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:  This program is NOT a grant, but rather a matching funds program.

About Elevation

Mission

Traditionally, technology and nonprofits have existed in separate worlds. At Elevation, we are bridging this longstanding gap by combining these two ostensibly different industries into one. We believe that technology is a catalyst that can propel nonprofits into making a greater impact. Our team at Elevation is that bridge and our solutions are the driving forces behind nonprofits generating quantifiable change and inspiring others to do the same. This idea is the foundation of how we do business every day.

Read more about mission & values here. 

Our Approach

At Elevation, we are united under one goal – provide quality digital solutions to nonprofit organizations so they can continue generating measurable change in their communities. In order to fulfill this mission, we have fostered a design process that is customized, flexible, and results-driven. Our clients receive fully functioning, efficient websites, and more. Your website is a tool and an integral part of fulfilling your nonprofit’s mission. When developed with the right team and ideas, you’ll be able to reach broader audiences and transmit a greater positive impact.

Read more about Elevation's team & clients here.

1 for 1 Matching Fund

For every dollar your nonprofit invests in Elevation’s in-house services, we will match that dollar with one of our own.

Born out of our mission to elevate nonprofits’ impact, our 1 for 1 Matching Fund helps us to provide otherwise out-of-reach services to eligible nonprofit partners.

What is the 1 for 1 match?

Making professional design & web services affordable

For every dollar your nonprofit invests in Elevation’s in-house services, we will match that dollar with one of our own.

Born out of our mission to elevate nonprofits’ impact, our 1 for 1 Matching Funds program helps us provide otherwise out-of-reach services to eligible nonprofit partners.

How can your organization participate?

If you are a nonprofit with a project and would like to apply for assistance, please complete our brief online application.

Are there Additional Requirements? 

We work with all sectors, from religious to environmental, provided that their missions align with the values listed on Elevation's "About Us" page. For logistical purposes, we do rely on a point of contact based in the US, Canada, or Europe, but past recipient organizations have been located across the Americas and Africa as well.

Which Projects are Eligible? 

• Website Design & Re-design in WordPress
• Copywriting
• CRM Integrations in WordPress
• Branding & Graphic Design
• Marketing & Google Grants
• On-going WordPress Support
• Website Hosting

Is there a maximum benefit? 

We match what you raise, up to a 50K project. (For a 50K project, we’ll fund up to 25K. For a 16K  project, we fund up to 8K, etc.) We consider projects over 50K to be appropriate for well-established organizations and thus are not eligible for this program. We still strive to provide all nonprofits with the best results for every dollar they spend.

Why do we need other funding for the first half of our project?

We understand that nonprofits are under-resourced. We include a stipulation about additional funding to support an organization's commitment to finishing a project, which we have found to work best when additional parties are invested. If you feel the project minimums are unachievable for your organization but you can provide empirical data showing strong community support, please include that information in your application.

What is the timeframe for projects? 

The minimum timeframe for projects is 4 months, though most projects take 5 to 6 months to complete. Projects that take longer than 6 months due to delays from the client incur an extraordinary fee.

What is the time commitment required from our staff? 

On average, website clients can expect their staff to dedicate 10 labor hours each week in order to make adequate progress. The amount of time required from your staff members depends on how much they split up the work and how much support your organization has for creating content, writing copy, and accessing hosting and integration information from the other technologies you use. Significant, actionable progress on a project must be made within two weeks of a request from the Project Manager, or your project will be placed on hold.

NOTE: Our Environment Program is not accepting unsolicited letters of inquiry at this time. Climate change is the defining issue of our day. It is an urgent global crisis that affects every problem philanthropy seeks to solve, whether it’s improving health, alleviating poverty, reducing famine, promoting peace, or advancing social justice. To safeguard human health and the environment, the Hewlett Foundation supports work to ensure that energy sources are clean and efficient, and that global average temperature rise does not exceed 2° Celsius.

The Hewlett Foundation has been investing for a number of years in various strategies to avoid the worst effects of climate change and spare human suffering by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Our grants focus on cleaning up power production, using less oil, using energy more efficiently, preserving forests, addressing non-CO2 greenhouse gases, and financing climate-friendly investments. Our grantmaking is focused in developed countries with high energy demand and developing countries with fast-growing energy demand or high deforestation rates.

