NOTE: Although unsolicited proposals are rarely considered, inquiries about future support for projects that fall within the Child Well-being Program’s grant-making strategies can be submitted through a letter of inquiry.

Child Well-being

Through the Child Well-being Program, the foundation aims to promote children’s healthy development and protect them from abuse and neglect. 

Doris Duke took a special interest in the well-being of children and families, supporting communities, early family planning efforts and nearly 85 child welfare organizations during her life. In her will, which guides our focus areas, she expressed her interest in "the prevention of cruelty to children." 

Why It's Important

Children’s well-being and ability to thrive are strongly tied to the safety and stability of both their families and where they live. These factors provide the foundation for healthy physical and emotional development during childhood. Unfortunately, many children in the U.S. experience a long legacy of unjust historic and systemic inequities and disparities that rob them of access to the fundamental factors that allow others to flourish. All children should be able to grow up in secure, positive, healthy and inclusive environments that allow them to reach their full potential.

What We Support

The Child Well-being Program takes a funding approach that supports intergenerational work that bolsters culturally, geographically and locally relevant programs with and for communities to foster the long-term well-being of families. By funding efforts that strengthen the systems that serve families and support the needs of children and caregivers together, the Child Well-being Program aims to promote children’s healthy development, prevent maltreatment, and ally with communities to create improved and more equitable outcomes for their children. To accomplish this goal, we focus our grantmaking in the three below areas.

Place-based Approaches to Improving Well-being

One of the Child Well-being Program’s core strategies is to support coordinated, resident-informed, neighborhood-level efforts that aim to make measurable improvements in the health and well-being of children and families.

Delivery of these programs must be culturally, geographically and locally relevant. The Child Well-being Program therefore supports organizations that have deep roots in their communities, are trusted by residents, and partner with multiple sectors (e.g., health, education, criminal justice and housing agencies) to coordinate services for children and families at the neighborhood level. Each grantee is supported to:

• Invest in improving the local physical environment (e.g., clean and safe housing, community gardens, safe places to socialize and play).
• Use administrative and/or independently collected and validated data for informed decision-making and to assess impact on child, family and/or community well-being.
• Coordinate health and social services that work with families in a particular neighborhood.
• Bring additional resources to the neighborhood that are relevant to their local context and empower residents to use them.
• Increase resident engagement, foster social connectedness among community members and build a sense of belonging within neighborhoods where residents live.
• Communicate stories of success within the neighborhood.

Strengthening & Coordinating Service Systems

Through its grantmaking, the Child Well-being Program aims to strengthen and expand the capacity of social service systems that are collaborative and provide culturally appropriate, evidence-based, and context-specific prevention and treatment programs for parents and children. By strengthening the ability of existing social service systems to better serve those in places contending with sizeable inequities, more children and families can receive the essential supports and resources that help them to pursue full, healthy and happy lives. Services such as these, when well-coordinated, can make a significant impact in responding to the effects of generations of inequities and exposure to trauma, violence, abuse, and neglect to help give families a fairer shot at achieving healthy and happy futures.

Building Capacity and Sharing Knowledge

The Child Well-being Program works to build individual, organizational and collective capacity that fosters, aligns and expands opportunities to advance more equitable outcomes for children and families. The program invests in the career development of visionary and effective leaders from a variety of disciplines who reflect the experiences, cultures and backgrounds of the communities they serve. These leaders include those from multiple social service systems, nonprofit organizations and researchers.

Our grantmaking also supports the generation and use of research evidence that offers invaluable insights into the communities we aim to serve and informs policies and practices that shape the experiences and well-being of children and families.

The program also provides targeted funds to facilitate communication and storytelling that use a strengths- and equity-based lens to replace harmful dominant narratives with authentic representation and the lived experiences of the communities and families we support.

Additionally, we support advocacy efforts that increase awareness of community needs and promote essential elements of well-being.

NOTE: Letters of inquiry are accepted on a rolling basis; there are no deadlines. Please note that we do not seek, and rarely fund, unsolicited grant applications.

Our Goal

Our grantmaking aims to ensure that American public education prepares all students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to fully participate in democracy and thrive in the global economy.

