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New Venture Fund

Washington, D.C.

Grants

2023 (3 years)
$3,000,000

Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation

The Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation, a project of the New Venture Fund, makes charitable grants that enable cities, counties, and states hard hit by climate change to file high-impact climate damage and deception lawsuits represented by expert counsel. These lawsuits seek to hold major fossil fuel corporations accountable for the industry’s disinformation and deception, the enormous and debilitating costs imposed on them by climate change, or both. The award renews support for legal processes associated with a variety of lawsuits filed in support of states, counties and cities affected by climate change.

2023 (1 year 1 month)
$500,000

Media Democracy Fund

Media Democracy Fund—a project of New Venture Fund—founded in 2006 and based in Washington, D.C., is a catalyst for an open, secure, and equitable internet. The Fund brings together diverse voices to design inclusive and responsible solutions and empower public interest advocates to create an environment where digital technologies and the internet have a long-term, positive impact on society. The Media Democracy Fund is launching The Digital Equity and Opportunity Initiative to leverage large-scale federal investments in broadband expansion and digital equity to close the digital divide and build lasting technological infrastructure in underserved communities. The Initiative is raising an initial fund by June 2023 to support promising state and local coalition efforts implementing  federally administered state broadband grant programs on behalf of underserved communities.

2023 (2 years)
$500,000

Climate Justice Resilience Fund

New Venture Fund (NVF), founded in 2006 and based in Washington DC, is a force for social good–maximizing the impact of charitable dollars by centering race, equity, diversity, and inclusion in the organization's culture and work, increasing and diversifying opportunity. Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) is a project of NVF that supports women, youth, and Indigenous Peoples to create and share their own solutions for climate resilience by putting people, their rights, and their lived experience directly at the center of climate action. CJRF is a grantmaker that focuses on inter-related issues through which climate change profoundly affects the lives and prospects of hardest-hit communities: water access, food security and sovereignty, sustainable livelihoods, migration and relocation, and climate-induced loss and damage. This grant provides flexible support to CJRF.

2023 (2 years)
$400,000

Dangerous Speech Project

A project of New Venture Fund, the Dangerous Speech Project (DSP) was founded in 2010 to develop, and make constructive use of, the observation that certain strikingly similar kinds of rhetoric precede mass violence in diverse cases, and that this knowledge might be used to prevent such violence. The organization’s mission is to equip people to counter dangerous speech and the violence it can catalyze. DSP envisions a world free of violence inspired by dangerous speech, in which people also fully enjoy freedom of expression. Its work is anchored around four areas of programmatic focus: 1) studying – and developing influential ideas about – dangerous speech and its harms; 2) investigating effective responses to harmful speech; 3) adapting, framing and disseminating dangerous speech ideas for use by key actors, including technology company staff and technology policymakers; and 4) advising and critiquing decision makers on speech governance. The award provides flexible support to DSP.

2023 (2 years)
$1,000,000

Tipping Point Fund

New Venture Fund is an independent 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a fiscal sponsor, specializing in helping funder collaboratives and others launch new social change projects. This grant will support New Venture Fund’s Tipping Point Fund project, a $22 million, five-year pooled grant fund. This collaborative vehicle is funded by select members of the Presidents’ Council on Impact Investing (and others), a group of twenty leading American foundations with a shared commitment to practicing and promoting impact investing. It aims to fund field-building infrastructure to support the growth and practice of impact investing, focusing on critical public goods that are unlikely to be developed without grant support. The project funds public policy and engagement and data, metrics, and measurement, and seeks to encourage others to participate in funding these areas, which are best suited to collective action and require additional support beyond that which can be provided by individual grantmakers. Grant proceeds support the awards provided by the Tipping Point Fund, along with its operating costs.

2023 (1 year 11 months)
$37,000

Digital Action

A project of New Venture Fund, Digital Action seeks to strengthen democratic rights in the digital age. It runs campaigns and builds coalitions that increase the accountability of Big Tech and improve protections from online harms. Digital Action applies a human rights framework, prioritizing areas where online harms lead to real world violence, and where they have outsized impact on already historically marginalized groups. It makes powerful cross-sector connections between local activists and global policy debates. The organization has a unique model within the digital rights advocacy ecosystem as it works behind the scenes in service of the movement and does not seek credit or publicity for its work. The award contributes to costs related to an executive director leadership transition at Digital Action.