Goals

The following fundamental logic guides our grantmaking:

• We should focus our charitable dollars on mitigating climate change. The window for effective mitigation is rapidly closing, and the more society can reduce future warming, the less it will need to adapt.
• The most effective way to reduce GHG emissions is to focus on supporting progress in the biggest emitting countries and regions of the world: China, the United States, Europe, and India. These areas have both the largest potential gains and opportunities for spillover effects to other countries.
• Within these countries and regions, we should focus on the highest-emitting industries and sectors, including electricity and transportation, as well as industrial processes, the built environment, and forests and land-use.
• Philanthropy can speed emissions reductions by supporting a mix of analysis, advocacy, communications, technical assistance, innovation, business sector engagement, public-private partnership, and building public support and will for policy change. This work is largely national, and includes support for international agreements.
• The dramatic emissions reductions we need will not be possible unless we shift our thinking. We must get beyond our present focus on near-term, incremental efforts that reduce emissions today, and identify the longer-term, scaled-up, step-changes needed to mitigate the climate problem. To do that, we looked farther into the future—to 2050, rather than 2025 or 2030, and asked: What will energy and economic systems need to look like in 2050 to achieve the well below 2°C goal? And how can philanthropy support this transition?

Given this logic, we have five strategic imperatives for our grantmaking:

• Support work to reduce fossil fuels:
• We must continue to support current efforts to peak global use of fossil fuels as early as possible, including defending recent successes.
• Support work on energy systems:
• We must pivot from narrowly focusing on specific sub-elements of the energy sector to looking for systemic shifts that are potentially transformational. For example, instead of resting on the field’s success at bringing renewable electricity generation to market, we must now support work to overcome the complex, persistent, and interrelated regulatory, legal, social, and political barriers to deploying it at scale.
• Support work integrating across sectors.
• The work we support needs to be more broadly integrated across different problems and solutions. For example, transforming the transportation sector will require going beyond vehicle improvement and integrating it with the electricity, information, and land-use sectors.
• Support work to store carbon in the land.
• Climate models suggest that nearly a third of global emissions reductions must come from managing our lands, our agriculture, and our forests. To date, only a very small share of government or philanthropic resources has gone to support this work. Our society must increase that amount dramatically.
• Support and promote innovation.
• Climate philanthropy needs to invest more in research, analysis, and advocacy for policies that drive innovation in advanced energy systems and technologies. This includes finding ways to unlock public funding for the early stages of innovation and encouraging private investment for the commercial deployment of viable new technologies.

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.

Het Actiefonds is an organisation that supports the struggle for a sustainable and socially just world in which people and the environment are more important than economic interests. We do so by investing in bottom-up social change. It is our mission to support social movements and activists all over the world that fight for equality, sustainability and social justice. We raise money among individual donors only and finance activists fighting for a better world.

NOTE: We welcome your ideas for funding requests. f your work is aligned with our funding priorities and geographic focus, send a short description to the relevant Program Officer and Program Associate. Please do not send a full proposal until requested.

Climate

We support innovative climate leaders around the world to design their own bold strategies to address climate change. 

Our world is changing due to climate change. And fast. Because climate change is such a multi-faceted, complex problem, there is no singular solution. Instead, tackling such a wicked problem requires a diversity of approaches and strategies. Not surprisingly, most philanthropic strategies to address climate change are designed by the foundations funding them, and most of those foundations are based in the U.S and Europe. What if instead of relying only on these strategies, outstanding climate leaders around the world were given the resources to design their own bold strategies to address the climate challenge? That could dramatically increase the diversity of strategies being pursued and that is the central approach of this Initiative.

Our goal is to support innovative climate solutions: bold, creative ideas that wouldn’t otherwise get the support they need to have a chance at making a big difference.

Key to this work is our support for Climate Breakthrough, which provides unrestricted funding to outstanding problem solvers from around the world. Climate Breakthrough awardees pursue the breakthrough strategies we need to reduce greenhouse gases well below their current unacceptable trajectory.

About Us

The JDC Europe Community Initiative Fund encourages Jewish communities and communal organizations to pilot new initiatives or advance key programmatic expansions. In certain cases, the Fund may support existing programs in their current scope.

