The Upward Mobility Initiative’s training sprints are free, 16-week, live virtual courses designed for practitioners working to advance upward mobility in their communities. Led by Urban Institute staff, each training sprint helps a small cohort of participants build practical skills for starting or strengthening efforts to advance mobility from poverty in their communities. Last summer Urban hosted three sprints (Understanding Your Community’s Upward Mobility Conditions, Identifying Effective Interventions Across Pillars and Predictors, and Understanding Your Community’s Upward Mobility Ecosystem) that engaged 90 participants representing local governments, foundations, social service providers, and nonprofit and community-based leaders. Sprints cover a range of topics, like analyzing local mobility conditions, engaging stakeholders, developing theories of change, and identifying evidence-based solutions, while producing a deliverable the participants can use to launch or strengthen local efforts.
"This course gave us the opportunity to apply what we learned to a real-life issue to understand how to approach complexities within systems to arrive at solutions."
— Ben Lien, Exodus Lending, Minnesota
We are pleased to offer our second round of sprints from January to May 2027. Each sprint will have space for 30 participants, and our goal is to assemble a cohort diverse in geography, organization type, role, and experience. Because of limited space, not all applicants will be selected; those not selected may be placed on a waiting list or contacted about future training opportunities.
Read more below about how to apply, available training sprint options, and Urban’s broader upward mobility training and technical assistance work. For a list of frequently asked questions, click here.
The Training Sprints team is led by Kimberly Burrowes and Martha Fedorowicz.
Learning Platform
Access the members-only Training Sprints platform.
Sprint Format and Attendance
To kick off our next round of sprints, we will host a primer session for all participants on Wednesday, January 13, 2027, from 2:00–4:00 p.m. / 11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. PST. During this session, we will introduce the Upward Mobility Framework, review course expectations, onboard participants to our online learning platform, and provide an opportunity to meet instructors and peers.
Sprints will begin the week of January 25 and will consist of eight sessions offered every two to three weeks, followed by a final capstone session in the middle or end of May, where participants will present their final deliverables to one another. We will also offer optional office hours where participants can meet one-on-one with instructors or other Urban Institute subject-matter experts. We strongly encourage you to attend all eight sessions live to make the most of the peer learning and practice activities. We understand that you may need to miss a session, however, and recordings will be available so you can catch up and complete the assigned homework.
To receive a certificate of completion for participation in a training sprint, participants must do the following:
- attend the pre-sprint Primer (either live or asynchronously),
- attend at least six of the eight course sessions live,
- complete the final deliverable and present during the capstone session, and
- complete the final feedback survey.
How to Apply
If you’re interested in applying for a training sprint, click “Apply here” below for the training sprint you would like to apply for and fill out the application. The application should take no more than 20 minutes to complete and must be completed in one sitting. After offering enrollment to participants who were wait-listed from the previous round of sprints, we have a limited number of remaining spots available for this application cycle.
You may apply for more than one training sprint, but you may only enroll in one sprint at a time, pending available spots. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, so we encourage you to apply early. The application opens on October 26, 2026, and closes on November 13, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. PST. Selected participants will be notified by no later than December 4, 2026. If you are not selected for this round of sprints, we will place you on a waiting list for future opportunities. Wait-listed applicants will be notified by no later than December 18, 2026.
About Urban's Upward Mobility Training and Technical Assistance Program
In 2016, Urban Institute researchers began a multiyear effort to better understand upward mobility and identify solutions to the challenges of persistent generational poverty in the US. Through engagement with academics and people who have experienced or worked to alleviate poverty, research and evidence gathering, and work in communities, that effort evolved into the Upward Mobility Initiative.
Today the initiative focuses on providing local leaders with data and tools to assess and improve community conditions that advance upward mobility and narrow inequities. Since 2021, Urban has provided training and technical assistance for advancing upward mobility to hundreds of communities around the country, including through our Upward Mobility Cohort, our Mobility Action Learning Network, our trainings for national networks, and our virtual workshop series.
In summer 2026, we offered our first round of Upward Mobility Training Sprints to 90 individuals coming from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. They represented 58 different communities ranging in population from 25,750 to 8.58 million and work for nonprofits, city and county governments, philanthropies, anchor institutions, and the private sector.
As a result of this work, at last count more than 60 local governments, nonprofits, community foundations, and collective impact organizations around the country have used the Upward Mobility Framework as the basis for strategic planning, and hundreds more have attended our trainings and used our data tools to learn more about mobility from poverty in their communities. We continue to learn from those communities about what it takes to do upward mobility work locally, and we bring their expertise and examples into our training and technical assistance programs so that participants can learn directly from those already advancing this work.
