Adapting to Face New Challenges in 2020

How do you sum up a year like 2020?

One word that comes to mind is relentless. For so many of us, the intensity and loss of this year never let up. We confronted a global pandemic and its effect on our daily lives, as well as the vast impact in places already experiencing deep inequities. We collectively witnessed the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many other Black men and women, and poured our grief and our anger into the beginning of a national reckoning on racial justice. We took part in an intensely divided election, and have seen unprecedented threats to American democracy.

Through it all, our grantees were also relentless in their quick and critical responses to such severe upheaval and human need. They put unbelievable energy and heart and soul into ensuring that kids and families continued to be fed and housed, that communities remained safe and healthy, and that people who have been systemically underserved and under-resourced had equitable access to support.

Since our inception, we have focused on multi-year, flexible gifts so that our grantees can adapt to face new challenges. Our Ballmer Group team dug in even more this year to meet our grantees’ tenacity and make sure these organizations had the support they needed to effectively do their work. I’m proud to say that we doubled our grant commitments: over $420 million went directly to nonprofits in 2020, bringing Ballmer Group’s lifetime giving to over $1.4* billion since 2015.

Here is just some of the impact our team and our grantees made in 2020:

• COVID response — At the beginning of the pandemic, our team moved quickly to get new dollars out to essential non-profits delivering a wide range of crucial services: expanding testing and contact tracing; keeping systemically-underserved neighborhoods secure; increasing access to mental health services; getting PPE to frontline workers; securing food; keeping childcare centers open and safe; supporting undocumented kids and families; meeting emergency needs of college students; keeping families in their homes; narrowing the digital divide, and so much more.
• Equitable Access to Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans — In the wake of the first relief act from Congress, we saw organizations struggling. Ballmer Group explored how to strengthen the ability of nonprofits to equitably access PPP loans. We provided $35 million in capital to community-based lenders, so that non-profits would have access to dollars intended for them. We also partnered with Nonprofit Finance Fund to provide coaching sessions and help make certain that eligible organizations will have these loans forgiven.
• Supporting the fight for racial justice — As Steve and Connie said in a post earlier this year, it is impossible to improve economic mobility for all children without confronting and fighting racism. We support our grantees who fight against inequity and injustice, and we will do much more, as 2020 cannot and will not be the only year to focus on racial equity. We are also looking inward, and have been taking concrete steps within our own organization to ensure we are authentically and fully committed to anti-racism and inclusion at every level of our work, as well as in our new grants. One organization doing incredible work that we were excited to support this fall is Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), which has launched the Black Equity at Work certification: a clear set of comprehensive standards and a roadmap to turn corporate America’s good intentions into measurable progress on racial equity.
• Connecting families in crisis to benefits — A grantee that pivoted quickly in 2020 is Benefits Data Trust (BDT), which responded as demand for public benefits—from Medicaid to SNAP—surged. We saw our flexible funding at work as BDT rapidly connected over 34,000 American families to benefits, helping them access approximately $86 million in support in the first half of the year to lessen the economic effects of the crisis.
• Recruiting and retaining Black teachers — Data shows that Black students who have at least one Black teacher in elementary school graduate at higher rates and are more likely to go on to college. However, historical and systemic barriers have limited the number of Black educators who enter and remain in the teaching profession. We invested in the Alder Graduate School of Education to recruit and support more Black teachers in California, building on our 2019 grants to the Center for Black Educator Development, the National Center for Teacher Residencies, Teach For America, TNTP, and Urban Teachers that will bring more than 3,500 Black educators to public schools across America.
• Results-driven community partnerships — StriveTogether and Community Solutions are remarkable organizations tackling the well-known link between economic mobility and place, by supporting community partnerships across the country. When government, community leaders, nonprofits, and businesses come together with a shared vision and accountability to results, change is realized. StriveTogether works with nearly 70 communities on issues from cradle-to-career; this year, many of the partnerships they support were able to secure additional funding for early childhood education. Community Solutions works with 80 communities to end homelessness; 13 have ended homelessness for a population, and more than half have achieved reductions in the number of people experiencing chronic and veteran homelessness.
• Resources for our littlest kids’ success — One of the issues nearest to my heart is early learning – in fact, focusing on our littlest kids is one of the reasons I joined Ballmer Group. I remain struck by the idea that children make more than one million new neural connections per second (!) during their first few years of life, which helps set the foundation for future learning, behavior, and health. Yet public spending in America is lowest for children under the age of three. That is why I am so excited that, in 2020, all six of the local campaigns supported by our grantee Children’s Funding Project, from Multnomah County in Oregon to Pensacola, Florida, were successful. That translates to over $500 million more each year for early childhood education. We are thrilled to see this kind of investment in our littles!
• Transforming youth justice — Among the many critical things that need our attention, it is important to stay vigilant as the US remains the #1 incarcerator of children in the world, and the burden of mass incarceration disproportionately falls on youth of color. This cannot be ignored or pushed to the back burner. In 2020, we put resources toward organizations like the Justice Lab’s Youth Justice Initiative and the Burns Institute, which are working to end reliance on youth prisons. We know this works: we saw systemic change come to life in Los Angeles County, where there have been huge strides toward dismantling their youth justice system in favor of a “care-first” model that emphasizes emotional support, counseling, and treatment. Huge thanks go to our Los Angeles grantees A New Way of Life, Anti Recidivism Coalition, Brotherhood Crusade, Community Coalition, Centinela Youth Services, InnerCity Struggle, Liberty Hill Foundation, Urban Peace Institute, and many more organizations that have been doing critical work to make this transformation happen over many years.

I could go on and on, and I plan to! In the coming year, I will continue to share the successes and impact of our grantees, and the ways they have adapted to meet urgent needs in 2020 will continue to inform our work.

But right now, I want to sincerely thank our grantees and their amazing teams for what they have accomplished this year. You keep us hopeful, inspired, and steadfast in our commitment to supporting economic opportunity.

*In line with industry standards, Ballmer Group measures commitments according to dollars given out, rather than amounts held in DAFs.