus and sit with its students on Thursday, October 1, hosted by President Eddinger, who has led the college since 2013. This is the only proposal in front of us the whole group will have seen first-hand.
What is this organization?
Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts, enrolling more than 19,000 learners a year across credit, non-credit, and dual-enrollment programs from campuses in Charlestown and Chelsea. Its credit student body is 64% students of color and 64% part-time, averages 26 years of age, and comes from 94 countries. The college is a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution, was named a 2026 Leader College by Achieving the Dream, and has built employer-driven allied health pathways through three successive federal TAACCCT awards. Pam Eddinger has been president since 2013.
The Accelerator would establish degree apprenticeships into five licensed healthcare occupations — Licensed Practical Nurse, LPN-to-RN, Medical Assistant, Radiologic Technologist, and Medical Laboratory Technician — fed by three pre-apprenticeships in Certified Nursing Assistant, Sterile Processing, and Phlebotomy.
Why we’re excited about this organization
Massachusetts has already removed tuition as the barrier. MassReconnect (2023) and MassEducate (2024) made community college free for students of any age or income, and enrollment responded at once — up 38.5% since fall 2022. What remains is the barrier philanthropy rarely addresses: the opportunity cost of participating. An adult with the aptitude for nursing still cannot leave a family-supporting job for two years of clinical training, however little the tuition costs. Degree apprenticeship dissolves that tradeoff, because the training and the paycheck are the same hours. We are also buying infrastructure rather than seats: the two largest investments are an executive director and a navigator, which is what makes the model outlast our money.
How this fits our US economic mobility strategy
This is the community college half of a bet we have already made on the employer half. We fund UW Health WorkForward to spread employer-embedded healthcare apprenticeship from inside a hospital system; BHCC builds the same ladder from inside the college that supplies it. Both are earn-and-learn by design rather than train-and-hope. It also deepens one labor market: with JVS Boston already in the portfolio, we would hold two Greater Boston grantees reaching working adults from different entry points — one through the workforce system, one through the college.
Funding role, timing & recommendation
We would be the sole funder. We recommend a three-year grant of $1,245,000, funding an executive director to build and run the accelerator, a dedicated apprenticeship navigator to carry learners through to completion, a laboratory retrofit converting Charlestown classroom space for nursing and allied health instruction, tuition support for the non-credit pre-apprenticeships that free community college does not reach, and curriculum design. Funds would release in annual tranches against milestones the college has committed to: both roles hired in year one, the retrofit designed then built, and cohorts ramping 50, 60, and 80 learners. BHCC’s own targets give us the KPI spine — at least 70% of the first cohort completing, credentialing, and landing employment, against roughly 50% in comparable programs. We would tie the year-two release to persistence, not enrollment.
In practice · What success looks like
From a twelve-week on-ramp to a nurse’s wage, without debt
A home health aide in Chelsea earns $19 an hour and cannot afford to stop working. She enrolls in the Certified Nursing Assistant pre-apprenticeship, with tuition covered — that program sits outside free community college, because it does not carry academic credit. She is hired onto a hospital floor, then moves into the Licensed Practical Nurse degree apprenticeship on full wages, with her classroom and clinical hours built into the job. She finishes licensed, employed, and debt-free.
(Illustrative. The pathway comes from the college’s program design; the person does not.)
What we’ll be looking at on the visit
- Does the employer demand hold? Degree apprenticeship only works if hospitals and labs commit to hiring apprentices at wage from day one. Who has signed on, and for how many seats?
- What happens to the learner who stalls? Completion, not enrollment, is where community college pathways break. What does the navigator actually do when a student’s childcare falls through?
- Does it outlast the funding? We are being asked to buy staff and infrastructure rather than seats. What carries the model once philanthropic support ends?
- Where does licensure get in the way? Each of these five occupations is state-licensed. Which requirements protect patients, and which are simply barriers to entry?
- What would success look like in three years? Enrollment is the easy number. We care about how many learners finish, get licensed, and are still employed twelve months later.
When
Thu, Oct 1 · 2:30–4:00 PM
Where
250 New Rutherford Ave, Charlestown
Format
Campus tour & student panel
Host
President Pam Eddinger
About Goodman Philanthropies
Goodman Philanthropies supports innovative, evidence-based solutions that expand economic mobility across the United States. We prioritize approaches that combine rigor, innovation, and scale to move the needle on poverty and opportunity. Bennett & Meg Goodman, alongside their children Jared, Alex, and Julia, are committed to expanding economic mobility in the United States through wage-building and wealth-building initiatives.
Learn more at goodmanphilanthropies.org/about
· See our portfolio at goodmanphilanthropies.org/portfolio