Understanding Your Community’s Upward Mobility Conditions
Understanding Your Community’s Upward Mobility Conditions
This sprint will guide participants toward a dynamic understanding of their communities’ upward mobility conditions. It will equip participants with tools to analyze and communicate that information in support of local priorities. Participants will learn how to frame and situate their work within the context of the Upward Mobility Framework, including how to engage and collaborate with key local stakeholders; develop a baseline understanding of mobility conditions and activities in their community; interpret and analyze the Mobility Metrics; document their local data landscape and identify knowledge gaps; conduct community-engaged data collection and analysis; craft a nuanced picture of their community’s upward mobility conditions; and strategically communicate findings with different audiences through research translation, storytelling, and data interactives. The course will culminate in the creation of a slide deck or fact sheet that participants can use to share their findings about their community with other stakeholders.
Audience and Learning Objectives
This sprint is ideal for early- to mid-career professionals working in local government, philanthropy, or other community-based and civic organizations. It is especially relevant for those in the process of answering the “what” and “why” of an upward mobility project. Participants will be most successful when participating with the support of their organization.
By the end of the sprint, participants will
- be able to assess local upward mobility conditions,
- be able to position their work within the Upward Mobility Framework,
- have a plan for engaging community members with their findings, and
- be able to strategically communicate findings with key stakeholders.
Sprint Modules:
- Orientation to Upward Mobility Fundamentals
- Driving Change: Positionality and Systems Change
- Assessing Local Conditions Using Mobility Metrics
- Developing a Baseline: Data Landscaping
- Enriching Understanding with Additional Data
- Engaging Community Members in Decision-Making
- Communicating Upward Mobility Conditions
- Moving from Understanding to Action
- Capstone Presentations on Your Mobility Conditions
Sprint Dates:
Sessions will be held from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST on the following dates: January 21, February 4, February 18, March 4, March 18, April 1, April 15, and April 29. The final capstone session will be on May 13 from 1:00 to 4:00pm EST. We will also offer office hours where participants can sign up for advising sessions.
The instructors for this sprint are Policy Program Manager Alexis Weaver and Policy Associate Isabella Remor.
Understanding Your Community’s Upward Mobility Ecosystem
Understanding Your Community’s Upward Mobility Ecosystem
Ecosystem mapping is a flexible, systems thinking tool that helps organizations, leaders, and their teams make sense of the actors, relationships, and outside forces that shape a community issue or the adoption and implementation of an intervention. Rather than looking at a problem or program in isolation, it asks who is involved (organizations, institutions, funders, residents), how they influence one another, and the impact of internal dynamics and external conditions, such as policy, funding, and economic or political trends, that can enable or constrain progress that advances upward mobility in their community. Visualizing these pieces reveals where coordination already exists, where there are gaps or barriers, and where there are levers of change.
In this sprint, you will choose one of two applications for the ecosystem map and use it as your focus throughout the experience. Both applications begin with an upward mobility challenge in your community or organization, but they differ in where the mapping process starts and what questions the process helps you answer.
Option 1: Improving Coordination and Building Collective Action. Start with an upward mobility problem in a particular policy domain (e.g., workplace, housing, health care) and use an ecosystem map and the Upward Mobility Framework to better understand the system surrounding it. You will examine who is affected, the actors and external forces that shape the issue, and the relationships and power dynamics that influence progress. The goal is to identify opportunities to strengthen coordination, build collective action, and advance strategies that address the challenge.
Option 2: Advancing an Intervention. Start with an intervention (such as a program, policy change, or cross-sector initiative) designed to address an upward mobility challenge in a particular policy domain (e.g., workplace, housing, health care). You will examine how the broader ecosystem may support or hinder its adoption or implementation by identifying key influencers, potential supporters and detractors, and connections to other systems and sectors. The goal is to identify actionable steps to strengthen and advance the intervention.
Not sure which to choose? If you are already committed to a specific intervention and want to increase its chances of success, option 2 may be the best fit. If you need a deeper understanding of the challenge, the actors involved, and opportunities for collective action, option 1 is likely the better starting point. We will walk through both approaches early in the sprint before you decide.
