William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States. In its global development giving, Hewlett prioritizes women’s empowerment, greater government transparency and accountability, and more effective policymaking processes. Its environmental program supports climate change initiatives, clean energy and land conservation. It supports K-12 teaching and learning and open educational resources initiatives and funds organizations that conduct quantitative research, advocate, and inform policy in its specific areas of interest. It also funds arts and community development efforts in the Bay Area.
IP TAKE: Hewlett, a GUTC signatory, values grassroots groups in global development, but its biggest funding dollars tend to support larger NGOs with which it often has longstanding commitments. Those commitments can make it difficult for newcomers to secure funding.
Overall, Hewlett tends to fund well-established organizations rather than invest in grassroots efforts. Grantseekers should note that this is a foundation that deeply values better data, so it funds a lot of research, assessment, and data collection projects.
It likes to work closely with grantees though it is bureaucratic in it’s approach; however, patience can pay off here. It invests in back-and-forth communication, which intends to better support grantees. According to Grantadvisor, there is a 7-8 year turn over at Hewlett, so make sure to acquaint yourself with program officers that retain institutional memory even if they’ve moved on to another organization.
PROFILE: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation was established in 1966 by Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, with a “loose charter mandating perpetual existence...as a charitable, religious, scientific, literary, or educational foundation for the purpose of promoting the well-being of mankind.” A signatory of the GUTC Pledge, this foundation is a nonpartisan organization that prioritizes the advancement of education for all, the environment, developing countries, the health and economic well-being of women, performing arts, strengthening Bay Area communities, and making the philanthropy sector more effective. The foundation’s current grantmaking programs are Cyber, Economy and Society, Education, Effective Philanthropy, Environment, Gender Equity and Governance, Performing Arts, Racial Justice, San Francisco Bay Area and U.S. Democracy. It also maintains a Special Projects grantmaking area.
Grants for Global Development
Hewlett's grantmaking for global development stems from its Cyber and Economy and Society programs. The Cyber program “makes grants to proactively define, research, and manage the burgeoning intersections between people and digital technologies.” Grantmaking goals include building and strengthening organizations with the appropriate expertise to tackle effective policy development, developing talent in the area and spreading information about policy related to cyber challenges and the rights of people in the online world. Grantees include the Cyber Law and Policy Program at Turtle Mountain Community College, the Cyber AI Program at Georgetown University and the CyberPeace Institute.
The Economy and Society grantmaking program aims to promote research and scholarship that challenges neoliberalism as a dominant economic paradigm. Grants stemming from this program support “grantees across the ideological spectrum” that explore and express new and more effective ideas in the areas of “economy, government and society.” Grantees include the Opportunity After Neoliberalism Project at the Brookings Institute and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which used funding for the Can Democracy and Capitalism Be Reconciled? Project.
Grants for Racial Justice and Indigenous Rights
Racial Justice is one of Hewlett’s newer grantmaking programs. Rather than articulate specific goals and priorities, the foundation’s grantmaking for racial equity works across grantmaking areas to confront and dismantle “entrenched systems of racial injustice.” Early grantmaking from this program has gone to Race Forward, the Asian American Journalists Association, the New Venture Fund’s Fair Representation in Redistricting Initiative and the Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice Initiative at City College, New York.
Grants for Women and Girls
Hewlett Makes grants for women’s and girls’ causes via its Gender Equity and Governance initiative. This program’s purpose is to “to foster inclusive societies so that all people, and especially women and girls, are able to fulfill their life aspirations.” The foundation’s current geographic priorities for this funding area are Sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico and the U.S., and its specific goals include reproductive health and justice, economic opportunity, government responsiveness and accountability and the development of policy towards these ends. Recent grantees include the African Population and Health Research Center, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
Grants for Climate Change and Environmental Conservation
The Hewlett Foundation’s Environment program works to “protect people and places threatened by a warming planet by addressing climate change globally, expanding clean energy, and conserving the North American West.” Its Climate and Energy strategy focuses on reducing fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emission, lobbying for policy and regulation changes in countries and industries that produce the most pollution, funding research into cleaner energy alternatives, and encouraging further philanthropy in the field. In 2008, Hewlett launched a $1 billion, joint climate-funding initiative, the ClimateWorks Foundation. Its Western Conservation strategy works to “protect the extraordinary natural resources of the Western United States and Canada, and back efforts to build broad public support and empower citizens who care about the conservation of land, water and air in the West.” Its goal is to conserve at least 320 million acres of land by 2035. Past grantees include $1.5 million to Water Foundation, $200,000 to Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, and $300,000 to Yurok Tribe for The Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program.
