OVERVIEW: The Cameron Schrier Foundation is the charitable vehicle of Bay Area couple Derek Schrier and Cecily Cameron. The foundation makes grants for education, civic engagement, and freedom of speech in the United States and abroad. It’s global grantmaking particularly focuses on South Africa.
IP TAKE: The foundation maintains a website, but does not accept unsolicited proposals. It’s not an accessible or approachable foundation, making it a tough nut to crack unless you can personally network with its founders or they notice your work. The Cameron Schrier Foundation’s work in Africa may broaden to address issues in other African nations and to promote collaborations between nations.
PROFILE: Derek Schrier is a financier who founded Indaba Capital Management while his wife, Cecily Cameron, is a writer. The couple founded the Cameron Schrier Foundation (formerly the Egg Foundation), which seeks to “develop young leaders, promote education equity, encourage an active civil society, support educational institutions, and help communities and individuals in need.” The Cameron Schrier Foundation appears to take a broad approach toward its grantmaking. It does not appear to maintain specific programs, but it invests in education, community, academic and research institutions, democracy and civil society, leadership, and humanitarian aid.
Derek Schrier holds an A.B. from Princeton, as well as J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University. He worked in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs and was a partner at Farallon Capital Management before founding Indaba Capital Management in 2010. Schrier also worked extensively with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa during the 1990s and managed research for the African National Congress’s political campaign during the nation’s first democratic elections in 1994. Cecily Cameron also graduated from Princeton and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is a writer, but worked for many years in the financial services, technology, nonprofit and retail sectors.
Grants for Global Development
The Cameron Schrier Foundation invests in a variety of global development issues across both the United States and the globe. Historically, about half of the foundation’s grants support U.S. organizations, while about 30 percent have been made in Africa. Another 6 percent have been made in other regions outside of the United States. Past grantees include the University of Witwatersrand, where the couple recently gave a $1-million-gift to the Johannesburg-based school to endow a new chair in development economics; African Leadership Academy; Center for Effective Global Action, a hub for research on global development; Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance; Princeton in Africa; and Kucetekela Foundation, a “nonprofit organization which provides scholarships to Zambian boys and girls.”
Grants for Civic and Democracy
The Cameron Schrier Foundation broadly invests in organizations that promote civic engagement and defend democratic institutions in the United States. It has previously supported Impact Fund, a public interest law firm that advocates on behalf of underserved communities in the fields of civil rights, environmental justice, and poverty, and PEN America, a group of “writers and their allies” who work to defend freedom of speech and expression on college campuses and elsewhere; and Boston Review, a quarterly magazine that serves as a “platform for informed debate and conversation around ideas and culture.” It has also partnered with Boston Review, a political and literary publication that aims to provide a forum for “a range of voices and views” and to stimulate public discourse toward “a more just world.” The Cameron Schrier Foundation partners with Groundup, a news agency and social justice organization that emphasizes the needs and issues of vulnerable communities in South Africa.
Grants for Community Development
Cameron and Schrier have supported San Francisco’s Larkin Street Youth Services, which provides homeless youth with shelter, education, job training, and health services. Another San Francisco grantee, the Homeless Prenatal Program, helps poor and homeless families move toward economic stability and healthy futures.
Important Grant Details:
Grants generally range from $25,000 to $125,000. While the foundation works primarily in the United States, internationally it prioritizes South Africa, where Derek Schrier once worked for the anti-apartheid movement. The foundation does not accept unsolicited applications.
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