Focus Areas

New Designs to Advance Learning

Our grantmaking funds school- and classroom-based innovations to better support student learning and holistic youth development, with an emphasis on meeting each student’s unique needs, ensuring deep mastery of content and skills, and improving academic outcomes.

Schools today are charged with preparing students to thrive in an increasingly complex world. This extends beyond supporting academic success and includes equipping young people to actively engage in our democracy and workforce. In order to meet this challenge, schools of the future will need to be places where learning is deeply personalized, instruction is focused on mastery of core skills, competencies, and knowledge, and holistic youth development is woven into the student experience. Our investments support schools, school districts, charter management organizations, and other school support organizations in catalyzing and implementing these changes.

Pathways to Postsecondary Success

We invest to reimagine pathways to educational and economic opportunity for high school graduates. This includes initiatives to improve college access and completion, particularly for low-income and first-generation students, as well as efforts to better align K–12 learning, higher education, and careers.

Given the changing nature of the economy, it is more imperative than ever for students to attain some postsecondary education to thrive in the global economy. This requires American education to collaborate with the labor market in the design of better pathways to opportunity for all students beyond high school graduation. By providing a diversity of options and flexibility necessary to accommodate the range of student needs and ambitions after high school, we can improve outcomes for all students, especially those who have faced historic barriers to opportunity. To meet that need, our grantmaking supports initiatives to improve postsecondary access and completion, and to expand the range of postsecondary pathways available to students, and to ensure that K–12 and higher education collaborate with the labor market to prepare young people for the future of work.

Leadership and Teaching to Advance Learning

We work to ensure that all students benefit from content-rich, standards-aligned instruction by funding efforts to strengthen teaching and school leadership, including the development of high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based professional learning.

Educators today are tasked with holding all students to high academic standards in mathematics, English language arts/literacy, and science, requiring an increase in both the rigor of instruction and the level of student engagement in order to achieve those expectations. As a result, teachers adapt teaching to meet students’ diverse needs while helping them master the academic content, skills, and habits of mind required for success in school and life. To help educators meet these challenges, the Corporation invests in the development of high-quality instructional materials and curriculum-based professional learning for teachers and instructional leaders. It also supports a wide range of initiatives to advance the knowledge, skills, and practices that educators need to support student success, including clinically rich teacher preparation, coaching and mentoring, and ongoing professional development for teachers and school leaders.

Public Understanding

Our grantmaking aims to build a shared understanding about the changes needed to ensure that all students excel in school and life, including efforts to foster collaboration among families, educators, community leaders, and students as true partners in achieving that vision.

Research shows that students thrive when families have a meaningful role in their education and schools are stronger when they have close ties to their communities. But not all children experience the benefits of strong community and family engagement at their schools. At the same time, the perspectives of families and educators are often neglected when school reforms are being developed and implemented, which can lead to frustrations that compromise the success of those initiatives. Our grantmaking aims to reverse those trends by bringing together families, communities, students, educators, policymakers, and the public in support of an equitable and educational system and high-quality learning experiences for all. These efforts include initiatives to elevate the concerns and priorities of families and educators, empowering them to shape educational policy and practice. We also fund programs to bridge the gap between home and school. This work ensures that all families have access to the information and best practices they need to navigate and support their children’s education and that they are able to act as effective advocates for change. Because we believe an informed public is vital to ensuring educational equity, we also support media organizations to encourage national and local conversations about issues that matter most to families and educators.

Equitable Systems

Our grantmaking is designed to ensure that everyone invested in improving our nation’s schools works together more effectively to design and implement improvement strategies within complex systems. This includes efforts to reduce fragmentation, foster collaboration, and build cultures of continuous learning, with the goal of building a more equitable education system that puts all students on a path to lifelong success.

