The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
/OVERVIEW: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative makes grants within three focus areas: Education, Science, and Justice and Opportunity. Grants within the education field primarily focus on K-12 education and support the “whole child” theory of learning, although they do support early childhood and STEM education to a lesser extent. Science grants focus on “transformative technology,” open source and biomedical research. Community grantmaking has recently focused on housing, homelessness and economic inclusion. CZI names additional grantmaking areas including climate change, criminal justice reform, immigration reform and racial equity.
IP TAKE: While CZI has only been around for less than a decade, it has proven itself to be a consequential funder with the potential to become one of the largest in the country. It’s been scaling quickly and expanding staff. After speaking with Chan, David Challehen notes,” CZI is not a foundation. It’s hard to know how to classify this outfit, in fact. What we do know is that CZI’s hires and recent moves have underscored that it intends to pursue change in three ways: traditional grantmaking, investments in for-profit social enterprises, and advocacy that includes 501(c)(4) giving and political donations. That’s a powerful trifecta, and with each passing month, it’s becoming clearer that Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg are intent on rapidly bringing to scale an organization that can work across a range of issues and sectors.” As Chan and Zuckerberg invest more windfall from Facebook stock, it’s also clear that CZI won’t face any near-term financial limits on its ability to keep ramping up. Grants have the potential to be big; however, they also tend to fund larger organizations. That said, CZI funds at the local, national and global levels with a mix of organizations receiving grants. As Priscilla Chan oversees the day-to-day details of CZI, follow her work closely to learn more about how funding may evolve.
Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get its attention and secure funding. CZI is not accessible, preferring a proactive approach; however, it occasionally issues calls for proposals, particularly for programs within its Science initiative. Other than that, networking may be grantseekers’ best bet. It’s important to note that CZI has made several significant grants that fall outside the confines of the foundation’s initiatives.
Mark Zuckerberg’s position as head of both CZI and Facebook has been a source of tension for the grantmaking organization in recent years. In mid-2020, 143 scientists currently or previously funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative issued an open letter calling on Zuckerberg to curb misinformation on the social media platform. Additionally, more than 70 CZI employees called for Zuckerberg and Chan to make a series of internal changes to combat systemic racism. Color of Change, a racial justice group that has also called on Facebook to curb misinformation, turned down a $2 million CZI grant over concerns it was “dirty money.” Others, including some school leaders, have told CZI officials that they have concerns about Summit, the funder’s personalized learning platform, citing Facebook’s previous handling of user data. While the two organizations are legally separate and distinct, both CZI grantees and the general public may continue to link them for as long as Zuckerberg remains at the helm.
PROFILE: Established in 2015, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an LLC created by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, a former teacher and pediatrician. It seeks to "build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone." In addition to the LLC, Chan and Zuckerberg operate three other funding entities under the CZI banner: the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Foundation (a 501(c)(3) private foundation); the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation; and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Advocacy, (a 501(c)(4) organization). However, the couple’s primary funding vehicle centers on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, through which it conducts most grants. CZI’s grantmaking primarily centers on three expansive areas of interest: Education, Science and Community, which focuses mainly on the Bay Area. CZI also names “additional giving” areas including climate, criminal justice reform, immigration reform, movement and capacity building and racial equity. The foundation does not outline specific grantmaking goals in these additional areas of giving.
Grants for Education
CZI’s Education initiative prioritizes personalized learning in K-12 and early childhood education. As with other areas of its philanthropy, CZI’s education grantmaking is not without controversy. Zuckerberg's first major philanthropic venture was in 2010, when he made a $100 million donation to improve the Newark, New Jersey, school system—backing a reform effort that generated plenty of political conflict and left community groups and leaders with deep knowledge of Newark and its schools disillusioned. Zuckerberg and Chan subsequently made an even larger education grant to improve schools in Silicon Valley, but took a more hands-on approach after learning important lessons from the Newark experience.
