Ballmer Group
/OVERVIEW: Ballmer Group broadly funds programs designed to increase economic development and mobility in select cities in the United States.
IP TAKE: The Ballmer Groups tends to support large, well-established organizations working in its thematic or geographical areas of interest with grants of $1 million or more. Support often extends over a period of several years. While Ballmer does not accept applications per se, it appears to be an approachable funder, with its website offering information about its team members and the various projects they work on. For organization’s based in Los Angeles County, Southeast Michigan or Washington State, it would likely be worthwhile to reach out via LinkedIn with a brief introduction
PROFILE: The Ballmer Group was established by Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, after his retirement. The foundation broadly supports “efforts to improve economic mobility for children and families in the United States who are disproportionately likely to remain in poverty.” Its grantmaking generally centers around “community-led initiatives,” “partnerships with all levels of government,” “stronger nonprofits,” and “the use of data to track progress and measure improvement.”
It pursues these goals through seven focus areas: Early Childhood and Family, Child Welfare, K-12 Education, Housing and Homelessness, College and Career, Criminal Justice Reform, Climate, Behavioral Health and Public Safety. Grantmaking is national in scope, but Ballmer names Los Angeles County, Southeast Michigan and Washington State as additional, regional areas of interest.
Grants for Early Childhood and K-12 Education
The Ballmer Group makes grants for early child and K-12 populations via its Early Childhood and Family, Child Welfare and K-12 Education focus areas. Grants for early childhood focus on providing support to children “engaged with the child welfare system” and helping families gain access to “high quality childcare and early education.” Ballmer recently gave $3 million to the BUILD initiative, a national organization that helps states develop high quality and widely accessible early childhood education and care systems. Other early childhood grantees include Brilliant Detroit, California’s Cherished Futures for Black Moms & Babies and Child Care Aware of Washington.
Ballmer’s K-12 giving focuses on in-school and after-school programs that “eliminate inequities” and teacher education and training programs that help to develop a “representative, racially diverse workforce of teachers and school leaders.” Through this focus area, the Ballmer Group has supported charter schools and networks including Alliance College Ready Public Schools, Aspire Public Schools and Los Angeles’s Camino Nuevo Charter Academy. Other K-13 grantees include the Alliance for Education’s Seattle Teacher’s Residency, California’s Alder Graduate School of Education, Code.org and BellXcel, which provides “evidence based afterschool and summer programs that have been proven to reduce the opportunity gap for underserved students.” Ballmer has also pledged $165 million to Communities in Schools to support low-income students.
Grants for Higher Education, Work and Opportunity
The Ballmer Group’s College and Career focus area supports higher education and other post-secondary opportunities that “expand pathways to good jobs and careers.” Grantmaking prioritizes programs “with a direct pipeline to local employers.” In the area of higher education, only a few grants go directly to colleges and universities; instead, Ballmer tends to give to organizations that help students gain acceptance to, stay enrolled in and complete college degrees. Recent grantees include the Aerospace Machinists Joint Training Committee, Career Connect Washington, Detroit Employment Solutions Corporation and the Diploma Equity Project.
Grants for Housing, Homelessness and Community Development
Ballmer’s Housing and Homelessness grants aim “to undo systemic racism in housing, increase housing supply, and reduce homelessness through long-term partnerships with nonprofits and government.” Grants support both direct services for homeless and vulnerable people and the policy development toward housing equity. Grantees that provide services and assistance to the homeless include Washington’s Building Changes and California’s First Place for Youth, which supports foster youth as they transition to adulthood. Other grantees include the Housing Authority of the City of Tacoma, the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles and Los Angeles’s Enterprise Community Partners.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
Ballmer’s grantmaking focus area for Criminal Justice Reform centers on improving the fairness and effectiveness of justice systems in the U.S. through interventions incuding “community-led approaches to violence intervention, automatically expunging old and outdated criminal recrods, and ensuring that affected individuals and families have acccess to career opportnities.” This focus area has seen an uptick in grantmaking in recent years. Grantees include the Center for Policing Equity, Chicago CRED, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Los Angeles’s A New Way of Life Reentry Project, among others.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
Ballmer’s Climate funding has mainly focused on limiting and preventing deforrestation and “lessening global dependence on fossil fuels.” Unlike Ballmer’s other funding areas, which mainly work in the U.S., climate funding has gone to U.S.-based organizations that operate in other parts of the world, as well as U.S.-focused initiatives. Grantees include the Wilife Conservation Society, the Climate and Land Use Alliance and the Tenure Facility, which used funding to help Indigenous people secure land rights and preserve forests. It also gave $118 million to the Climate and Land Use Alliance, which supports groups working to sustainably manage forests and land to counteract the effects of climate change.
Grants for Mental Health
The Ballmer Group recently named Behavioral Health as a new area of grantmaking interest. This initiative is two-pronged, supporting training and education programs to “build the worforce necessary to meet increasing need” and initiatives that integrate behavioral health into schools “so that more children, families and communities can access high-quality mental health care.” Recent grants have gone to the Detroit metro area’s Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, Washington's Behavioral Health Institute at Harborview Medical Center and Los Angeles County’s Koreatown Youth and Community Center.
Important Grant Details:
The Ballmer Group made over $420 million in grants in a recent year. Grants range from $100,000 to about $5 million, in most cases. THe foundation’s average grant size is about $1.5 million. Grants tendto go to large, well-established organizations, with more than half of all grants supporting organization’s in Ballmer’s target geogrpahic areas of Los Angeles County, Southeast Michigan and Washington State. For additional information about past grants, see the Ballmer Groups grants database page.
The Ballmer Group does not run an open application program or offer a direct avenue for getting in touch. Grantseekers may wish to network with specific team members working in a specific region or area of interest via social media.
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