School systems in the United States are exceedingly complex, encompassing great diversity and competing demands. New initiatives are often introduced without engaging the people who will be most affected by them or considering how changes in one area might have ripple effects in others. As a result, the field of education has often struggled to put promising ideas into practice, slowing the pace of progress for students, particularly those from historically marginalized communities. Two central challenges have been the tendency to design and implement improvement strategies in isolation, and the limited or ineffective sharing of knowledge across the field. The Corporation seeks to change these patterns by catalyzing integrated approaches that are better suited to improving complex social systems and sharing lessons learned from that work. Our grantmaking also supports initiatives that stimulate innovation in an effort to reduce inequity, paying particular attention to increasing diverse and representative leadership in education, designing and managing change effectively and inclusively, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.

NOTE: We expect to fund very few proposals that come to us via unsolicited contact. As such, we have no formal process for accepting such proposals and may not respond to inquiries. In general, we expect to identify most giving opportunities via proactive searching and networking. If you would like to suggest that we consider a grant — whether for your project or someone else’s — please contact us.

Open Philanthropy Project Focus Areas

So far, the focus areas we have selected fall into one of two broad categories: Global Health and Wellbeing and Longtermism, led by Open Philanthropy co-CEOs Alexander Berger and Holden Karnofsky, respectively. We summarize the key differences between these portfolios as follows: 

• While Longtermism grants tend to be evaluated based on something like “How much this grant raises the probability of a very long-lasting, positive future” (including by reducing global catastrophic risks), Global Health and Wellbeing grants tend to be evaluated based on something like “How much this grant increases health (denominated in e.g. life-years) and/or wellbeing, worldwide.”
• The Global Health and Wellbeing team places greater weight on evidence, precedent, and track record in its giving; the Longtermism team tends to focus on problems and interventions where evidence and track records are often comparatively thin. (That said, the Global Health and Wellbeing team does support a significant amount of low-probability but high-upside work like policy advocacy and scientific research.)
• The Longtermism team’s work could be hugely important, but it’s very hard to answer questions like “How will we know whether this work is on track to have an impact?” We can track intermediate impacts and learn to some degree, but some key premises likely won’t become very clear for decades or more. By contrast, we generally expect the work of the Global Health and Wellbeing team to be more likely to result in recognizable impact on a given ~10-year time frame, and to be more amenable to learning and changing course as we go.

Focus Area: Global Health and Wellbeing

• Effective Altruism Community Growth (Global Health and Wellbeing) - We want to increase the number of people who work to improve health and wellbeing by as much as possible, and help them to achieve their goals.
  • We support organizations and projects that connect people who work to improve the lives of humans and animals around the world. We hope to grow and empower the community of people who use reason and evidence to do as much good as they can.
  • Many of those people describe themselves as effective altruists, and we think of Open Philanthropy as an organization focused on effective altruism — while acknowledging that this term is subject to multiple interpretations, not all of which apply to us.
  • This focus area uses the lens of our global health and wellbeing portfolio, just as our longtermism community growth area uses the lens of our longtermism portfolio. The work we fund in this area is primarily focused on identifying and supporting people who are or could eventually become helpful partners, critics, and grantees.

