Venture: CommonLit

Investment: $3M grant

Portfolio: Scaling Capital

Investment date: June 2023

Region(s) served: North America

Sector: Education

Core Impact Metric: Accelerated learning outcomes for students

Unrestricted funding to scale up at a critical growth period

CommonLit equips educators with a highly effective, comprehensive digital literacy program at a fraction of the cost of competitors. Literacy skills are critical for successful life outcomes, yet 80% of low-income US students are unable to read and write proficiently. CommonLit is an industry leader in research and evaluation and has consistently shown accelerated student learning gains (essential for closing the literacy gap) across multiple, large-scale studies.

Why Rippleworks Invested:

The pandemic wiped out two decades of progress, resulting in unprecedented generational literacy loss and exacerbating opportunity gaps. Administrators are starting to shift towards solutions with proven impact to address these challenges. CommonLit is uniquely positioned to meet this gap in the market with a “one-stop”, more impactful, and more affordable program. CommonLit needs philanthropic capital to build out its team, further enhance its product, and scale up its work in order to serve more students and continue.