The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation seeks to dramatically improve the lives of people and the world around us through innovative strategies, systems changing approaches, and disrupting technologies. Our goal is to find social entrepreneurs with dynamic ideas and nurture them at the early stages with maximum leverage and total commitment.

Prospects for our portfolio of social enterprises come from a vast field of compelling ideas and dedicated leaders. We concentrate our selection on the capabilities of the founder/leader, the scalability of the model, and the potential impact of the organization on the world.

We have an open application process and accept applications year round. Borrowed from our venture capital legacy we find exceptional entrepreneurs, provide them with 3 years of unrestricted capital (totaling $300,000) and provide rigorous on-going support by joining their board of directors for the 3 years and partnering with the leader to help them to build capacity in their organization and scale their impact.

What We Fund

DRK’s hope is to support outsized impact through entrepreneurs and enterprises that create a transformational paradigm shift to meaningfully address a pressing societal problem affecting people’s lives.

DRK Funds:

• Organizations addressing a critical social or environmental issue as the focus of their work.
• Founders who intend to expand their impact significantly over time.
• Organizations operating in Africa, Europe, India, Latin America, and the United States.
• Independent nonprofit and impact first, mission-driven for-profit entities, including US 501(c)3 and its non-US equivalents, C corporations, B corporations, and hybrid organizations.
• Fiscally sponsored organizations in select cases where there is a plan to spin out (in our experience, independence creates stronger enabling conditions for growth).
• Post-pilot, pre-scale organizations. This typically means:
  • Your program, product or service is already in the market or in the field.
  • You have early indication that your model is having its intended impact.
  • Your organization is 3-5 years old (this is not a rule, but a guidepost).
• Organizations with one or more founders who are full-time or intend to be.
  • We believe that full-time leadership from the organization’s founder(s) is critical to an early stage organization’s growth.
  • We recognize that going full-time requires resources that you may still be putting together, and if that is the case we are happy to start a conversation with you in the meantime.
• We value diversity of people proximate to the problem at hand and a commitment to foster justice, equity, inclusion, and belonging practices.

Issues

Issues include:

• Arts & Culture
• Civic Engagement
• Economic Empowerment
• Education
• Energy & Environment
• Environment & Climate Change
• Food & Agriculture
• Health
• Social Justice
• Systemic Poverty

NOTE: Organizations that believe they meet these criteria can submit an organizational profile at any time. If your organizational profile falls within our priorities, selection criteria, and funding availability, we will follow up to learn more about your organization. Due to the volume of inquiries, we cannot respond to each organization individually.

Become a Partner

At the core of our model are our partnerships with courageous, dynamic organizations that are improving the lives of children and youth in the heart of their own communities.

We eagerly look for new organizations to partner with across the globe, based on our regional strategies, and particularly when we launch and expand thematic and regional initiatives. Please explore information about our regional strategies and initiatives in Africa, the Americas, Europe and Eurasia, and Asia.

We are committed to selecting partners who align with our values and our mission, and who will leverage the greatest benefit from their partnership with GFC.

Our Model

We find out what matters most to our partners and the young people they serve, and then we help make it happen. Our model combines flexible funding with capacity development services to help our partners realize transformational, youth-driven change.

This is how it works.

We find

• We identify innovative organizations – typically in the early stages of their development – that are run by local leaders working with children and youth around the world.

We fund.

• We fund our partners’ life-changing programs for children and youth, as well as their organizational development. We keep our grants flexible to maximize our impact and to meet needs that other funders are not willing to support.

Together we strengthen

• We advise, mentor, and guide our partners. We build mutual trust, accountability, and enduring relationships. Our targeted capacity development helps our partners grow stronger and more responsive to challenges on the ground.

We build networks

• We connect our partners to each other and to national and regional networks. We bring together brilliant minds to share knowledge, generate learning, fuel advocacy, and build movements of social change.

When our partners graduate, we stand proud

• Our partners emerge more sustainable and connected to the resources, people, and information they need to reach their goals. After graduation from the financial partnership, our partners remain vital peers and mentors in our growing global network.

Focus Areas

Together with our partners, we are building a future where all young people enjoy equal resources and opportunities in society and can live to their full potential.

Our work advances the rights of children and youth across four focus areas and five regions. We have a deep commitment to courageous organizations that support young people facing poverty, injustice, and discrimination.

We support grassroots organizations that are not afraid to tackle the root causes of poverty with innovative, local solutions. Most offer holistic care to comprehensively address the needs of each child. Many become regional and national leaders in children’s rights—raising awareness, influencing policy, and ultimately impacting thousands of children and youth beyond their doors.