• Farm Animal Welfare - We seek to improve the lives of the billions of animals confined on factory farms.
  • We believe that phasing out the worst factory farm practices and working to promote alternatives could significantly reduce animal suffering.
  • We are particularly interested in advocating for reforms that would improve the lives of the greatest number of animals. Especially when directed at chicken and fish — the two most numerous vertebrate farmed animals — we think that these reforms could potentially impact a large share of the animals confined on farms today.
  • Successfully developing animal-free foods that are taste- and cost-competitive with animal-based foods might also prevent much of this suffering. We have accordingly worked to accelerate the development and commercialization of plant-based foods and other alternatives to animal products.
• Global Aid Policy - We hope to contribute to a future where wealthy countries’ foreign aid improves the well-being of more people.
  • Many high-income countries spend less than 0.7% of their GNP on official development assistance each year. We believe there could be ways to increase aid levels and to increase the impact of current aid spending. We’re interested in funding effective strategies for doing so.
  • We are open to any approach that could substantially increase the quantity and/or quality of aid and other forms of development finance. We do not have sector or geographic restrictions, and we may support a range of tactics, from advocacy to technical assistance to research.
  • Below are preliminary areas of interest, which we developed largely based on conversations with leading practitioners and funders. We look forward to talking to a wide range of people to refine and shape this list.
    • Using policy research and/or advocacy to help expand high-return programs and investments within existing aid institutions.
    • Advocating for new, cost-effective global health programs (e.g. PEPFAR for other areas).
    • Developing strategies to increase high-level political support for aid investments.
    • Building and strengthening aid policy & advocacy fields in high-income countries.
    • Supporting investments to improve the cost-effectiveness or quality of existing aid programs.
    • Expanding access to capital or helping to reduce debt burdens, e.g. by supporting governments in negotiating more favorable terms from development finance loans.
  • We launched our Global Aid Policy program in April 2022. We expect to spend at least $15 million in 2022, and hope to grow the program substantially in future years. Below are several related grants we made prior to launching the program. 
• Global Health & Development - We believe that every life has value — and that philanthropic dollars can go particularly far by helping those who are living in poverty by global standards.
  • Most of our giving in this category is to organizations recommended by GiveWell, with whom we have a close relationship. We are excited to support cost-effective interventions to save and improve lives in low- and middle-income countries. An additional subset of our giving supports scientific research we believe can help address diseases that disproportionately afflict the global poor.
• Global Health R&D - We seek to support the development of new vaccines, drugs, and other tools to improve global health.
  • Historically, health technologies like vaccines and drugs have saved millions of lives around the world. However, diseases primarily affecting the world’s poorest people, such as tuberculosis, malaria, diarrheal diseases, rheumatic heart disease, and sickle cell disease receive much less research and development spending relative to their health burdens than diseases affecting the wealthy. Further investments could prevent millions of deaths and illnesses caused by neglected diseases.
  • Open Philanthropy has supported scientific research for human health since 2016. Over time we have learned that there are many excellent opportunities in global health R&D that we could support with increased resources and specialized staff. As a result, we launched this new program in 2023, substantially increasing our total funding in the area.
  • The Global Health R&D team works in parallel and in collaboration with our Scientific Research team, but with a greater focus on supporting tools and treatments through the development life cycle, including those requiring early proof of concept studies, human efficacy trials or implementation research. We are interested in funding research and development for new vaccines, diagnostics, drugs, monoclonal antibodies, and vector control tools for diseases with a large global health burden, as well as efforts to make these products more affordable and accessible.
• Innovation Policy - We hope to safely accelerate scientific and technological progress to make life better for billions of people.
• Historically, economic growth and scientific innovation have created enormous social benefits, lifting billions of people out of poverty and improving health outcomes around the world. At the same time, innovation carries risk; some technologies have the potential to do far more harm than good. 
• Our goal is to accelerate growth and innovation, without unduly increasing risks from emerging technology such as artificial intelligence or genetic engineering. Even small changes to the annual growth rate can compound to great effect over time, which gives us the opportunity to make high-leverage grants.
• We’re interested in pursuing a wide range of strategies. Our current interests include:
  • Advocating for policy reform to help more migrants, especially highly-skilled migrants, move to countries operating on the scientific and technological frontier.
  • Improving the quality of published scientific research, especially in the social sciences, e.g. by encouraging efforts to replicate influential papers.
  • Supporting efforts to accelerate clinical trials for new drugs, without sacrificing standards for quality and safety.
  • Providing financial support for the synthesis and communication of published academic research, in order to increase its impact.
• Land Use Reform - We seek to reduce the harms caused by excessively restrictive local land use regulations.
  • Local laws often prohibit the construction of dense new housing, leading to higher housing prices, especially in a few large high-wage metropolitan areas (e.g., New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C.). More permissive policy could contribute to both affordable housing and the continued growth of centers of economic activity, allowing more people to access high-wage jobs and encouraging economic growth through returns to agglomeration. Working toward more permissive policy in those key regions from a public-interest perspective (as opposed to lobbying for specific developments) appears neglected considering the significant potential gains. For more about our strategy in this area, see our land use reform cause report.

