An Opportunity to Create Systemic and Long-Lasting Change

As I considered how to begin this blog post, I didn’t expect to feel so similarly to how I did one year ago. 2021 has been a rollercoaster of experiences and emotions. There have been highs, like new vaccines and medical interventions to help us through the pandemic. But we have also experienced enormous lows: more grief and trauma as COVID-19 rages on, and continued outsized suffering experienced by those who are already subjected to systemic racism and historic disinvestment.

Yet, even in the depth of crisis, there is a glimmer of hope for a new future if we can take advantage of this opportunity to examine our country’s faltering systems, and act to build back stronger and more equitably. This year, we at Ballmer Group have focused on how our resources can support systemic, long-lasting change, so that opportunity is more accessible for generations to come.

Ballmer Group gave over $420 million directly to nonprofits in 2021, bringing our lifetime giving to over $2.1* billion. (We also added a grant database to our website, so you can explore over 275 active grantees organized by issue area and by region.)

Here are some themes that emerged from our grantmaking this year, and the stories of just a few of our incredible grantees:

Broadening Our Focus: We have always taken a wide lens on our mission to increase economic mobility for kids and families in the United States, as it will require transforming many systems—such as education, criminal justice, housing, and child welfare—to truly change what opportunity means in America. This year, the COVID-19 crisis led us to new areas of focus.

As demand has risen sharply due to the pandemic, we invested $38M to help build a workforce pipeline for Washington’s behavioral health system.
Our grantees Common Sense Media, National Digital Inclusion Alliance, and EveryoneOn advocated for more accessible and affordable broadband and digital supports, which are essential tools for learning and working during the pandemic. This year, there have been exciting wins—like the bipartisan infrastructure bill—that will set up more kids, families, and communities for success.
As a national housing crisis escalated and evictions loomed, our grantees National Low-Income Housing Coalition, Poverty and Race Research Action Council, Housing Partnership Network, and others, advocated for national support. In our regions, we funded organizations like OnePierce Community Resiliency Fund to quickly distribute federal rental assistance payments and reduce evictions for BIPOC communities, and Detroit Healthy Housing Center, which pairs housing and an emergency shelter with healthcare and other supportive services.
Community violence has risen during COVID-19, and communities of color are experiencing the harshest impacts. Just this month we built off of the work of current and past grantees in Los Angeles, such as Urban Peace Institute, GYRD Foundation, and Community Coalition, to provide a group of grants focused on building national solutions to address community violence. More on this in 2022!
Inequities in the K-12 education system deepened due to interruptions from the pandemic. We worked with partners like Blue Meridian Partners to fund national organizations focusing on learning loss. We also funded regional grantees like City Year in Los Angeles to focus on learning loss and NAF in Southeast Michigan, which will strengthen career training and opportunities for 10,000 students.
We know kids’ early years set the foundation for all future learning. In 2021, a window of opportunity opened as federal legislators considered significant new investments. We have invested for several years to build up advocacy strength for early childhood education, so our grantees—including MomsRising, Bipartisan Policy Center Action, Center for Law and Social Policy, First Five Years Fund, Save the Children Action Network, and more—acted quickly to keep early childhood education at the front of legislators’ minds, a move that could have far-reaching effects for generations to come.
We know it is impossible to improve economic mobility for kids and families without confronting and fighting racism. In January, President Biden passed an executive order for government departments and agencies to work to address racial inequities. This focus on equity from the executive office is a first from any administration, and the order offers new opportunities for philanthropy to partner with government to ensure it will be implemented well. We supported PolicyLink to help set standards and metrics and Urban Institute’s Racial Equity Analytics Lab to give agency leaders real-time data, all to help them know if progress is being made.

Strengthening Support for Core Issues: We also invested in strengthening and supporting issue areas that we believe are core to economic mobility, with a focus on ensuring that racial equity is deeply embedded in every strategy and grant.

Black boys and men face some of the most persistent obstacles to economic mobility, and this data has consistently informed our grantmaking over the years. One example of how we can help remove those barriers is to invest in a stronger pipeline of Black male teachers, as we did in 2020. In 2021, we built on this by investing in New Leaders, in partnership with Morehouse College, to strengthen the talent pipeline for Black school principals, another wraparound support to help increase hiring and retention of Black teachers, who, in turn, can make a positive impact on hundreds of thousands of Black students.
Evidence shows that administrative barriers in colleges and universities contribute to inequities in college access, progression, and completion. National Institute for Student Success (NISS) is working to reduce those barriers, and it has helped Georgia State University to eliminate all equity gaps in college completion based on race, ethnicity, and income level. We supported NISS to scale their work to 50 more colleges and universities, and we look forward to seeing this success spread.

We believe that changing systems to work better for kids and families can start with place based partnerships: communities and regions collaborating in a way that is measurable, accountable, and effective. We built up supports for the field of place based partnerships in three ways:

Ballmer Group is the founding and lead investor in Blue Meridian’s Place Matters initiative, which supports more place based partnerships in communities across the country, builds up the broader field, and invites more philanthropic support. In 2021, the fund accelerated its giving to help communities with pandemic recovery, moving more than $95 million into 20 cities including Spartanburg, Memphis, Atlanta, Dayton, Salt Lake City, and Louisville.
Place based partnerships can thrive when their leaders are racially diverse, representative, and from the community. We have made a suite of investments in organizations like Education Pioneers, Fuse Corps, Lead For America, Public Allies, and more that will add significantly to the talent base available to place based partnerships.
We have also resourced a virtual training hub to support community leaders with competencies and skills that have emerged as critical for communities to achieve better outcomes. Our grantee StriveTogether is leading this project that will launch next year, partnering with at least seven other national networks to develop online trainings in data analytics, facilitative leadership, and other important areas.

As we navigated this year’s ups and downs, one constant for me was the hope that our grantees give us. I would like to take this moment to say thank you. We are so grateful for your dedication to not only support kids and families, but to push us to think and dream bigger.

As the world around us continues to shift, and more opportunities for transforming systems emerge, Ballmer Group remains ready to stand alongside our partners and grantees, helping make opportunity available to all.

*In line with industry standards, Ballmer Group measures our yearly contributions according to dollars given out, rather than amounts held in donor advised funds.