Education

Poverty and injustice – and the many hardships that accompany them – deny millions of children the opportunity to learn. We promote the right of all children to access high-quality education, regardless of their circumstances.

Gender Equity

Young people have the right to protect their bodies, raise their voices, and define their futures. But millions are denied these rights every day. We work to ensure that all children – regardless of their gender or their sexual identity – can be safe, learn, lead, and thrive.

Youth Empowerment

Right now, the largest youth population in history is coming of age, and most of these young people live in the developing world. It’s a challenge – and an opportunity – we can’t ignore.

According to the United Nations, 89% of the world’s youth live in developing countries. At the same time, youth unemployment is on the rise. And work alone does not mean prosperity: nearly 40% of working youth live in poverty. Together, these challenges pose an enormous threat to our global economic and political stability – unless we seize the opportunity.

Freedom from Violence & Exploitation

All children deserve to grow up free from danger and harm – yet millions are threatened by war, trafficking, violence, and abuse. For survivors and children at risk, we work to bring safety and dignity to their lives.

Michael & Susan Dell Foundation Grants

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation only accepts unsolicited proposals for specific areas within the education, family economic stability and childhood health sectors in select countries where we work, namely the United States, India and South Africa.

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has approved grants ranging from $500 to several million dollars. As a guideline, the foundation generally will not fund more than 25 percent of a project’s budget or more than 10 percent of an organization’s total annual operating expenses.

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has always recognized the power of providing grants to partner organizations that we knew were already working hard to improve the lives of urban children living in poverty. By aligning with organizations that are already making a difference, we continue to make an immediate impact on the lives of thousands of children.

Foundation priorities:

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation only accepts unsolicited proposals for specific areas within the:

• education,
• family economic stability and
• childhood health sectors in select countries where we work, namely:
• the United States,
• India and
• South Africa.

The International Foundation fund US-based non-profit organizations who partner with poor communities in the developing world to improve their health, education and incomes, while strengthening local capacity to sustain their benefits. Our strategy seeks change in the intermediate area between individuals and national organizations, where community members work together toward a shared vision. 

The International Foundation funds grants in three key areas—health, education and incomes. However, each of these areas represents a range of investment opportunities that, if integrated with other program areas, can lead to broader, more balanced and more sustainable results.

The focus of our grant-making combines criteria on the nature of the program, the geographic location, and the level of poverty.

Quantifiable Impact Focus

Our grants support the specific types of programs, in specific geographic regions, that we believe address the most pressing needs in the world today.

Program Focus

We believe each of our priority program categories are linked by our overall goal to benefit an entire region. While grants are awarded to some organizations focused on one category, we look for partners who take a more holistic, community-based approach and are committed to delivering positive and sustained results.

• Agriculture: We support projects working toward agricultural sustainability in developing countries that suffer from the impact of population growth and climate change, poor technology, and policy and management issues. These projects help smallholder farmers with crop management, storage, timely market information, mobile phone-based training services, savings and loan programs, and resource acquisition.
• Education: We support programs that extend the reach of national education systems to remote and undeserved areas. This includes remedial education, access to technology resources, teacher training, and extracurricular projects. We also support formal and informal education programs in information technology and vocational skills in both rural and city communities that prioritize women and girls.
• Environment: We support projects designed to address air and water pollution, climate change, soil degradation, exploitation of natural resources, biodiversity loss, deforestation, desertification, and ocean acidification. Our grants focus on projects that ensure water quality and access, WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene), and eliminating vector-borne diseases and exposure to toxic chemicals.
• Health: We support community primary health programs as well as maternal and child health care. We also support programs that provided general health education including hygiene, family planning, and birth control. Finally, we support programs that extend the reach of healthcare to remote regions and sectors of countries while also working to extend the reach of national health systems.

Geographic Focus

We support US-based organizations serving vulnerable populations and communities in many parts of the developing world. We prioritize countries in which the need is great and the environment allows for successful outcomes.

Latin America & The Caribbean or Africa or South & Southeast Asia

Purpose of Grants

Jewish Helping Hands launched its Tikkun Olam Grant program in 2012 to advance our goal of inspiring and supporting tzedakah, justice and righteousness, throughout the world. Our goal is to help vulnerable populations in the United States and abroad through a variety of programs focused on economic development and social empowerment, with a particular focus on those demographics that have been overlooked and/or marginalized.

