JUNE 30, 2026

Goodman Philanthropies Awards $500,000 Grant to RAISE US, a Bipartisan Effort to Prepare American Workers for the AI Economy

Washington, D.C. — Goodman Philanthropies is pleased to announce a $500,000 grant to RAISE US, a new national, bipartisan nonprofit co-founded by Gina Raimondo, the 40th U.S. Secretary of Commerce and 75th Governor of Rhode Island, and Eric Holcomb, the 51st Governor of Indiana. As one of a small group of founding funders, Goodman Philanthropies is supporting the organization at its launch and through its first year of work to build the workforce infrastructure the country needs as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes the labor market.

RAISE US is taking this on with a bipartisan coalition of governors, employers, and the AI labs themselves, working to redesign how America prepares workers for, and moves them into, good jobs in the age of AI. The nonprofit launched last week with more than two dozen of the country's largest companies and philanthropies behind it, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, and Bank of America, and with initial state partnerships in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah. Raimondo told The New York Times, "It's the first one I know of where competitors in the tech industry have put aside their competition to say, 'We're going to write big checks and, in the service of our country, do what we can to figure out this transition.'"

The Goodman Philanthropies Board was unanimously supportive of RAISE US and is delighted to be an early philanthropic funder. Bennett Goodman commented, "Secretary Raimondo has a well-deserved reputation for operational excellence. If anyone can rethink America's workforce strategy for the age of AI, it's her."

Why did Goodman Philanthropies invest?

Estimates of the AI labor market disruption ahead vary widely, but the direction is clear, and the country is not prepared for it. The United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year on higher education, workforce training, and unemployment insurance, yet that money is not organized around job outcomes. Programs built for a slower-moving economy assume a worker loses one job and finds a similar one, not that whole categories of work may be reshaped, and that people may need to retrain and change careers repeatedly over a working life. America has a detailed technology strategy for AI. It does not yet have a people strategy. RAISE US is building exactly that.

Most past efforts to retrain displaced workers have struggled, often because training is disconnected from real jobs and real employer demand. RAISE US is designed to avoid that. It works through governors, who control the community college systems and can move faster than Washington, while bringing employers and the AI labs themselves to the table as part of the solution. RAISE US's Policy Lab, which we are particularly excited about, will evaluate what works, share insights, and help proven AI labor market policy solutions spread to states and employers.

"We are thrilled to be among the earliest supporters of RAISE US," commented Jared Goodman. We will track the investment against key performance indicators agreed upon over the first twelve months, and will weigh future funding based on early traction and results. The chance to help shape a bold, bipartisan model at its founding, one with the potential to influence how states and employers across the country prepare workers for the age of AI, is precisely the kind of early, high-leverage bet our U.S. economic mobility strategy is built to make.

What outcomes are we expecting to see in the next year?

• Establishment of 4+ state partnerships to pilot AI-era workforce and education initiatives

• Launch of 2+ employer partnerships and workforce transition pilots focused on reskilling, redeployment, and earn-and-learn pathways

• Deployment of catalytic funding to support 2+ innovative workforce training models

• Establishment of the initial RAISE US data and policy infrastructure, including partnerships to support labor market analysis and policy pilots

• Full recruitment and onboarding of staff to support core initiatives, ensuring operational progress and execution

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. Our work is generously funded by Bennett & Meg Goodman, who, alongside their children Jared, Alex, and Julia, are committed to dismantling barriers to upward mobility through strategic, impact-driven philanthropy. To learn more about our work and our portfolio of grants, visit www.goodmanphilanthropies.org.