Ballmer Group

OVERVIEW: Ballmer Group broadly supports programs and policy to increase economic development and opportunity for children and families nationally, along with a regional program that invests more deeply in Southeast Michigan, Los Angeles County, and Washington state.

IP TAKE: Founded in 2015, Ballmer Group has rapidly evolved into one of the largest U.S. anti-poverty funders, making a whopping $850 million in grants in 2022. More than half of Ballmer’s grants fund initiatives in Washington, Los Angeles County and Southeast Michigan. Kim Pattillo Brownson, Ballmer’s strategy director, told IP that the “overarching focus is always on economic mobility.” Though known for its anti-poverty, housing, and education work, Ballmer has expanded into climate change funding, in addition to other new areas of giving. Ballmer tends to make large, unrestricted grants, though it also supports smaller community organizations, sometimes by working with intermediaries to vet and select grantees. Ballmer’s team, led by Executive Director Nina Revoyr, works closely together. This funder does not accept unsolicited grant applications, and its website lacks a contact page. That said, detailed staff portfolios are included, often with LinkedIn pages, so it may be worthwhile for nonprofits working in Ballmer’s thematic and geographic areas of interest to reach out with a brief introduction.

PROFILE: The Bellevue, Washington-based Ballmer Group was established by Steve and Connie Ballmer, after Ballmer’s retirement from his position of CEO at Microsoft. The group is “committed to improving economic mobility for children and families in the United States.” The Ballmer Group’s website is not as intuitive as other sites, and does not provide separate pages defining separate giving areas. According to Ballmer’s grants database and site, stated impact areas include Early Childhood & Families, Child Welfare, K-12 Education, Housing & Homelessness, College & Career, Criminal Justice Reform and Climate. The group also recently included Behavioral Health and Public Safety as new initiatives “that strengthen the conditions foundational to economic mobility or present opportunities for learning.”

Ballmer’s grantmaking is further organized around levers of change, which the group defines as “approaches” to grantmaking across all areas that “hold promise for long-term system improvements.” These are:

  • Strengthening and Developing Place-Based Partnerships, which refers to grants for organizations committed to improving outcomes in specific communities or geographic regions.

  • Partnering with Government, which pertains to grants that “expand or enhance public programs and initiatives.”

  • Investing in Systems of Change Through Advocacy, which refers to support for advocacy and policy to improve economic mobility across all grantmaking areas.

  • Scaling Technology & Data Across Social Services, which aims to bring up-to-date technology and information to organizations and government agencies to improve efficacy and services.

With the exception of its global grantmaking for climate change, Ballmer’s giving is national in scope and names Los Angeles County, Southeast Michigan and Washington State as regional areas of interest. Ballmer also articulates a commitment “to address barriers to racial equity in all we do.”

Grants for Education

Education is Ballmer’s largest giving area, with funding supporting early childhood, K-12 and higher education initiatives. Giving for early childhood and K-12 tends tends to focus on school and instructional quality, as well as children’s mental health and overall wellbeing. Higher education represents a smaller area of giving, with a strong focus on career education and “pipelines” to employment.

Grants for Early Childhood Education

Early childhood education grants stem mainly from Ballmer’s Early Childhood & Families focus area. Grants for early childhood focus on providing support to children “engaged with the child welfare system” and helping families gain access to “high-quality child care and early education.”

  • Ballmer recently announced a $43 million commitment to “build, strengthen, and diversify Washington State’s early childhood education workforce,” with early grants supporting teacher education programs at the University of Washington, as well as Child Care Aware Washington and Pathwaves WA.

  • The group has also supported the BUILD initiative, a national organization that helps individual states develop high-quality and widely accessible early childhood education and care systems.

  • Other early childhood grantees include the Washington State Child Care Resource & Referral Network, Start Early of Chicago and the Los Angeles Partnership for Early Childhood Investment.

Grants for K-12 Education

The overarching goal of Ballmer’s K-12 Education giving is to “reduce and eliminate inequities that shortchange student achievement.” Specific areas of focus include in- and out-of-school learning, the development of “strong schools” in underserved neighborhoods and support for “a more representative, racially diverse workforce of teachers and school leaders.”

  • Recent giving has emphasized charter schools and networks.

  • Ballmer has provided ongoing support to organizations including Communities in Schools Washington, the Charter School Growth Fund, KIPP and Los Angeles’s Great Public Schools Now.

  • Grants have also gone to teacher education programs at California State University campuses and the University of Washington.

  • Grantees providing out-of-school learning opportunties include the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Heart of Los Angeles Youth and Michigan’s Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, among others.