In cooperation with local communities, JHH supports programs that are sustainable and scalable through financial and hands-on support. Our objective is to promote organizations and projects that will make a tangible and lasting difference in the lives of the populations they serve. With each of our grants, JHH also intends to share its experience and expertise, so as to help further our joint mission.

Criteria for Grants

JHH values programs and projects that aim to bring about positive change for groups of all backgrounds and religious affiliations.

JHH will consider making grants to individuals or organizations that show clear promise to achieve one or both of the following:

• Respond to unmet needs of those who are poor and/or marginalized
• Promote self-help and empowerment within communities

In the 2022/2023 Grant Cycle, we are focusing primarily on projects that provide the basic necessities for a decent life:

• Women’s Empowerment
• Education
• Food
• Shelter
• Clothing
• Water
• Health
• Internet Connectivity
• Gender Equity

We are also focusing especially on projects in these areas:

• East Africa
• Central America
• North America
• Any Impoverished Jewish Communities
• Israel

JHH especially seeks to partner with grassroots organizations who utilize resources local to their communities especially when those projects support the safety and health of the community members.

The Conservation, Food and Health Foundation seeks to protect the environment, improve food production, and promote public health in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Types of Support

The Foundation supports projects and applied research that:

• Generate local or regional solutions to problems affecting the quality of the environment and human life;
• Advance local leadership and promote professional development in the conservation, agricultural, and health sciences;
• Develop the capacity of local organizations and coalitions; and
• Address challenges in the field. 

The Foundation funds applied research, pilot projects, new initiatives, training, and technical assistance, rather than ongoing support for programs that are already well underway. An important goal for the Foundation is to provide seed money to help promising projects, organizations, and individuals develop the track record they need to attract major foundation funding in the future.  

Fields of InterestThe following are examples of the Foundation’s areas of interest within the fields of conservation, food, and health, and are not meant to be exclusive.ConservationConservation grants promote environmental conservation through field research, projects, and advocacy that:

• Protect biodiversity and preserve natural resources.
• Help mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.
• Build the scientific and technical capacity of local conservation organizations and promote local, regional, and international partnerships.
• Increase engagement between scientists, local communities and organizations, and decision-makers.
• Partner with indigenous communities and local people.

FoodGrants in the food and agriculture program area focus on research-based projects that build capacity for self-sufficiency and resilience to climate change, strengthen local food systems, and support healthy nutrition through projects that: 

• Enhance food security.
• Develop and promote sustainable agricultural practices
• Build the capacity of small-scale farmers.
• Advance farmer research and research partnerships.
• Develop environmentally sound and affordable approaches to control pests and diseases affecting important local food crops.
• Promote indigenous food sovereignty and knowledge systems.
• Address challenges of uptake and scalability through new methods of extension, education, and technology transfer.

HealthThe Foundation supports efforts that test new ideas and approaches that promote public health, with a special emphasis on reproductive health and family planning and their integration with other health promotion activities. It favors community-level disease prevention and health promotion projects and efforts that help strengthen regional and country public health systems over disease diagnosis, treatment, and care provided by clinics, hospitals, and humanitarian aid programs.Activities that help increase capacity include applied research, program development, technical assistance, and training projects that:

• Promote reproductive health and family planning.
• Address issues related to mental and behavioral health.
• Address issues relating to pollution and environmental health.
• Increase the understanding of zoonotic and neglected tropical diseases.
• Address issues relating to nutrition and health.

Key Priorities

In all of its areas of interest, the Foundation gives priority to projects that have the potential to advance the field, build local capacity, promote replication, influence public opinion and policy, affect systems change, and benefit people beyond the immediate project and its local context.

Grants are made for a one- or two-year period. Second-year funding is conditional on the provision of a satisfactory progress report, interim financial report, and work plan. Renewal requests for projects that were not originally approved as a multi-year project may be considered, but require a new application.

Grant awards are made twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, with applications due several months prior.  The Foundation will consider only one proposal from an organization in any calendar year.

NOTE: For the 2023 cycle, In light of the situation with COVID and how it may have affected clubs’ ability to support their chosen charities, at this time clubs must have only supported their nominated charity for six months (instead of the usual one year) before applying for a DG on their behalf. This allows clubs to nominate charities that were perhaps forced to suspend operations for a time due to COVID or charities that may have been borne out of COVID. Support is defined as donation of goods, services or money made by more than two individuals of a FAWCO Member Club or FAUSA.