Through this Fund, JDC also hopes to strengthen relationships with communities that have had limited connections with JDC.

JDC Europe Community Initiative Fund

The JDC Europe Community Initiative Fund is a project of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) – the world’s leading Jewish humanitarian aid organization working to alleviate poverty and strengthen Jewish life in more than 70 countries around the world.

Through partnerships with communities and organizations around the world, JDC serves as a catalyst for the development of Jewish communities, fostering self-sustainability and paving the path for future generations. The JDC Europe Community Initiative Fund is designed to stimulate Jewish community development in Europe by supporting innovation and key programmatic efforts through the provision of grants.

Grants will focus on the following program areas:

• Volunteerism and engagement
• Providing Jewish content to community members
• Leadership development
• Community outreach
• Resilience
• Community planning

NOTE: Not-for-profit organisations who have not been invited to apply by a programme officer can submit unsolicited requests for funding through our letter of enquiry process. If an organisation believes that strong alignment exists with Oak Foundation’s funding priorities, we encourage it to submit an unsolicited letter of enquiry. We will then invite applications for a grant only if we also find alignment with our funding priorities and if there is available budget.

Oak Foundation Grant

Overview

We have a responsibility to take care of our planet for future generations. We have a lot of work to do: we face a climate emergency, our natural life support systems are collapsing, and inequality is tearing at our social fabric. We have just ten years to reduce climate pollution by half and arrest the damage caused by using fossil fuels indiscriminately, bulldozing our forests, pouring plastics into our oceans, and trading endangered species into extinction.

There is still time to act. The actions we take today can revive the planet’s health for the future. Philanthropy, civil society, business, and political leaders are starting to come together to define a shared vision to repair the damage we have done to our home. We can build from the bottom up to ensure that our solutions are inclusive, fair, and lasting. And, we can ignite hope and catalyse change that restores our connection to nature and heals our planet’s health.­­

In response to the lessons learned from the recent evaluations of our successes and failures, from the wisdom of our partners, and from the teachings of the Covid-19 pandemic, our five-year strategy (2021-2026) focuses on safeguarding our future by restoring our connection to nature, and changing the ways we feed and fuel our world.

Our three systems

The new strategy has evolved from a sectoral approach, which focused on climate, marine, and wildlife trade and conservation, to a global systems transformation approach. We have chosen to focus on three systems that present the greatest transformative opportunities: Energy, Food, and Natural Security. Each of these systems is vital to our future as a human species and the global commons upon which we all depend. You can find out more about each system below.

• Energy: Changing how we fuel our world

Our pace in reducing dependence on fossil fuels has been unacceptably slow but the trend toward clean power is accelerating in exciting ways.

Recognising the need to cut fossil fuel use in half by 2030 and to zero by 2050, we will support organisations and diverse movements working to accelerate this transition. In doing so, we will engage at the intersection of race, equity, gender rights, and climate justice. We will also support widespread efforts to change the cultural narrative about the acceptability of fossil fuels.

In the energy system, our work will focus on six areas: oil, gas, plastics and petrochemicals, clean power, transport, and sustainable cities. We will fund efforts to catalyse the deployment of clean energy technologies, supporting the transition away from coal, oil, and gas. We will continue to support our partners’ work in Europe, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Brazil. We will complement our funding efforts with dedicated campaigns to end offshore oil and gas exploration and rapidly reduce pollution from aviation to systematically reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. And, we will enable efforts to eliminate the mountains of unnecessary single-use plastic products and reduce demand for, and oversupply of, virgin plastic.

• Food: Changing how we feed our world

Under our new strategy we will support efforts to ensure that food is harvested, processed, distributed, eaten, and disposed of in a way that promotes health, biodiversity, human rights, and animal welfare, all while staying within the boundaries of our planet’s life support systems.

Our strategy involves engaging in four areas to bring about a just, equitable, and sustainable food system: we must rebalance meat consumption, transform the wild food supply chain, and promote a real blue economy in which seafood is allowed to recover and be harvested sustainably, ensuring the food security of coastal and Indigenous communities. We will work toward increasing fisheries transparency and reducing labour rights abuses, particularly in the nations with the biggest fishing fleets and the murkiest practices.