Through applied exercises, peer learning, and facilitated discussion, and informed by the Upward Mobility Framework, participants will analyze the ecosystem, identify levers of change, and develop a rationale for action: why the issue matters, why action is needed now, and the immediate next steps based on their map and analysis. The sprint culminates in a written document that brings together all the pieces of their mapping work and a 10-minute presentation tailored to a specific audience, either internal (a supervisor or organizational leadership) or external (a potential partner or champion who can bring others to the table).
Audience and Learning Objectives
This sprint is ideal for mid-career practitioners; program managers; nonprofit and civic leaders and even policymakers working in local government, economic mobility, and philanthropy; and intermediaries or other community-based and civic organizations. Ecosystem mapping can help those individuals and organizations who want to accelerate their work, build or strengthen a cross-sector collaboration, or improve their capacity to facilitate systems change as part of an upward mobility initiative.
By the end of the sprint, participants will
- develop an ecosystem map that documents the actors, internal dynamics, community and equity considerations, and external forces impacting and influencing a specific upward mobility problem or intervention,
- use the ecosystem map to identify gaps and opportunities for collaboration and partnership-building or for adopting or implementing a specific intervention,
- craft a compelling rationale for action, and
- identify clear action steps to build partnerships and strengthen collaborations that advance upward mobility work in their communities.
Sprint Modules
- Orientation to Upward Mobility Fundamentals
- Introducing Systems Thinking, Ecosystem Mapping, and Crafting the Upward Mobility Problem Statement
- Mapping Actors, Power, and Local Dynamics
- Analyzing the Ecosystem and Writing a Compelling Rationale for Action
- Identifying Concrete Next Steps to Activate the Map
- Capstone Presentations on Your Ecosystem Maps
Live sessions will include presentations from the core instructors and guest speakers and facilitated peer learning. In between live sessions, participants will be expected to dedicate about two to four hours of time for reviewing reading materials, developing their maps and conducting analysis by using various templates and worksheets, and providing asynchronous feedback to peers.
Sprint Dates:
Sessions will be held on Thursday afternoons from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST on the following dates: January 28, February 11, February 25, March 18, April 1, April 15, April 29, May 13. The final capstone session will be held from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST on May 27.
The instructors for this sprint are Senior Policy Associate Joe Schilling and Training and Technical Assistance Manager Izabela Solosi.
Identifying Effective Interventions Across Pillars and Predictors
Identifying Effective Interventions Across Pillars and Predictors
This sprint will guide policymakers, practitioners, and program leaders in government, nonprofits, community foundations, collective impact organizations, and other mission-driven organizations in identifying strategies and interventions that are suitable for their communities and then tailoring them to address their local upward mobility challenges. To start, participants will examine a core challenge in their own community and analyze its root causes. They will then identify and assess potential pathways for addressing that challenge, and identify which strategies would be most feasible and impactful in their local context. Participants will outline a theory of change to explain how proposed strategies are expected to improve local conditions, consider how to advance goals through community engagement and coalition building, and build out messaging on their interventions with a rationale for action.
Audience and Learning Objectives
This sprint is ideal for mid- to advanced-career professionals whose roles involve advising on or developing policy or programming, be it in government or nongovernment functions. Participants will leave this sprint with actionable insights on policy and program solutions for their communities’ challenges, including an understanding of how those solutions link to the Upward Mobility Framework.
By the end of the sprint, participants will
- gather data and evidence on a local upward mobility challenge and name some of its root causes,
- select evidence-based strategies to pursue locally,
- assess various feasibility dimensions of a proposed strategy,
- outline a clear theory of change for how their selected solution(s) will address their upward mobility challenge,
- identify community and stakeholder engagement and coalition-building opportunities for advancing their goals, and
- produce a narrative for why now is the right time to pursue their chosen solution(s).
Sprint Modules
- Orientation to Upward Mobility Fundamentals and Understanding Community Conditions
- Identifying Community Priorities and Root Causes
- Identifying and Evaluating Solutions
- Assessing Feasibility
- Theories of Change and Logic Models
- Coalition Building and Community Engagement
- Building a Narrative
- Capstone Presentations on Priority Solutions
Sprint Dates:
Sessions will be held on Tuesdays from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST on the following dates: January 26, February 2, February 16, March 2, March 16, March 30, April 13, and April 27. The capstone session will be held on May 18 from 1:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST. We will also offer office hours where participants can sign up for advising sessions, with dates to follow.
The instructors for this sprint are Policy Program Managers Karolina Ramos and Emma Fernandez.
We hope you’ll apply to join this growing national network of leaders working to advance mobility from poverty in their communities.