• Scientific Research - We are interested in research that could affect a large number of people.
  • We primarily support biomedical research but our interests are not limited to any particular field, disease, condition, or population. Instead, we seek to identify scientific research that has the potential for high impact and is under-supported by other funders. We are excited to support high-risk and unconventional science when the potential impact is sufficiently large.
  • We are broadly interested in research that may lead to improved understanding of topics related to human health. We are most interested in research that could affect a large number of people. We typically start by looking for metrics related to the number of lives affected (often starting with the World Health Organization’s Global Health Estimates and IHME’s Global Burden of Disease Study). We begin with landscaping exercises to identify important research topics that could have the greatest impact in a given area.
  • Once we understand the research gaps in these fields, we assess which gaps are underfunded and seem most amenable to progress if funded. Often as part of this process, we will attend scientific conferences and interview scientists as advisors, peer reviewers, or potential grantees. For more information, see our Guide for Grant Seekers.
  • Some aspects of the following topics are currently of particular interest: broad spectrum antiviral drugs, vaccine development, basic immunology, some aspects of cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, predicting mouse to human translation, control of inflammation, epigenetics, novel scientific tools and methods, malaria, and research on how biomedical research may be improved. 
• South Asian Air Quality - We are working to improve health by reducing air pollution in South Asia.
  • South Asia experiences some of the world’s highest air pollution levels. Our understanding is that poor air quality contributes significantly to negative health outcomes for more than 1.8 billion people in the region, and that reducing the levels of particulate matter present in the air could save millions of lives. We have seen relatively little philanthropic attention on this issue.
  • We have identified a number of activities that could significantly improve South Asia’s air pollution levels, including implementing more widespread and accurate air quality monitoring programs, conducting research to better understand the sources and effects of air pollution in the region, and increasing the salience of air quality among stakeholders. We believe that supporting these activities, and potentially others, could help inform the design, implementation, and enforcement of more effective air pollution abatement policies.

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.

What We Do

Global Fund for Children partners with community-based organizations around the world to help children and youth reach their full potential and advance their rights.

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.

Background

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.

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

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.

The National Grassroots Organizing Program offers two-year flexible, general operating support grants of up to $30,000 per year, with an average grant size of $20,000 per year, to small, non-profit grassroots constituent-led organizations throughout the United States and its territories and that are not located in the state of Vermont.

The guiding principle behind this program is our belief that people most affected by a problem are in the best position to determine the solutions. We will consider proposals from grassroots, base-building organizations that are working to help themselves and their communities create broad systems change through community organizing campaigns and movement-building efforts.

We prioritize organizations that are led by and center the leadership and agency of Black communities, Indigenous communities, and communities of color that approach their work using anti-oppression values – consciously striving to dismantle systems of oppression and the legacies of white supremacy culture in this country while working toward a more just and equitable society.

We define grassroots organizing as building people power to confront entrenched power. It involves collective action from the bottom up. It challenges the status quo, demands changes in policy and practice, educates communities about root causes of their problems, and advocates and agitates for systemic and just solutions. True progressive change occurs only when underlying, systemic forces are understood and addressed. We firmly believe that grassroots, constituent-led organizing is among the most effective means to create social change.

Grassroots Organizing Strategies

We recognize the following practices to be important components of effective grassroots organizing efforts.

Note: Successful applications will deeply embody all of these strategies.

Community & ally outreach

Consistent, multi-faceted efforts to recruit and engage people in your work. Examples include sharing information and resources, public forums, canvassing, workshops, tabling at events, phone-banking, and media engagement.

Leadership development of constituents

Investing time, training and resources to cultivate innate leadership assets within people who historically haven’t had access to civic and community engagement opportunities or positions of power.

Constituent empowerment & decision-making

The organization is driven by the people impacted by the problem. Constituents define core values, identify and prioritize issues, and determine the appropriate course of action to solve them.

Popular education

An educational technique, based on the theories of Paulo Friere, designed to raise the consciousness of its participants and allow them to become more aware of how an individual’s personal experiences are connected to larger institutional or societal problems.

Root cause analysis

The practice of continually peeling back the layers of a problem and asking “why?” each one exists until the root cause(s) of the issue can be identified and targeted for change.

Power analysis

The process of identifying which individuals or entities hold the power to make decisions that positively and negatively affect an issue.