2022 (2 years)
$600,000

Media Democracy Fund

New Venture Fund (NVF) is a project and fiscal management organization that seeks a healthier, more equitable world across a range of social and environmental issues. Media Democracy Fund (MDF), a project of the NVF, runs and supports projects that create the conditions for an open, secure, and equitable internet. The Disinformation Defense League (DDL), launched by MDF in 2020, is a distributed national network of more than 230 community-based organizations that are disrupting online racialized disinformation infrastructure and campaigns deliberately targeting Black, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and other communities of color. This grant provides flexible support for DDL to provide training and resources for its network of community-based organizations to fortify and scale current inoculation efforts and increase cohesion and collaboration in targeted communities; to host working groups made up of national experts and grassroots community members to dive deep into challenges and opportunities facing the network; and to deepen members’ understanding of how far-right White supremacist tactics move across the internet. DDL’s goal is to increase the capacity of its partner organizations to monitor and combat disinformation in their communities, to expand community awareness of disinformation and its impact, and to improve local leadership on issues related to online racialized disinformation and conspiracy.

2022 (4 years)
$1,000,000

IllumiNative

The New Venture Fund supports organizations working to advance racial, social and economic justice. One of the ways it does this is by serving as a base for community-led philanthropic initiatives, including IllumiNative, a Native-led organization established to increase the visibility of Native Nations and peoples in American society. IllumiNative grew out of findings from a two-year research initiative that explored opportunities to transform how the American public and its institutions perceive, portray, and engage with Native peoples and their communities. It identified the media and popular culture as two primary drivers perpetuating the negative stereotypes and myths and have led to the erasure of Native peoples. This grant to New Venture Fund provides flexible support to IllumiNative to build power for Native peoples by amplifying contemporary Native voices, stories, and issues to advance justice, equity, and self-determination. Over the next four years, a primary focus of IllumiNative is to expand and fortify its network of grassroots Native groups able to use narrative and culture change strategies to contribute to its effort.

2022 (1 year)
$50,000

Project Unloaded

Project Unloaded, fiscally sponsored by the New Venture Fund, is a new effort whose mission is to create a new cultural narrative that guns make the country less safe. It approaches gun safety through narrative and culture change, with young people as the agents of that change. With a focus on teens and young adults, Project Unloaded communicates engaging, accessible information about the risks around gun use, via digital media platforms and peer influencers. Its goals are to permeate culture with the central message that guns make us less safe; shift individual knowledge, attitudes and behaviors during the formative teen years; and build a community of like-minded peers to amplify this message. This grant enables Project Unloaded to conduct a survey of young people, ages 13-25, to collect data about their beliefs, experiences and perceptions toward guns.

2022 (1 year 7 months)
$850,000

N Square

New Venture Fund (NVF) conducts public interest projects and provides professional insight and support to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. This award provides flexible support for NVF’s project N Square, which is designed to inspire a generation of big thinkers to reduce and ultimately eliminate nuclear threats. N Square engages nuclear specialists to solve problems in new ways while introducing new allies to the complexities of the issue.

2022 (2 years)
$600,000

AAPI Civic Engagement Fund

New Venture Fund is a project and fiscal management organization that seeks a healthier, more equitable world across a range of social and environmental issues. The AAPI Civic Engagement Fund (the Fund), housed at New Venture Fund, was established in 2012 by a group of private foundations to foster civic engagement within the diverse and growing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the country. The Fund provides support to a nascent but emerging network of local and state-based nonprofits working to connect AAPI community members to social services and to build their civic and political power. This flexible support for the Fund helps build the capacity of its network members to gather and share news, information, and compelling stories from their communities. It also supports a new and intersecting line of work that brings state- and community-based AAPI groups into collaboration with other racial justice organizations and movements to share and tell stories of mutual interest. The goal of these efforts is to create and amplify more accurate, authentic, and nuanced narratives about the diversity of AAPI communities and their contributions to American society.