The FAWCO Foundation Development Grant

The FAWCO Foundation Development Grants financially assist projects which are passionately supported by FAWCO Member Clubs and FAUSA. The purpose of the program is to fund projects that can make an immediate impact and lead to success for the people they support. The assistance offered should be direct, with a goal of sustainability.

Through The Foundation, FAWCO Member Clubs and FAUSA have been aiding worthy and reputable charitable projects around the globe for over 45 years. Some clubs are working “hands-on” with their projects while others make financial contributions or donations of goods. FAWCO Member Clubs and FAUSA are passionate about supporting projects that improve the human condition throughout the world. The DGs provide the financial assistance that can help the recipients achieve their goals. 

The Development Grant categories are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in the areas of Education, Environment, Health and Human Rights. 

The Foundation encourages FAWCO clubs to nominate grassroots organizations that receive little or no great sponsorship or support. Each FAWCO club may nominate two different projects each year.

Grant Categories

The grant categories are aligned with the UN Millennium Goals.

The FAWCO Foundation 2020 Development Grants will be offered in these categories:

Education

For projects promoting literacy, supporting academic studies, building or providing classrooms, libraries or general learning facilities for disadvantaged children or providing training designed to lead to economic and other types of empowerment for women and girls.

Due to the generosity in sponsorship, there are three awards available which will be given to the three projects receiving the most votes.

• AW Surrey Hope Through Education $5,000
• Educating Women & Girls Worldwide, sponsored in part by Renuka Matthews $5,000
• For programs specifically aimed at women and/or girls.
• Pam Dahlgren Educating Africa’s Children $5,000
• For programs specifically in the geographical area of Africa and will be awarded to the Africa-focused nominated project which receives the most votes.

Human Rights

For projects in a FAWCO Member Club’s host country or the world:

• providing vocational training, teaching practical skills, promoting social entrepreneurial initiatives for at-risk/marginalized population groups, 
• or addressing the critical problems of violence, food and shelter, healthcare, education, poverty, advocacy, human trafficking, prostitution, refugees, including all those impacted by economic, political or other forced migration,
• or promoting cultural understanding.

Due to the generosity in sponsorship, there are three awards available which will be given to the three projects receiving the most votes.

• Breaking the Cycle, sponsored in part by AW Eastern Province $5,000
• FAUSA Effecting Change for Women and Children at Risk $5,000 
• Safe Haven, sponsored in part by the family and friends of Louise Greeley-Copley $5,000
• For programs specifically supporting the Human Right to Safety and Shelter including:
• Refugee Programs  
• Protection for Women and Children Fleeing Violence
• Victims of Human Trafficking
• Shelters for Natural or Man-made Disasters

Environment

For projects promoting the responsible use of the environment to provide for the basic needs of a family or a community.

• Nurturing Our Planet - $5000

Global Issues - NEW for 2020! 

Close To Home $5,000                  

This Grant can be placed within any of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to which we align our Development Grants in the areas of Education, Environment, Health and Human Rights. In order to recognize FAWCO club’s local charities that are often overlooked on the world’s stage, the TFF is offering this Development Grant that is available for projects that take place in the nominating Club’s home country.

Health

For projects providing medical treatment, diagnostic services, preventive care or medical counseling. This can include, but is not limited to, cancer, HIV/AIDS, communicable, non-communicable and environmental diseases, substance abuse, life-improving surgeries, mental issues, the critically ill, the disabled, the aged, medical transport, special needs and maternal health for mothers and children.

Critical Health Concerns - $5000

Helping the Disadvantaged Become Self-Reliant

Gupta Family Foundation is a private, nonprofit foundation headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, USA. Our mission is to support organizations that provide focused intervention in the lives of people who have been disadvantaged in some way to help them become self-reliant. We take a very broad view of “disadvantage” to include anything that holds a person back from realizing their potential, such as poverty, physical or mental disability, social alienation, etc. The foundation also supports relief agencies that serve people affected by emergencies such as natural disasters.

The foundation evaluates and awards annual and multi-year grants ranging from $5,000 to over $250,000 (USD). Our focus is on funding smaller organizations all around the world that are led by individuals with a deep personal commitment to their missions. 

Our selection criteria include:

• Mission alignment
• The organization is run by the founder or, if not, by a successor who embodies the original inspiration, passion and commitment of the founder.
• At least 90% of grant monies reaches the intended beneficiaries.
• The organization is non-sectarian, i.e.,
  • It does not, directly or indirectly, support or condone the proselytization of any religion,
  • It is not supported by or affiliated to a religious organization.