Campaign development

A game plan of action including tactics, materials, timelines and their intended audiences and effects.

Mobilizing constituents & allies

Moving people to take specific action toward achieving a common goal. Examples include attending rallies and protests, tabling at events, testifying at hearings, contacting public officials, speaking to the media and phone-banking.

Coalition building

Partnering with other organizations that have allied missions and interests with the goal of creating power in numbers.

Non-violent direct action (NVDA)

Public forms of protest for the purpose of demonstration, obstruction or dissent.

Note: If you have thoroughly reviewed the Foundation’s priorities and grantmaking activity on the website and you believe your organization is a good match for our mission, you can email our staff (lnffstaff at lairdnorton dot org) with a brief description of your work. Please be aware that we rarely make grants to organizations that we first learn about through these types of email inquiries, and have limited staff capacity to respond to every message. Our team will be in touch if there is an interest in learning more about your work, or if there are other resources we can connect you with for your work.

Laird Norton Family Foundation

The Laird Norton Family Foundation (LNFF) is a private family foundation in Seattle, Washington, with a mission to honor and reflect the family’s shared values through giving and engage the family in philanthropy as a platform for strengthening family connections. 

Programs

Arts in Education

The goal of the Arts in Education program is to increase arts education and to improve pre-K through grade 12 student learning through the arts. Funding will be directed toward programs that seek to enhance students’ educational outcomes rather than to simply increase participation in, or appreciation for, the arts.

The Arts in Education program will consider funding programs that:

• Encourage the adoption and/or growth of arts integration within a public school or school district. We will prioritize programs that integrate the arts as a tool within greater, diverse curriculum content areas over arts enrichment or direct arts instruction programs.
• Advocate systemic change within schools, districts, or at the state level to encourage arts in education, and
• Utilize the arts as a tool to reduce the educational achievement gap.

Climate Change

Climate change poses a significant global threat, one which we are addressing by striving to ensure an equitable, resilient, habitable, and enjoyable world for current and future generations. While our work is focused on climate change, we believe in the value of ecosystems services and in the stability and resiliency of healthy natural systems. We also believe it is essential that the cost of externalities be incorporated into lifestyle, policy, and business considerations.

 We are focused on investing in regenerative biological systems that influence the carbon cycle (“biocarbon”) and reducing dependency on fossil fuels. We have chosen to focus our grantmaking on efforts to hasten the demise of coal and other fossil fuels and on work that increases the abilities of the forests, agricultural lands, and estuaries of the Pacific Northwest to sequester carbon.

Human Services

The goal of the Human Services program is to support, empower, uplift, and create opportunities for long-term success and a brighter future for unaccompanied youth and young adults (age 12-24) who are in crisis, have experienced trauma, or are aging out of the foster care system. We want to support these youth and young adults in their journey from surviving to thriving.

We will consider funding organizations or programs that provide support for youth/young adults suffering from trauma, mental illness, or addiction, with priority given to homeless youth and those impacted by the foster care system. While the full spectrum of services for youth in crisis is essential, we expect to do the bulk of our grantmaking in two areas:

• Prevention and early intervention work to keep young people from sleeping in unsafe situations — or at a minimum make that a very brief and one-time occurrence, and
• Support for long-term stability support services.

Watershed Stewardship

Watersheds have social, ecological, and economic significance. The goal of the Watershed Stewardship program is to create enabling conditions for long-term social and ecological health and resilience in places of importance to the Laird Norton Family. Currently, we prioritize work in Minnesota and Wisconsin as well as a few key watersheds in the Western United States, consistent with the Laird Norton family's priorities.

Mission

Our mission is to support and strengthen our communities by investing in underserved and at-risk children and youth to become leaders.

The Panera Bread Foundation envisions a world in which young people can unlock their full potential and dare to dream — a world in which opportunity and economic mobility are accessible and equitable for all. We will provide opportunities for children and youth to grow as leaders and gain access to education and career advancement.

Focus

Our focus is to create opportunities for children and youth to gain skills and build relationships through programs that inspire and strengthen our communities. From leadership development, mentorship and skill-building to workforce development and college readiness, our focus is rooted in their future.