2022 (2 years)
$400,000

Digital Action

A project of New Venture Fund, Digital Action’s mission is to strengthen democratic rights in the digital age. It runs campaigns and builds coalitions that increase the accountability of Big Tech and improve protections from online harms. Digital Action applies a human rights framework, prioritizing areas where online harms lead to real world violence, and where they have outsized impact on already historically marginalized groups. It makes powerful cross-sector connections between local activists and global policy debates. The organization has a unique model within the digital rights advocacy ecosystem as it works behind the scenes in service of the movement and does not seek credit publicly for its work. The award provides flexible support to Digital Action.

2021 (1 year)
$200,000

AAPI Civic Engagement Fund

New Venture Fund is a project and fiscal management organization that seeks a healthier, more equitable world across a range of social and environmental issues. The AAPI Civic Engagement Fund (the Fund), housed at New Venture Fund, was established in 2012 by a group of private foundations to foster civic engagement within the diverse and growing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities across the country. The Fund provides support to a nascent but emerging network of local and state-based nonprofits working to connect AAPI community members to social services and to build their civic and political power. This project grant renews support for the Fund’s storytelling initiative to build the capacity of its network members to gather and share news, information, and compelling stories from their communities, with the goal of creating more accurate, authentic, and nuanced narratives about the diversity of AAPI communities and their contributions to American society.

2021 (3 years)
$600,000

U.S. Impact Investing Alliance

The New Venture Fund is a public charity dedicated to supporting innovative and effective public interest projects. It currently manages programs, provides fiscal sponsorship services, and coordinates grant programs. This grant provides support for the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, a fiscal sponsorship project of the New Venture Fund. The U.S. Impact Investing Alliance is dedicated to building the impact investing ecosystem by bridging market gaps and addressing shared challenges. Its long-term vision is to place measurable social, economic, and environmental impact alongside financial risk and return at the center of every investment decision. The U.S. Impact Investing Alliance pursues this vision through  its strategy that includes three pillars: 1) advocating for an enabling policy environment through engagement with policymakers and regulators; 2) catalyzing the flow of institutional capital for impact through engagement with investors, asset managers and intermediaries across asset classes; and 3) building the impact investing movement globally through education and awareness raising in collaboration with different stakeholders. This grant supports the Alliance over a period of three years.

2021 (2 years 3 months)
$900,000

Horizon 2045

New Venture Fund (NVF) conducts public interest projects and provides professional insight and support to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. This award supports NVF’s fiscally-sponsored project Horizon 2045, which is a long-term systems change effort to develop and bring about a model for global security independent of nuclear weapons. Horizon 2045 is a multi-phased large-scale project to build a new global security architecture that no longer relies on nuclear weapons by the year 2045, the hundredth anniversary of the advent of the nuclear age. This award supports the second phase of the project, which projects forward into a world in which nuclear deterrence theory no longer makes sense.

2021 (1 year)
$350,000

Media Democracy Fund

New Venture Fund (NVF) is a project and fiscal management organization that seeks a healthier, more equitable world across a range of social and environmental issues. Media Democracy Fund (MDF), a project of the NVF, runs and supports projects that create the conditions for an open, secure and equitable internet. The Disinformation Defense League (DDL), launched by MDF in 2020, is a distributed national network of more than 225 community-based organizations that are disrupting disinformation campaigns deliberately targeting Black, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and other communities of color. This grant provides flexible support for DDL to provide training for its network of community-based organizations in disinformation, racial justice, civil rights, narrative change and policy advocacy; to enhance the organizational security of its network members; and to deepen their understanding of how far-right White supremacist tactics move across the internet. DDL’s goal is to increase the capacity of its partner organizations to monitor and combat disinformation in their communities, to expand community awareness of disinformation and its impact, and to improve local leadership on issues related to online racialized disinformation.

2021 (2 years)
$500,000

Media Democracy Fund

A project of New Venture Fund, Media Democracy Fund (MDF) is a catalyst for an open, secure, and equitable internet. It brings together diverse voices to design inclusive and responsible solutions that empower public interest advocates to create an environment where digital technologies and the internet have a long-term, positive impact on society. The award provides flexible support to MDF’s administrative and programmatic management of the NetGain Partnership (NetGain), a philanthropic collaboration seeking to advance the public interest in the digital age. Each year a new NetGain Challenge is launched in which funding partners focus on a topic at the broad intersection of technology and the public interest in order to increase knowledge and collaboration on the topic. Activities undertaken through NetGain include expert convenings, learning events, published research, and grantmaking.

