15,000. That was the number. That was how many scholarship applications Tennessee families needed to file for lawmakers to expand Tennessee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.
In 2024, after years of advocacy work from the Beacon Center of Tennessee, state legislators passed the Education Freedom Scholarship (EFS) Act, the state’s first universal school choice program. The EFS Act gives eligible students a $7,295 scholarship to use for the qualified school of their choosing. It represented the culmination of the Beacon Center’s work to bring school choice to the state on a broad scale.
But getting legislation passed is only half the battle. Earning buy-in and continued support from legislators and the general public is just as critical.
So once the Education Freedom Scholarship Act was signed into law, the Beacon team began educating Tennessee families on how to utilize it and ensure its impact for years to come.
The Education Freedom Scholarship Act created 20,000 scholarships that Tennessee students could use to pay for the education that best suited their needs. However, for the program to continue to expand, 75% of the scholarships (or 15,000) needed to be utilized.
Beacon had their goal. Now came the strategy.
To reach their scholarship application benchmark, Beacon’s team knew they had to not only develop engaging and easy-to-understand messaging, they also needed to target their messaging effectively.
They developed three main audiences: first were parents of school-age children who could benefit from a scholarship. Second were Tennesseans who cared about how the state’s education system was serving students. And finally, Beacon wanted to reach state lawmakers to show them the benefits and results of their vote.
After the legislation passed, Beacon launched a website dedicated solely to educating families about the programs available to them and enabling them to apply for scholarships and applicable programs. TogetherforEveryStudent.org was a one-stop shop to answer any question parents might have about the school choice options available to their students. The site then gives parents easy ways to apply for scholarships and get their student the resources available to them.
To launch the website, Beacon developed a campaign that included email, digital, and SMS marketing to their audiences. Beacon also partnered with the American Federation for Children and the Tennessee Department of Education to provide resources to school leaders—including a webinar made exclusively for them. Through the website, Beacon also developed opportunities to provide one-on-one support for parents. As a result of this outreach campaign, Beacon added 10 education freedom advocates to their Education Advocacy Team, 8,791 email contacts, 8,768 SMS housefile contacts, delivered over 330,000 messages to lawmakers, and reached over 950,000 Tennesseans with digital advertising about the Education Freedom Scholarships and the Together for Every Student website.
But Beacon’s work wasn’t just about educating parents and families about the state’s new program, it was also battling the misinformation being spread to tamp down the program’s success. Pro-status quo, anti-school choice voices tried convincing Tennesseans that school choice would dismantle public schools or was (somehow) an elaborate billionaire plot to … it’s unclear exactly. However, thanks to reliable polling from Beacon and an effective earned media strategy, media outlets reported that nearly 70% of Tennesseans support the expansion of school choice in their state.
The goal was 15,000 scholarship applications.
The result was dramatically more.
In total, 33,000 scholarship applications were submitted within the program’s first six hours. In total, over 40,000 applications were submitted from over 300 ZIP codes representing every region of the state. Over 240 private schools and 4 virtual schools are participating in the EFS program, and school choice champions and legislators have begun working on options for expanding the program to meet the demand.
The passage of the EFS Act was a milestone of success for school choice in Tennessee. The incredible response from Tennessee families was a mark of its necessity and importance. School choice is stronger today because Beacon is working to make it so. And because of these record-setting achievements, the Beacon Center is the winner of the 2025 Communication Excellence Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year.
It’s hard to say whether the Education Freedom Scholarship Act would have passed without Beacon’s work and advocacy. But what’s undeniable is the fact that without Beacon’s strategy and tireless work, the lives and futures of those 15,000 students—and tens of thousands more—would be very different than they are now.