A portion Ballmer’s K-12 grantmaking stems from the Group’s Child Welfare initiative, which prioritizes children in foster care and juvenile justice programs. One grantee, Washington’s Treehouse, helps young people in foster care graduate from high school on schedule and pursue post-secondary education and/or career training. Other grantees include Friends of the Children-Seattle, the Guidance Center of Wayne County, Michigan, and Los Angeles grantee First Place for Youth. Ballmer has also given $2.7 million to the Detroit Public Schools Community District to help fund the district’s health hub sites, which offer free health, mental health and dental care for Detroit students, as well as other support for students and their families.

Grants for Higher Education and Economic Development

Ballmer’s College and Career impact area supports opportunities for young people to “pursue post-secondary education that leads to a degree or certification.” Giving also targets “career training and apprenticeship programs with a direct pipeline to local employers.” As a result, it appears Ballmer intersects higher education giving with job development, viewing one as one potential pathway to the other.

  • Grants stemming from this program tend to support large organizations that increase career opportunity and college completion, rather than individual colleges and universities.

  • Recipients include Los Angeles’ Thrive Scholars, the Institute for Nonprofit Practice’s Black Leadership Institute and Basblue, a Michigan organization that works to increase career and educational opportunities for “women and nonbinary individuals.”

Grants for Housing, Homelessness and Community Development

Ballmer’s Housing and Homelessness grantmaking focuses on “the relationship between stable housing and economic mobility.” Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the development of policy addressing “undue systemic racism in housing,” increasing the supply of affordable housing and reducing and preventing homelessness.

  • Ballmer has provided long-term funding to Equitable Path Forward, an initiative of Enterprise Community Partners, which provides loans and technical assistance to “developers and housing providers of color” as a means of promoting diversity and equity in real estate and community development.

  • Other housing grants have supported Develop Detroit, Funders for Housing Opportunity and the University of California and Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, which “develops strategies to house families in sustainable and affordable homes and communities.”

Grants for Criminal Justice Reform and Violence Prevention

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 including “community-led approaches to violence intervention, automatically expunging old and outdated criminal records, and ensuring that affected individuals and families have access to career opportunities.”

  • The Criminal Justice Reform focus area has seen an uptick in grantmaking in recent years.

  • Grantees include the Detroit Justice Center, the Clean Slate Initiative, the Fines and Fees Justice Center and Homeboy Industries, which supports “formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated people” in Los Angeles County with counseling, job training and other re-entry services.

Public Safety is one of Ballmer’s new initiatives, and the group has yet to name specific goals for its grantmaking in this area. However, early grants have gone to organizations that support victims of violent crimes, gun control policy and programs for fair policing.

  • Grantees include the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, the Center for Policing Equity, the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention and Chicago CRED, which aims to reduce violence through “street outreach, coaching and counseling, workforce development, and advocacy.”

Grants for Climate Change and Clean Energy

Ballmer’s Climate funding is the foundation’s newest giving area and represents a commitment of $431 million that will be disbursed over several years. Early grantmaking has mainly focused on limiting and preventing deforestation and “lessening global dependence on fossil fuels,” but keep an eye on this area as it may evolve quickly like other areas of Ballmer’s funding.

  • 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.

  • About half of Ballmer’s climate grantmaking has gone to the Climate and Land Use Alliance, a regranter which supports initiatives to sustainably manage forests and land to counteract the effects of climate change in the Amazon and other geographic areas.

  • The group has also supported the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Tenure Facility, which helps Indigenous people secure land rights and preserve forests.

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 workforce 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 healthcare.”

  • Ballmer has made three-year commitments of over $1 million to grantees, including the state of Washington’s Behavioral Health Catalyst, the University of Washington’s Center for Child & Family Well-Being and the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers.

Ballmer has also made grants for children’s mental health through its Child Welfare grantmaking focus area, which prioritizes children and families in the welfare system.

  • One grantee, the Youth Villages Foundation, works nationally to help “children and young people across the United States who face a wide range of emotional, mental and behavioral problems, using proven treatment models that strengthen a child’s family and support systems and dramatically improve their long-term success.”

  • Other grantees include Ryther, a Seattle organization that provides therapy to struggling and vulnerable young people, and Friends of Youth, which “serves youth and young families facing circumstances of homelessness, foster care, and behavioral health challenges” in Kirkland, Washington.

Grants for Public Health

The Ballmer Group does not specifically name health as an area of grantmaking interest, but grants stemming from Early Childhood and Families and Child Welfare focus areas tend to support pediatric, maternal and family health initiatives. Grantees include Los Angeles’s Black Women for Wellness, Cherished Futures for Black Moms & Babies, the Healthcare Anchor Network and the Washington State Hospital Association, which received a grant to support its TeamBirth program “to improve equity and outcomes for birthing families across the state.”

Important Grant Details:

The Ballmer Group’s grants range from $50,000 to over $400 million.

  • Grants tend to support large, well-established nonprofits and universities.

  • Larger grants tend to represent three- to five-year commitments.

  • More than half of all grants support organizations in Ballmer’s target geographic 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.

PEOPLE:

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