2021 (1 year 6 months)
$800,000

National Collaborative for Health Equity

The National Collaborative for Health Equity (NCHE) was launched in 2014 as a project of the New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. The mission of NCHE is to promote health equity by harnessing data, developing leaders, and catalyzing partnerships across the many different sectors that share responsibility for creating a more equitable and just society. In 2018, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), NCHE launched the Health Opportunity and Equity (HOPE) Initiative alongside the Texas Health Institute in partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health. The HOPE Initiative provides an interactive data tool designed to help states and the country move beyond measuring disparities to spurring action toward health equity. HOPE tracks social determinants of health and health outcomes by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. The unique analyses use an opportunity framework to set aspirational but achievable goals to improve life outcomes—especially populations of color most affected by systemic racism and conscious and unconscious bias.

2021 (1 year)
$500,000

IllumiNative

IllumiNative, a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, is a national Native-led organization with a mission to build power for Native peoples by amplifying contemporary Native voices, stories, and issues to advance justice, equity, and self-determination. To achieve this, it uses research, narrative and culture changes strategies, movement building, and digital organizing, and fosters collaborations across many sectors. Recent projects include Native American Votes, a collaboration with Native Organizers Alliance (NOA) to dramatically increase voter turnout among Native American communities in the 2020 election; and an ongoing collaboration with the Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) on the Native Now campaign, which has created lesson plans for teachers, social media graphics, a coloring book, and a factsheet about Indigenous Peoples Day. The flexible support provided by this grant enables IllumiNative to build its capacity at a time when its work is in high demand; and in turn, help build the capacity of its network of partner organizations to use narrative and storytelling to advance their goals.  

2020 (3 years)
$3,000,000

Collective Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation

The New Venture Fund (NVF) is an independent 501(c)(3) that acts as fiscal sponsor, specializing in helping funder collaboratives and others launch new social change projects that tackle the structural causes of inequality and environmental degradation. This award supports NVF’s Collaborative Action Fund for Accountability, Resilience, and Adaptation (CAF), which supports precedent-setting lawsuits to hold major corporations accountable for costs associated with the effects on climate of their pollutants. The award renews support for legal processes associated with a variety of lawsuits filed in support of states, counties and cities affected by climate change.

2020 (1 year)
$500,000

Media Democracy Fund

The award supports the Disinfo Defense League (DDL), a program of Media Democracy Fund, which is a fiscally sponsored project of New Venture Fund. DDL is a rapid response network designed to disrupt and dismantle manipulation and disinformation efforts targeting Black, Afro Latinx, and Latinx communities. DDL works to fight voter suppression during the 2020 U.S. election cycle and help stop racialized disinformation in other key areas including the COVID-19 pandemic, the global uprising against anti-Black racism and police violence. It works across geography, generation, and gender to equip communities with the tools, training, and tactics needed to combat racialized disinformation and win.

2020 (2 years)
$500,000

Algorithmic Justice League

A project of New Venture Fund, the Algorithmic Justice League is focused on conducting rigorous academic research on algorithmic bias that can lead to harmful discrimination; evidence-based advocacy focused on the artificial intelligence industry and government policymakers; and, producing art and creative science communication pieces to inform the general public on the risks and opportunities of artificial intelligence. Through this work, the Algorithmic Justice League seeks to advance transparency and accountability in the development, deployment and use of artificial intelligence related technologies and help ensure that marginalized communities most at risk to be harmed by these technologies are agents of change. The award provides flexible support to the organization.