Additionally, Hewlett, along with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, David and Lucile Packard, and Rockefeller foundations, and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, heads a fund called Invest in Our Future that works to ensure that local groups and organizations benefit from the opportunities created by three recent federal bills: the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Grants for Education
Education funding at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation aims to “help educators, schools and communities turn schools into places that empower and equip every student for a lifetime of learning, and to expand access to open educational resources.” It is organized around two strategies: K-12 teaching and learning and open educational resources.
Grants for K-12 Education
Hewlett’s K-12 teaching and learning program supports “states, districts, schools, teachers and students” as they “prepare every student to set and achieve their own, authentic goals.” Sub-initiatives in this program include innovation in teacher practice, education systems, and advocacy. The open educational resources initiative invests in the development of high quality open resources in the U.S. and promotes these resources “as a way to increase educational access and equity in the developing world.” Past grantees include OCAD University, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and iCivics.
Grants for Higher Education
Hewlett supports higher education through its education, the environment, performing arts, U.S. democracy and San Francisco Bay Area programs. Its education program prioritizes K-12 teaching and learning and open educational resources, supporting both teacher education and the development of free, high-quality educational materials that are available online to educators around the world. Education grantees include teacher preparation programs at Stanford and Michigan State University and the OER Graduate Network of the Open University.
Hewlett’s environmental program aims “to protect people and places threatened by a warming planet by addressing climate change globally, expanding clean energy and conserving the North American West.” One past higher education grantee in this area is Stanford University, which used funding to study carbon dioxide removal in the state of California.
Grants for Arts and Culture
The Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts program prioritizes the San Francisco Bay area, supporting “meaningful artistic experiences for communities.” Grants for Communities support “a broad range of performing arts forms and practices that are relevant to and reflective of people living throughout the region,” especially those that reflect demographic and economic diversity. Grants for Artists directly support individual artists and collectives seeking to “evolve business models,” “seize opportunities presented by the changing ways art is created, distributed, and financed,” and “embrace collaboration across artistic boundaries and sectors.” Grants for Youth supports arts education for Bay Area youth by directly funding school arts programs and advocating for public policy that increases investment in the arts. Grants for Sector-Wide Capacity provide capacity building grants for Bay Area groups working in arts advocacy and infrastructure.
Grants for Housing and Community Development
The Hewlett Foundation’s Bay Area Communities program prioritizes disadvantaged communities and supports nonprofits working to solve the area's “most pressing problems.” These include leadership development, neighborhood revitalization, teen pregnancy, student achievement and teacher retention. Past grants have gone to the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California and the Urban Habitat Program, an Oakland-based organization that works “to advance equitable transportation, land use and housing policies” throughout the Bay Area.
In education, Hewlett has joined forces with five other Bay Area funders to form PropelNext, a collaborative effort to “enhance the ability of organizations to collect, use and apply data for ongoing improvement and learning.” PropelNext has provided general operating support for Enterprise for Youth, Generation Citizen and the Oakland Leaf Foundation, which aims to “cultivate community transformation through creative education for youth and families.”
Grants for Civic and Democracy
The Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. Democracy grantmaking program aims “to strengthen America’s electoral and governing institutions and, in doing so, build public trust in our democracy.” The program’s current subinitiatives are Trustworthy Elections, which makes grants to improve the accessibility and security of elections nationwide, and National Governing Institutions, which funds initiatives to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of the legislative and executive branches of U.S. government in light of increasing polarization. Grantees of the democracy program include the Center for Responsive Politics, the Truman Center for National Policy and the New Venture Fund’s Voting Rights Lab.
Important Grant Details:
Hewlett Foundation grants are often substantial and typically range from $100,000 to $2 million. While a significant portion of its grantmaking centers around the San Francisco Bay Area, it also funds organizations across the United States and internationally. To get a broader sense of the types of organizations Hewlett supports and at what level, explore its grants database.
The foundation regularly posts calls for proposals, but it is also proactive in its grantmaking, and reaches out to potential grantees that are doing good work in sync with its goals. While Hewlett accepts unsolicited letters of inquiry, it rarely funds projects in response to them; however, it looks at inquiries and its staff often engages with grantseekers who are referred by existing grantees.
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