• Natural Security: Changing how we live with nature

Wild places, such as savannas and forests, are a form of natural security for both the wildlife and human beings that call them home. Wild places drive the Earth’s systems of regeneration. They keep life safer from pandemics and allow for the process of adaptation and evolution of life on Earth to continue. Our work and grant-making will focus on the connectivity between people and their wild places.

We will support the rich biodiversity of “living landscapes” in Southern Africa and Southeast Asia. Living landscapes is the term we use to describe a conservation approach that supports productive, resilient rural networks of people who are able to deter over-exploitation, while safeguarding wildlife and wild places. Our work in living landscapes also considers nature’s borders, such as river basins, and supports symbiotic relationships whereby community development, employment, and livelihoods can be provided while biodiversity can also thrive.

Our funding principles

In all of our work, we are committed to social justice. To this end, we pursue rights-based approaches, gender equality, and partnership with the organisations we fund. We seek to support innovation, visionary leaders and organisations. We seek to be inclusive, flexible, and to learn from different points of view. We believe that the best grant-making reflects both careful due diligence and the willingness to take risks.

We encourage our partners to work together – we believe that together we are stronger. We fund initiatives that:

• target the root causes of problems;
• are replicable either within a sector or across geographical locations;
• include plans for long-term sustainability, such as co-funding;
• strive to collaborate with like-minded organisations;
• demonstrate good financial and organisational management; and
• value the participation of people (including children) and communities.

Funding

The average award: they range between USD 25,000 to USD 10 million.

We believe in providing long-term support to our partners to help create long-lasting change. We also believe that our partners benefit from having diverse funding sources to promote resiliency and to achieve the impact they desire. Therefore, we generally fund no more than 50 per cent of any project budget or 20 per cent of organisational budgets. Requests to fund higher levels should be discussed with the programme officer.

Community Investments

While charitable investments are tailored to local needs, Applied Materials and the Foundation provide funding focused on Girls Empowerment, Education, Civic Engagement, Arts and Culture and the Environment. We also contribute to relief and recovery efforts when natural disasters affect our communities around the world.

Focus Areas

We provide funding to organizations providing programs and services in the following focus areas:

Education, Arts & Culture, Civic Engagement, Environment and Girls Empowerment.

We prioritize projects that address community needs in sites where Applied Materials does business and welcome opportunities to engage employees with local grant recipients.

Education 

Education inspires young minds, opens new doors and paves the way to more promising futures. We recognize that many communities and schools lack the resources and programs required to prepare their students for meaningful careers. For this reason, the majority of our education grants are directed to neighborhoods with the greatest need.

We have a special interest in funding Education grant proposals that:

• Benefit students in grades K-12
• Focus on traditional skills such as reading, writing, math, science and technology, and other subjects that prepare young people for college and career
• Address critical education needs through innovative approaches to learning
• Expand existing efforts in order to reach more students or a wider geographic area
• Actively partner with other nonprofit groups to create, implement or evaluate shared programs

Arts and Culture

Creativity sparks the imagination and drives the development of new ideas that can transform the way we live. We support efforts that bring the full spectrum of artistic expression to the greater community, from visual and performing arts to community events and workshops.

We have a special interest in funding Arts and Culture grant proposals that:

• Have broad community appeal
• Take arts and culture outside traditional settings to reach young people of diverse backgrounds, particularly in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods
• Support nonprofit organizations in bringing the arts to educational programs and organizations

Civic Engagement

When people are actively involved in improving the quality of life in their neighborhoods, they help to create more vibrant, livable communities. With our civic engagement grants, we support organizations that help people find stability in difficult times and develop strength of NGO/nonprofit sector to address community challenges.

We have a special interest in funding Civic Engagement grant proposals that:

• Meet basic needs such as access to nutritional food, clean water and affordable housing
• Support systemic, collaborative approaches to eliminating homelessness
• Stimulate innovations that improve efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery
• Support the infrastructure of the nonprofit sector and its leadership 

Environment

To engage employees and community members in working toward a more sustainable future, we invest in environmental education and community-based projects that demonstrate the importance and value of protecting the environment.

We have a special interest in funding Environment grant proposals that:

• Focus on environmental education for young people, especially in underserved communities
• Encourage hands on opportunities for employee volunteers and their families

Girls Empowerment

See separate grant page here