2020 (2 years)
$600,000

IllumiNative

IllumiNative, a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, is a national Native-led organization designed to ensure Native peoples are seen, heard, valued and included in public life. Its mission is to illuminate Native voices, stories, and contributions in order to break through the invisibility and dispel the false narratives that adversely impact Native peoples. Its mission and programming are based on research carried out in 2016 to uncover opportunities for igniting Native imaginations and transforming how the American public and its institutions perceive, portray, and engage with Native peoples and their communities. The flexible support provided by this grant enables IllumiNative to continue its efforts to uplift Native voices through online campaigns that aggregate and amplify Native stories and experiences, conduct research to better understand Native peoples’ policy preferences and opinions, and engage in collaborations with the media, technology and entertainment sectors to ensure more accurate and nuanced portrayals of Native peoples in popular culture.

2020 (2 years)
$400,000

Digital Action

A project of New Venture Fund, Digital Action exists to strengthen democratic rights in the digital age. It builds coalitions within civil society that reveal digital threats and acts to address the factors allowing them to proliferate. It makes connections across sectors and between local activists and global policy debates. Digital Action’s programming has three core areas: 1) building and amplifying narratives of harm online; 2) helping its partners to develop, test, and socialize good ideas for how the digital world can be reformed; and, 3) driving collective action towards precedent-setting changes. The award provides flexible support to Digital Action as it builds out its work focused on addressing online disinformation and the growing power of technology platform companies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

2020 ( 2 months)
$20,000

IllumiNative

IllumiNative, housed at New Venture Fund, is a storytelling and narrative change effort designed to amplify the voices of Native Americans, challenge negative and inaccurate stereotypes about them, and bring visibility to the important contributions Native peoples make to American democracy. This grant supports a virtual event that brings together Native and non-Native artists and influencers to develop high-quality content that takes advantage of the reach of celebrity to increase participation in the Census in hard-to-count Native country. IllumiNative is partnering with the non-profit narrative change organization HARNESS to run virtual salon and workshop and assist with the production and dissemination of content in Native communities.

2020 (2 years)
$1,200,000

New Venture Fund (NVF) conducts public interest projects and provides professional insight and support to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. This award supports NVF’s project N Square, which is designed to activate novel ideas for reducing nuclear threat. N Square helps nuclear specialists solve problems in new ways while introducing new allies to the complexities of the issue.

2020 (4 years 6 months)
$6,000,000

Catalytic Capital Consortium

New Venture Fund is an independent 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a fiscal sponsor, helping funder collaboratives and others launch new social change projects. This grant will contribute to a $9.725 million pooled grant fund at New Venture Fund that will do regranting that advances the work of the Catalytic Capital Consortium, an investment, learning, and market development initiative of the MacArthur Foundation and its strategic partners, The Rockefeller Foundation and Omidyar Network, each of which also is contributing to the grant pool. The initiative aims to create a positive impact on people and the planet by spurring greater use of catalytic capital globally, as well as by encouraging conventional investors to make investments in tandem with catalytic capital. Grants funded through the pool will seek to increase the knowledge, awareness and use of catalytic capital among diverse investor groups, including foundations, high net worth individuals and families and donor governments, as well as development finance institutions and conventional investors. The grant supports the goals of the Catalytic Capital Consortium by providing funds for regranting as well as operational expenses, including contributions towards the hiring of a program officer to implement the project.

2020 (1 year)
$500,000

2020 Census Project

New Venture Fund is an independent 501(c)(3) organization that serves as a fiscal sponsor, specializing in helping funder collaboratives and others launch new social change projects. With the 2020 U.S. Census facing numerous challenges, foundation leaders came together in 2015 as the Democracy Funders Collaborative Census Subgroup to develop a strategy to ensure a comprehensive count. The Subgroup created the 2020 Census Project, housed at New Venture Fund, which aims to achieve a full and accurate count of the U.S. population by focusing on three primary goals: 1) Advocating for policy improvements to the American Community Survey and census to ensure adequate federal funding and sound decision making by the federal government; 2) Supporting outreach and public education to improve response rates for the 2020 census, particularly among undercounted populations; 3) Encouraging new players to help with the policy and Get Out The Count efforts, including funders, faith-based groups, businesses and state and local government. MacArthur funds provide flexible support for the 2020 Census Project. 