Our grant partners are funded to start a new program or to expand and continue an existing program. Programs are focused on college readiness, skills building, post-secondary planning, workforce or leadership development, or mentoring.

Sparkplug provides grants to start-up organizations and new projects of established non-profits in the following three areas:

Education

Sparkplug funds projects to educate or support communities, including but not limited to school-age students, that move beyond traditional classroom instruction. In keeping with our justice-oriented framework, we fund education projects that engage excluded students in new ways, projects that restore knowledge that has been marginalized through racism or colonialism, and projects that rebuild community and collective problem-solving.

We're especially interested in supporting critical and investigative thinking, and projects that address race, gender, and class disparities in education. We do fund community-based education and social justice curriculum development, For example, we have funded the development and sharing of curriculum that explores connections between Palestine and the US/Mexico border region to teach students to think critically about the impact of militarized border zones on youth, families and the environment.

Some examples of education projects that we have funded in the past include:

• A program using digital tools to educate consumers on how they can support farmworkers rights.
• A youth-led education campaign exposing and opposing militarization in their community.
• A digital platform to preserve the archives of a local black community.
• A year-long program bringing together social and environmental justice organizers to train new organizers and develop joint community projects.

Community Organizing

Sparkplug funds work by members of a community for their community -- work that aims to create justice by making systemic change and/or shifting power. Or in other words, we fund projects that are created, run by, and meet the needs of people with shared lived experience who face the same types of oppression, discrimination, violence, or barriers, who live in the same area, or who have a shared vision and aspirations for the future.

For example, We DO fund projects created and led by LGBTQ youth to change policies that affect them.

Some other examples of community organizing that we have funded in the past include:

• A farmworker-led campaign against deportations and for access to drivers licenses for undocumented people.
• Training community members as housing organizers as part of a campaign to build their leadership capacity and win local housing justice.
• Support to frontline communities in energy democracy organizing.
• A COVID-19 related mutual aid and advocacy project by and for people experiencing homelessness.

Music

Recognizing the critical importance of music in bringing communities together and building collective creativity, Sparkplug supports emerging musicians in developing new work, sharing existing work with a wider community through events or media, bringing together musicians to collaborate on creating or performing pieces, or facilitating new workshops that bring music to oppressed communities. Applicants for music grants will be asked to submit a sample of their music with their Letter of Intent form.

Some examples of music projects that we have funded in the past include:

• A music and other media production of a multi-ethnic Ottoman world, drawing on the stories and songs of Sephardic women.
• Commissioned compositions and the production of CDs in selected genres.
• The development of a musical program, using historical materials, memorializing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911.
• A multi-media, semi-staged performance based on the life and poetry of the celebrated Italian Renaissance poet, Torquato Tasso.

NOTE: TWe began accepting applications at 12 a.m. March 10, 2023, and reached our submission maximum in 14 hours. Submissions for 2023 are no longer being accepted.

About the Foundation

The Olive Tree Foundation, Inc., is an independent philanthropy established in the United States in 1997.

Our mission: The Olive Tree Foundation strives to support U.S.-based nonprofits that provide food, shelter, medical care and education for those in need; make arts and culture more accessible and equitable; invest in community and youth and adult development; and protect the environment.

Grantmaking Focus

Organizations eligible to apply for grants from The Olive Tree Foundation focus on:

Basic necessities

• We support nonprofits that provide food for the hungry, shelter the indigent and infirm and provide medical (physical and emotional) care to those in need.

Youth education and development

• OTF support nonprofits that develop the academic skills of youth. Key objectives should include character-building; fostering ethics, teamwork, self-esteem and self-confidence; broadening horizons and aspirations; strengthening unique abilities and talents; developing community awareness and involvement; improving academic, communication and interpersonal skills.

Adult education and development

• We support nonprofits that promote literacy and workforce development through various programs that empower adults to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining.

Community development

• We support nonprofits involved in the protection of civil rights and the creation of environmental infrastructures that enhance quality of life in the communities they serve.

Arts and Culture

• We support nonprofits that improve the quality of life in communities through arts and cultural enrichment and/or renovate structures that preserve a historical heritage.