The goal of this session is to highlight recent advances in ecological forecasting catalyzed by the rapidly-growing Ecological Forecasting Initiative (EFI), a grassroots community of ecologists, social scientists, data scientists, computer scientists, and educators. EFI was created in 2017 and has quickly grown to include over a hundred researchers, agency scientists, and managers who are developing near-term to decadal forecasts to anticipate the future state of populations, communities, and ecosystems across the planet. Through the development of EFI, ecologists have gained important insights on 1) how forecasting can be used as a framework for hypothesis testing and advancing ecological theory; 2) how to develop the cyberinfrastructure that underlies the model-data fusion necessitated by near-term, iterative forecasting; 3) how to engage agency partners, tribes, and managers to co-develop forecasts to support natural resource decision-making; and 4) how to train the next generation of ecological forecasters to ensure diverse, interdisciplinary representation within this subdiscipline of ecology. As forecasting is an increasingly valued approach for conducting ecology, our symposium will highlight how the community-led EFI is developing teaching tools and partnerships to engage ecologists broadly in this effort.