Grants for K-12 Education
The program is divided into two focus areas and seeks to “partner with students, educators, and families to build and support tools and programs that make it easier to apply the science of learning and human development.” The Whole Child Approach to Education program adopts an expansive holistic approach to education and works to support teachers and students as “whole people.” It focuses on the entire ecosystem of learning, including physical conditions like hydration, sleep, and vision and dental health, in addition to academic achievement and a child’s social, emotional, and identity development. Learning Science researches how people learn to implement practices that enable teachers to support students according to their individual needs.
CZI also works to develop and accelerate the adoption of innovative Education Technology through partnerships “with leading researchers and educators to build tools that help teachers differentiate learning experiences for every student.” It primarily supports Gradient Learning, a nonprofit organization that administers the Along and Summit Learning systems, both developed by CZI.
In late 2020, CZI gave $6.3 million to organizations working to promote equity in K-12 classrooms. Additionally, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, CZI granted over $9 million to support educators and students through remote learning, including committing $5 million in coronavirus response grants to address the social-emotional and mental health of students and families. Other past grantees include $3.2 million to the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment program at the Center for Collaborative Education and $20 million to NewSchools Venture Fund. In 2023, the initiative made a $1.1 million grant to the University of California at Irvine for research evaluating the effectiveness of holistic learning programs at the Anaheim schol district. Grantseekers can browse CZI’s searchable database of past grants or visit the CZI Newsroom to learn more about previous grantees and the types of organizations CZI supports.
Grants for Early Childhood Education
While early childhood education is not a primary focus of the education initiative, it is an area that receives funding. Most notably through its continued support of Chan’s Primary School, a nonprofit that works to combine the education and healthcare systems to help underserved children thrive. CZI has also supported the Sesame Workshop, and, in 2018, made a $30 million donation to Reach Every Reader, a partnership between the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Florida State University. Grantseekers can browse CZI’s searchable database of past grants or visit the CZI Newsroom to learn more about previous grantees and the types of organizations CZI supports.
Grants for STEM Education
CZI has done some work to support STEM education. In 2019, it partnered with the University of California system to replicate the successful Meyerhoff Scholar Program, a program that encourages underrepresented students to complete undergraduate and graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math. In 2018, CZI gave two gifts to support curriculum in math and sciences. That included a $1 million gift to Illustrative Mathematics to build out a free, open-source math curriculum for pre-K and an $800,000 grant to Unbound Ed to create middle school science and language arts curricula. The funder also put up $460,000 to support 100Kin10. Grantseekers can browse CZI’s searchable database of past grants or visit the CZI Newsroom to learn more about previous grantees and the types of organizations CZI supports.
Grants for Science Research
CZI’s Science Initiative works “to accelerate progress by awarding grants for scientific research that can advance entire fields, building and funding transformative technologies in partnership with the scientific community, and fostering interdisciplinary collaborations in science.” Grants focus on several different program areas. The Imaging program works to improve and develop imaging hardware and software tools. The CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network seeks to research and develop new methods for treating and preventing neurodegenerative diseases. The Open Science program focuses on facilitating the open sharing of scientific knowledge to “empower more people to engage in research practices that accelerate the pace, robustness, and reproducibility of science through partnerships, policies, and grants.” The Science in Society program works to shrink the distance between scientific research and the communities it seeks to benefit. Finally, the Single-Cell Biology program focuses on developing technology to better understand the ways in which “disease manifests in the body’s cells and tissues.”
CZI also has a separate Science Technology program that supports “transformative technologies” in biomedical science. Its teams work to create “tools for the scientific community in order to analyze, visualize, and share data.” While this is not a funding program outright, it takes “a collaborative approach” that seeks to complement CZI’s “grant programs and [support] scientific communities.”
While not a CZI initiative, Zuckerberg and Chan are among the tech luminaries who have backed the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, which rewards researchers with $3 million grants and “honors transformative advances toward understanding living systems and extending human life.” Zuckerberg sits on the board.