2019 (2 years)
$700,000

New Venture Fund (NVF) conducts public interest projects and provides professional insight and support to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. This award supports NVF’s project N Square, which aims to stimulate creative and impactful solutions to nuclear challenges and to make the topic more salient to the public. N Square is embarking on a multi-phased large-scale project, Horizon 2045, to build a new global security architecture that no longer relies on nuclear weapons by the year 2045, the hundredth anniversary of the advent of the nuclear age. This award supports the first phase of the project, which interrogates deterrence theory.

2019 (3 years)
$1,500,000

New Venture Fund is an independent 501(c)(3) that acts as a fiscal sponsor, specializing in helping funder collaboratives and others launch new social change projects. This grant supports New Venture Fund’s Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund (Equity Fund), which supports organizations that work to connect local concerns about the health, environmental, and economic well-being of communities to climate change. By investing mostly in local and state-based organizations that represent communities of color, indigenous peoples, young voters, and working families, the Equity Fund seeks to build a strong base of support for climate policy solutions in communities significantly affected by the consequences of climate change. The award helps these organizations build their capacity to engage effectively in advocacy on climate and clean energy policy initiatives. 

2019 ( 5 months)
$50,000

N Square

New Venture Fund conducts public interest projects and provides professional insight and support to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. This award supports its project N Square, which is a collaborative network of innovators and influencers from nuclear and other fields (such as technology and the arts), and which aims to stimulate creative and impactful solutions to nuclear challenges and to make the topic more salient to the public. This award supports an effort by N Square to host a series of workshops that are designed to identify priorities for change in the field that promote greater inclusion and innovation, in order to reduce nuclear risks.

2019 (3 years)
$2,000,000

New Venture Fund is an independent 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a fiscal sponsor, specializing in helping funder collaboratives and others launch new social change projects. This grant will support New Venture Fund’s Tipping Point Fund project, a $15-30 million, three-year pooled grant fund. This collaborative vehicle is funded by select members of the Presidents’ Council on Impact Investing, a group of twenty leading American foundations with a shared commitment to practicing and promoting impact investing, as well as others. It aims to fund field-building infrastructure to support the growth and practice of impact investing, focusing on critical public goods that are unlikely to be developed without grant support. The project will fund public policy and engagement and data, metrics, and measurement and seeks to encourage others to participate in funding these areas, which are best suited to collective action and require additional support beyond that provided by individual grantmakers. Grant proceeds are funding the grants made by the Project and its operating costs.

 

2019 ( 6 months)
$25,000

A project of the New Venture Fund, the Dangerous Speech Project undertakes work online and off-line to identify dangerous and harmful speech in order to help mitigate violence, while protecting freedom of speech. Amid widespread anxiety about hate, harassment, and dangerous speech online, minimal attention has been paid to finding constructive ways of responding to that content. The award supports research that will examine the #iamhere movement in its efforts to respond to hated and vitriol online in an effort provide new insights about the capacity of counterspeech to influence the behavior of others.

2019 (1 year)
$250,000

Digital Action

A project of New Venture Fund, Digital Action is a new global organization that works to strengthen democratic and digital rights as technology evolves. Flexible support is being provided to the organization as it develops and tests new models of global collaboration among civil society organizations to challenge problematic technology products and business practices through a mix of rapid response and longer-term campaigns.

2019 (3 years)
$600,000

Dangerous Speech Project

A project of New Venture Fund, Dangerous Speech Project (DSP) was founded in 2010 to develop, and make constructive use of, the observation that certain strikingly similar kinds of rhetoric precede mass violence in diverse cases, and that this knowledge might be used to prevent such violence. DSP has since developed methods that are used around the world to identify and counteract rhetoric that can inspire violence and hatred, while also protecting freedom of expression. The award provides flexible support to DSP as it undertakes research, analysis and convenings seeking to understand dangerous speech and hatred occurring on social media platforms. Through this work, technology companies, government policymakers, academics and advocates will have a better understanding about what is required to effectively diminish hatred online, while not having a chilling impact on free speech.

