Our Grants
Our active grantees are listed below, updated monthly. We hope you will engage with and support these inspiring organizations.
Past Year of Giving
$300+M
Active Grants
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Annual giving numbers updated as of 12/31/24. New grants made in 2025 are added each month and shown below. Please note that we cannot accept unsolicited grant applications.
Search Grants:
Impact Area:
Behavioral Health grants strengthen the systems within behavioral health care, providing scholarships and training to build the workforce necessary to meet increasing need, and integrating behavioral health into the education system so that more children, families, and communities can access high-quality mental health care.
Ballmer Group’s first grants centered on the child welfare system – a network of services whose purpose is to ensure child safety and to strengthen permanency in families. These grants continue to support affected families and kids and to transform systems in order to improve prevention and to reduce racial disparities in care.
Our Community Impact grants strengthen local Place-Based Partnerships, including building leadership pipelines, to help communities working to address complex issues and achieve measurable results.
Early Childhood & Families grants build systems of support and care for our littlest ones in the most critical point of their brain development by promoting equity in prenatal and maternal health, as well as helping all families access high quality childcare and early education.
K-12 Education grants seek to reduce and eliminate inequities that shortchange student achievement, by strengthening both the in-school academic experience as well as wrap-around and afterschool support. We believe that all neighborhoods deserve strong schools and a more representative, racially diverse workforce of teachers and school leaders.
Public Safety grants support leaders and organizations working to advocate for and scale effective public safety initiatives.
Region:
Our National Impact grants focus on opportunities to strengthen impact across the country, and partners with regional teams to advance key issues.
In the Ballmers’ home state of Washington, our grants focus on public systems transformation, with deep investments in child welfare, behavioral health, and education as levers for change.
In the home of the Clippers, the Los Angeles County grants support building more equitable public systems, focusing on education, criminal justice, and a community-led vision of safety.
The Southeast Michigan grants works across the tri-county area surrounding Steve Ballmer’s hometown, bringing philanthropy, government, and business together to tackle economic mobility, and focusing on education and community development.
Grantees
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Alliance for Children’s Rights
Alliance for Children’s Rights works to protect the rights of children in poverty and those overcoming abuse and neglect by delivering free legal services, supportive programs, and systemic solutions. In addition, it fights to provide stability for children in foster care and those at risk of entering foster care by helping them obtain access to mental and medical healthcare, educational services, benefits, housing, and more.
Amara
Amara has a bold vision to change the world when it comes to how we support and care for children, adults, and families experiencing foster care and considering adoption, in our communities. Amara partners with people and communities most impacted by our child welfare system, to address trauma, build connections, and ultimately ensure all children, adults and families feel safe and supported, with a commitment to equity.
Catholic Charities of Spokane
Catholic Charities Eastern Washington affirms the dignity of every person, partnering with parishes and the greater community to serve and advocate for those who are vulnerable, bringing stability and hope to people throughout the region. Our grant funds the Rising Strong program, a holistic, family-centered drug treatment and housing program that supports families in staying together while they begin to recover from addiction, heal from trauma, and rebuild their lives.
Child Welfare Playbook
Child Welfare Playbook works with experts from across the U.S. to identify and document practical, scalable strategies for improving child welfare. Our grant enables its efforts related to implementing a kin-first culture in Washington state.
Children’s Bureau of Southern California
Children’s Bureau of Southern California works to reduce risk factors and increase opportunities for children, parents, and communities through prevention, treatment, and advocacy efforts. Their comprehensive services help thousands of at-risk children and parents annually from 20 community sites in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
Family Impact Network
Family Impact Network facilitates a better system that transitions under-resourced children and families from crisis to healing. Reaching 20 counties in Eastern and Central Washington, Family Impact Network smooths processes and builds stronger connections between service providers and government, so that families can get the care they need quickly and easily, and so social workers can spend more of their time helping families.
FIRST Clinic
FIRST Legal Clinic is dedicated to preventing unnecessary family separation by providing early legal intervention to pregnant individuals and parents at risk of child welfare involvement, with a focus on reducing racial disparities in child welfare outcomes. Our grant will support FIRST’s expansion efforts by funding key leadership positions, increasing contracted legal services, and enhancing data tracking systems. This investment will strengthen FIRST’s capacity to serve more families, expand into Pierce County, and build a sustainable funding model, ensuring that more families receive the support they need to stay safely together.
First Place for Youth
First Place helps foster youth build the skills they need to make a successful transition to self sufficiency and responsible adulthood. Our grant supports work in Southern California to provide transition aged youth and teens with stable housing, support for higher education progress, and support to obtain employment.
Foster America
Foster America seeks to transform systems that serve children, youth, and families by innovating for a more just, equitable future. Our grant supports its work related to enhancing innovation capacity in Washington state, which ultimately aims to increase family wellbeing, safely decrease child welfare involvement, and determine the most effective capacity additions for Washington in the long term.
Friends of the Children
Friends of the Children pairs youth facing the toughest systematic barriers with professional mentors who help prepare them for post-secondary education and/or employment, develop positive goals for the future, and develop a healthy lifestyle. The organization’s youth-development program works to break the cycle of poverty and violence through three primary prevention goals: school dropout, teen parenting, and involvement with the criminal justice system.
Friends of the Children – Seattle
Friends of the Children-Seattle pairs youth facing the toughest systematic barriers with professional mentors who help prepare them for post-secondary education and/or employment; develop positive goals for the future; and develop a healthy lifestyle. Friends of the Children commits to each child for 12-plus years.
Friends of Youth
Friends of Youth serves youth and young families facing circumstances of homelessness, foster care, and behavioral health challenges, and provides individualized care, mentorship, and community relationships to enable their personal growth and success. Our grant supports Friends of Youth in their work to prevent youth and young families from entering crisis situations and providing high-quality services tailored to meet their holistic needs.