Previous grantees here include Massachusetts General Hospital to “analyze single cells and develop computational tools to build a single cell map of the human liver,” and to support the work of Caroline Magnain, an imaging scientist. CZI has also made grants to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard for a number of single cell biology research programs. CZI also partners with University of California, Santa Cruz to increase diversity and inclusivity in Science Journalism. New Grantseekers can look over funding opportunities and open calls for proposals here.
Grants for Brain and Cell Research
CZI’s funding for brain and cell research centers on two programs: the CZI Neurodegeneration Challenge Network, which seeks to research and develop new methods for treating and preventing neurodegenerative diseases, and the Science in Society program, which works to shrink the distance between scientific research and the communities it seeks to benefit. CZI has made grants to the Salk Institute For Biological Studies to support “the investigation of how astrocytes regulate neuronal synapse formation and function from development to aging.” It has also supported Regents University of California Los Angeles to support “the mapping of the integrated microbial, enteric, metabolic, immune and neuronal signaling networks that underlie microbiota-gut-brain contributions to neuropathological and neurobehavioral features common across neurodegenerative disease.” New Grantseekers can look over funding opportunities and open calls for proposals here.
Grants for Public and Global Health
Priscilla Chan is a pediatrician and consequently CZI prioritizes health grantmaking, primarily through its Science initiative. The Science in Society program seeks to use science to better understand health and disease and “bring biomedical research closer to the communities it aims to serve.” The Movement for Science program focuses on promoting a broad belief in science among the general public and delivering “clear communication to the public about the value of scientific endeavors,” particularly as related to biomedical science. Another element of this work is the Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, an independent research center “conducting research that helps solve big health problems.”
CZI committed $60 million to Gates Philanthropy Partners’ Cardiovascular Health Initiative portfolio, which works to prevent heart disease and stroke in low- and middle-income countries. It has also previously supported Mount Sinai Medical Center Inc, Stony Brook Foundation (Stony Brook University), and The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.
Finally, CZI has also made grants toward addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. The CZI COVID-19 Response program collaborates with partners and grantees to help increase “access to testing, genomic sequencing, research, community support, and more.” Financial support includes $25 million to the Covid-19 Therapeutics Accelerator, and $5 million to support relief efforts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, CZI pledged over $22 million to support students and teachers, primarily in California school districts, during the pandemic.
Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy
CZI includes climate change as an area of focus in its additional giving areas, but does not expolicitly name strategies for its giving for climate or clean energy. A large portion of this funding has, however, supported development and implementation of carbon removal technologies. The Breakthrough Energy Foundation, for instance, received $10 million for its work on “technologies that have the potential to reduce carbon emissions by at least 500 million tons per year by 2050.” Another grantee, Carbon 180, has received multiple rounds of funding for its work, which involves research and analysis for a “procurement fund to equitably remove legacy emissions from past industrial activity.” Other carbon reduction grantees include Activate, CarbonPlan and UCLA, which recieved $21 million for its Institute for Carbon Management for SeaChange. Other recent areas of interest concerning climate change include sustainable agriculture and Indigenous land management and conservation. Support has recently gone to Sound Agriculture, a for-profit venture focused on sutsainable food production and reduced dependence on synthetic fertilizers, as well as Global Ocean Health’s Intertribal Workign Group for Carbon Removal, which engages multiple North American tribal nations in “just and scalable solutions” to the climate crisis.
