Saxena Family Foundation

OVERVIEW: The Austin-based Saxena Family Foundation names STEM education and women’s and girls’ causes as grantmaking priorities. This funder mainly gives to organizations with which members of the Saxena Family maintain personal connections.

IP TAKE: The Saxena Foundation has made a few large gifts to Michigan State University, but the remainder of its grantmaking has consisted of smaller grants to STEM programs and schools in Austin, Texas and India. This accessible funder accepts and reviews applications on an ongoing basis, but it is not approachable and maintains niche funding that requires some networking.

PROFILE: Headquartered in Austin, Texas, the Saxena Family Foundation was founded in 2000 by Manej Saxena. It seeks to “advance inventive and effective ways of promoting Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education in the United States and empowering young women so that they have equal rights later in life.” Saxena studied at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India and earned an MBA from Michigan State University. He is a software entrepreneur and currently serves as the executive chair of Cognitive Scale, a company that creates AI decision-making products. Grantmaking is limited to organizations and schools based in North America and India.

Grants for STEM Education

The Saxena Foundation broadly supports STEM education, with more than half of its grantmaking supporting institutions of higher education. The foundation gave $1 million to Saxena’s alma mater, Michigan State, to establish the Omura-Saxena Endowed Professorship in Responsible Artificial Intelligence. Funding has also gone to Michigan State’s Broad College of Business. Other past education grantees include American Youthworks, a Texas-based career development and service-learning program, and the TIE Young Entrepreneurs competition, which offers education, mentorship and funding opportunities to young entrepreneurs, mainly in the field of technology. In Austin, the foundation has supported local schools including St. Edward’s University, the University of Texas and St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, and in India, Saxena’s alma mater, the Birla Institute for Technology and Science, has received ongoing support.

Grants for Women and Girls

The Saxena Foundation names women and girls as a grantmaking priority, but only a few grants have supported organizations working in this area in recent years. The foundation provided ongoing support to Saheli, a Boston organization that supports “immigrant survivors of domestic and sexual violence while keeping in mind their unique cultural beliefs and upbringing.”

Important Grant Details:

With the exception of a few large gifts to Michigan State University, Saxena's annual giving has remained under $50,000. Its average grant size is about $5,000, and grants are mainly directed toward organizations with which the Saxena family maintains personal connections.

According to its website, the Saxena Foundation accepts requests for funding at any time and reviews applications as they are received. The foundation indicates that “most grants will be in the $5,000 to $50,000 range,” but that this range is “not necessarily typical of future grants.” Inquiries may be directed to the foundation via its contact page.

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