Institute for Family Development
Institute for Family Development advocates for cost-effective and equitable policies and programs that keep children safe and families together. Its programs decrease the need to place children into foster care, residential treatment, and juvenile justice facilities. Families are served in their own homes and engaged as partners in change. The organization provides a range of family counseling programs and home-based parent education throughout Washington state.
Kindering Center
Kindering’s CHERISH program offers free screenings, therapy, and support services for the youngest children (ages zero to five) involved in the child welfare system to minimize trauma, stabilize placements, and facilitate healthy transitions. Our grant supports expansion to offer services to more children and families before they reach out-of-home care, helping more families in crisis and preventing removals.
Legal Counsel for Youth & Children
Legal Counsel for Youth and Children protects the interests and safety of youth in Washington by advancing their legal rights. Our grant will expand access to legal aid for youth experiencing homelessness and youth impacted by the child welfare system in Washington state, and support systemic advocacy efforts.
Los Angeles Room & Board
Los Angeles Room and Board works to ensure California’s community college students realize their postsecondary education goals by providing affordable transitional housing designed to end homelessness. The organization also offers a residential education program designed to promote persistence, retention, and completion of students’ degree programs.
Mockingbird Society
The Mockingbird Society is dedicated to transforming the foster care system and ending youth homelessness by empowering young people with lived experience to lead advocacy efforts and drive systemic change. Our grant will support Mockingbird’s efforts to expand youth-led advocacy, enhance policy implementation, and scale the MOCKINGBIRD FAMILY™ model statewide. This investment will improve placement stability, foster parent retention, and public funding integration, ensuring that young people in Washington’s child welfare system have the resources, relationships, and opportunities to thrive.
National Center for Youth Law
National Center for Youth Law works to transform systems – classrooms, courts, the justice system, and healthcare spaces – to extend equity, dignity, and care for children and youth. It centers youth voices and experiences through impact litigation, policy advocacy, collaboration, and research.
Olive Crest
Olive Crest is dedicated to preventing child abuse by strengthening, equipping, and restoring children and families in crisis. Our grant supports Olive Crest’s full range of child welfare services in Washington state, including a Therapeutic Mental Health Services program for children and caregivers.
Ryther
Ryther provides therapeutic services to young people in Seattle who are struggling emotionally and behaviorally. Its evidence-based practices and models of trauma care are designed to help children and young adults, and their families, to find a path to health and hope for their futures.
The Village Family Services
The Village Family Services aims to protect children from abuse, preserve families, and build a stronger, safer community. The organization offers a full spectrum of trauma-informed programs and services including vital support for homeless youth and those who identify as LGBTQ+. It also provides evidenced-based behavioral health services to children, youth, and adults and has long been at the forefront of culturally sensitive foster care and adoption services. Across all their programs, the majority of people the organization serves are Latino or Hispanic.
Think Of Us
Think Of Us is a research and design lab for the social sector, working to transform child welfare. Our grant supports their Audacious Project goal to support a transformational shift to a system that prioritizes family well-being by allocating greater resources to prevention, family-first placements, and services for older youth.
Treehouse
Through advocacy, programs, and partnerships, Treehouse improves educational outcomes and addresses systemic barriers for youth in foster care. Treehouse empowers these young people to achieve academic success by strengthening supports for foster care youth from pre-kindergarten until they achieve a degree or credential, living wage, and stable housing.
Washington Association for Children and Families Institute for Practice Improvement
The Washington Association for Children & Families works to strengthen families and champion bright futures for children, youth, and families across Washington state. It formed the Institute for Practice Improvement to provide technical assistance and training to private agencies committed to the well-being of children and families to improve their practice and implement innovative practices.
Wonderland Child & Family Services
Wonderland Child & Family Services serves children with developmental delays, disabilities, and prenatal substance exposure, helping them meet healthy developmental milestones. Our grant supports the operations and replication of its Hope RISING Clinic, which offers comprehensive services for children with prenatal substance exposure.
WorkLife Partnership
WorkLife Partnership (WLP) is dedicated to economic equity and thriving workplaces across the country. WorkLife deploys its Resource Navigator benefit inside of businesses to provide personalized, immediate, one-on-one assistance when workers need it most, addressing needs such as legal aid, childcare, and utilities/rental assistance, while focusing on the long-term emotional, financial, and career growth of workers. Our grant supports WLP’s partnership with Washington Association for Children & Families to provide its member employees within the child and family services sector with resource navigation and job quality consultation services. These individuals, operating in emotionally demanding environments, will be supported by Resource Navigation services, which focus on their well-being and resilience. Employers and employees will also benefit from Job Quality initiatives to enhance workplace conditions.
Young Womens Christian Association of Seattle-King County-Snohomish County
YWCA Seattle | King | Snohomish is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women, and ensuring all people in the community have the opportunity to thrive. Our grant provides support to all 10 YWCA affiliates across Washington state that provide a range of core services including housing/homelessness (emergency shelter, transitional/permanent housing, advocacy), health and safety (legal advocacy, domestic violence services and support groups, behavioral health, childcare, domestic violence prevention and education), and economic mobility (job training, financial literacy and coaching, and supportive employment).
Youth Advocate Programs, Inc.
Youth Advocate Programs works to keep youth and adults across the U.S. safely home with their families, supported by their community, by investing in communities to create holistic, consistent care capable of providing exactly what each person needs to achieve well being. By redirecting justice, child welfare, and other social services dollars from youth prisons and other out of home facilities to communities where program participants live, YAP helps its partners better address racial equity in their service delivery and get better outcomes for the young people they serve.
Youth Villages Foundation Inc
Youth Villages helps 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.