OVERVIEW: The Musk Foundation is the personal philanthropic organization of Elon Musk. It makes grants to support renewable energy research and advocacy, human space exploration research and advocacy, pediatric research, science and engineering education, and development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.
IP TAKE: It is difficult to take this foundation’s website seriously as anything other than a way for its founder to troll grantseekers. It doesn’t provide much information or provide a method of contact. As a result, it’s not transparent or approachable. However, a mailing address and phone number for the foundation are provided below.
Grantseekers may have more success getting Musk’s attention by tweeting at him, which has worked in the past. Additionally, teenagers in their school’s computer club successfully reached Musk after finding his contact information in public records. They convinced him to give a Q&A to Hack Club members and secured a donation for the organization. Perhaps creative methods of reaching out will work again.
PROFILE: Established in 2002, the Musk Foundation was created by Elon Musk, CEO of the electric vehicle automotive company Tesla Motors and the space rocket maker SpaceX. Musk grew up in South Africa but moved to Canada at the age of 17 after obtaining citizenship through his mother. He attended the Queen's School of Business before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where he received his bachelor's. He also pursued a Ph.D. in applied physics at Stanford, but left to pursue entrepreneurial interests, becoming a known quantity for Paypal, Space X, and Tesla Motors. He is the richest man in the world. The Musk Foundation does not have a mission statement or offer much in the way of a guiding principles. In fact, the foundation’s website consists of only 38 words, listing its funding interests. These are: “Renewable energy research and advocacy; Human space exploration research and advocacy; Pediatric research; Science and engineering education; Development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.”
While the Musk Foundation website lists five distinct priority funding areas, realistically all of those areas boil down to the same thing: support for science research. Looking at tax records, it is easy to see this represented in grants the foundation has made.
Grants for Science Research and Environment
In 2015, the foundation donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute, which “works on reducing global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies.” On January 21, 2021, Musk announced, via a tweet, that he is “donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology.” According to XPRIZE Foundation, which is running the competition, the Innovation Prize will run for four years, from April 22, 2021 (Earth Day) through Earth Day 2025.
Grants for Public Health and Diseases
Despite Musk’s early skepticism about the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, the foundation donated $5 million to two Boston-area researchers to further their work on the coronavirus, including for vaccines and diagnostic tools. Musk also donated $50 million to the children’s charity St Jude in honor of the successful SpaceX flight in September 2021.
Grants for Education
The foundation has given to the Mercatus Center, a libertarian think tank at George Mason and the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia. In early 2021, Musk pledged $20 million to local schools in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley as part of a total $30 million commitment to the area. The foundation has also gifted $5 million to the online Khan Academy. It has consistently given to the Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences, Ad Astra School, and The Windward School, all in California. It also donated to the UNICEF Giga Connect initiative to help bring the internet to schools in low-income and developing countries, and to Hack Club, a nonprofit that supports student-led coding clubs.
Grants for Texas
Since relocating to the Lonestar State, Musk has committed $10 million to support revitalization efforts for Brownsville’s downtown district and $1 million to Feeding Texas, a foodbank focused on the state.
Important Grant Details:
Grants through the Musk Foundation range from $1,000 to $100 million; however, the most common amount is a modest $10,000.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals or requests for funding. Its website is minimal and does not provide a clear way to contact either Elon Musk or Jared Birchall, treasurer of the foundation and the only other known staff member other than Musk himself. However, a mailing address and telephone number, both culled from tax records, are provided below.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
CONTACT:
2110 Ranch Rd., 620 S.
P.O. Box 341886
Austin, TX United States 78734
(650) 210-5300