Grants for Racial Justice and Indigenous Rights
While the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative does not have a focus area dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion, it names racial equity as one of its additional giving areas and has made several recent grants in this space. Specifically, in 2020, CZI pledged to invest $500 million over five years to support organizations and leaders working toward racial equity, and, by all accounts, these promise to be the first grants toward a major push in this field for the funder. Past grant recipients include First Nations Development Institute, Forward Promise, Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the University of Texas at Austin, The Center at Sierra Health Foundation, and The Skillman Foundation. To learn more about CZI’s support for grantees that focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, review recent press releases in the CZI Newsroom.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
Criminal justice reform is one of CZI’s additional giving areas, and while the foundation does not outline specific goals and priorities for this giving area, it has given significant sums to organizations working in the area of justice reform and anti-recidivism. A recent grant of $3.5 million went to the Alliance for Safety and Justice, which works in policy development and group organizing for safe communities and an equitable justice system. Other recent criminal justice grantees include the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and A New Way of Life, which supports services, counseling and housing to “people rebuilidng their lives after incarceration.” Grantmaking for criminal justice has tapered off somewhat in recent years.
Grants for Immigrants and Refugees
CZI names immigration reform as one of its additional giving areas. Although it does not currently elaborate on its goals in this area, the foundation has traditionally invested heavily in immigration reform. In April 2013, Mark Zuckerberg launched FWD.us, an effort to advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, which has quickly become a leading organization in the field, due in large part to CZI's funding. In early 2021, CZI made an additional three-year $100 million investment in FWD.us to support and expand immigration reform efforts across the country. Grants have recently supported policy development toward immigration reform as well as programs that support people with temporary protected status in the U.S. One grantee, African Communities Together, received multi-years support for its work providing “capacity and skill-building training for Temporary Protected Status holders from black-majority countries.” CZI has also provided ongoing support to America’s Voice and the America’s Voice Education Fund, both of which work to build capacity and awareness of immigration issues in key states. Additional grantees include the American Immigration Council, the Cato Institute and the International Refugee Assistance Project.
Grants for Housing, Homelessness and Economic Opportunity
CZI’s Community grantmaking initiative names youth homelessness, housing affordability and economic inclusion as its three main areas of focus. Grantmaking for homelss youth supports research to better understand the problem of homelessness in the Bay Area, as well as capacity building and collaborations toward community solutions to homelessness. In housing affordability, CZI supports efforts to increase housing, eliminate housing “discrimination and unequal access” and build “political and public will” toward housing solutions. Recent work stemming from the economic inclusion subprogram has focused on “eliminating barriers and expanding access to entrepreneurs,” mainly through the foundation’s signature Inclusive Entrepreneurship, a $3 million committment to Bay Area organizations that support and develop entrepreneurs.
Grants for Democracy and Civic Engagement
Again, while this funder does not have a funding area specifically devoted to issues of democracy and civic engagement, it does have a history of making grants in this space, most significantly during the lead-up to the 2020 general election. In 2020 alone, CZI gave $300 million to promote safe and reliable voting during COVID-19 pandemic. The donation supported two organizations: $250 million for the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), and the remaining $50 million for the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR). Both nonprofits redistribute the money to state and local jurisdictions. It gave an additional $100 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life to support election officials and fund infrastructure for the U.S. election. These donations were controversial and triggered several lawsuits from conservative groups.
Beyond the 2020 presidential race, CZI has supported a number of ballot initiatives in California and Ohio and has made grants to advocate for those initiatives. Many of these advocacy grants have happened through the Chan Zuckerberg Advocacy, a 501(c)(4) organization that acts as the public policy advocacy fund for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC. Previous grantees here include Million Voter Project Action Fund and the Ohio Safe and Healthy Communities Campaign to advocate for an issue which appeared on the ballot during the November 2018 general election.
Important Grant Details:
Grant amounts vary wildly from the tens of thousands up to the hundreds of millions of dollars. Except for its periodically announced funding opportunities, CZI does not accept unsolicited proposals or requests for funding. The best way to stay up to date about CZI funding opportunities is to check the website frequently and follow the organization on social media. To learn more about previous grantees and the types of organizations CZI supports, grantseekers can browse the funder’s searchable database of past grants or visit the CZI Newsroom.
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