2019 (2 years 6 months)
$500,000

Media Democracy Fund

A project of New Venture Fund, Media Democracy Fund (MDF) is a catalyst for an open, secure and equitable internet. It brings together diverse voices to design inclusive and responsible solutions that empower public interest advocates to create an environment where digital technologies and the internet have a long-term, positive impact on society. The award supports the role MDF plays in coordinating the activities of the NetGain Partnership, a funder collaboration that seeks to strengthen digital society and advance the public interest. Each year, a new NetGain Challenge is launched in which funding partners focus on a topic at the broad intersection of technology and the public interest in order to increase knowledge and collaboration in the space. Activities undertaken through each NetGain Challenge include a mix of expert convenings, public events, published research and grantmaking.

2018 (2 years)
$500,000

IllumiNative

Founded in 2006, New Venture Fund is a public charitable organization that manages programs, provides fiscal sponsorship to nonprofit organizations, and coordinates grants programs. IllumiNative, housed at New Venture Fund, is a newly-established storytelling and narrative change effort designed to amplify the voices of Native Americans, challenge negative and inaccurate stereotypes about them, and bring visibility to the important contributions Native peoples make to American democracy. IllumiNative is the result of a two-year research initiative to uncover opportunities for igniting Native imaginations and transforming how the American public and its institutions perceive, portray, and engage with Native peoples and their communities. This flexible support grant will enable IllumiNative to take insights from its research to roll out programming and begin growing a network of storytellers to uplift Native voices and develop new narratives that reflect accurate and nuanced portrayals of Native peoples experiences, history, and contributions to American society.

2018 (2 years)
$1,300,000

New Venture Fund conducts public interest projects and provides professional insight and support to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. This award supports its project N Square, which is a collaborative network of innovators and influencers from nuclear and other fields (such as technology and the arts), which aims to stimulate creative and impactful solutions to nuclear challenges and to make the topic more salient to the public. This award supports N Square's network development so it can continue to facilitate the introduction, initiation, and integration of new ideas and resources into the nuclear field.

2017 (3 years 8 months)
$450,000

U.S. Impact Investing Alliance

The New Venture Fund is a nonprofit that works to achieve a healthier, more equitable world, collaborating with individuals and institutions to provide them fiscal sponsorships to enable them to work on their charitable missions. This grant provides support for the U.S. Impact Investing Alliance, a fiscal sponsorship project of the New Venture Fund. The Alliance is a field building organization committed to raising awareness of impact investing in the United States, fostering the deployment of impact capital and working with stakeholders to help build the impact investing ecosystem. It is the successor to the US National Advisory Board (NAB) on Impact Investing, which was formed in 2014 as a part of the global Social Impact Investment Taskforce established under the UK’s presidency of the G8.The Alliance is the US representative to the Global Steering Group on Impact Investment which emerged from the taskforce. This grant provides general operating support to the Alliance over a period of three years.

2017 (1 year)
$500,000

The New Venture Fund (NVF) is a 501(c)3 public charity that supports and hosts a range of donor-driven, public interest projects in areas such as civic engagement, conservation, global health, public policy, international development, and education. The Safety Net Defense Fund (SNDF) project, hosted at NVF, is working with two leading national organizations – the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for Community Change – that have deep histories of civic engagement and policy work on poverty issues and safety net programs. Under the current Administration and Congress, many of these programs such as health care under the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and food assistance are under threat, and tens of millions of people are at risk of losing vital supports. The Foundation is one of several philanthropic supporters of the SNDF, which will work over two years to mobilize public support to defend the integrity of the safety net.

2017 (2 years)
$300,000

Dangerous Speech Project

A project of the New Venture Fund, the Dangerous Speech Project (DSP) was founded in 2010 to test a simple, original idea: that a particular type of public speech tends to catalyze intergroup violence, and that this knowledge might be used to prevent such violence. It has since developed methods that have been used around the globe to identify and counteract rhetoric that can inspire violence, while also protecting freedom of expression. The award supports the DSP’s research, analysis, and convenings seeking to understand hateful and dangerous speech occurring on social media platforms, while also providing advice to leading technology companies on how to make their platforms less hospitable to it. Through this work, platform operators, government policymakers, and advocates will have a better understanding about what is required to effectively diminish hatred online, while not having a chilling impact on free speech.

2017 (3 years)
$1,500,000

Funders for Housing and Opportunity

The New Venture Fund (NVF), is a 501(c)3 public charity that, through fiscal sponsorship, supports and hosts a range of donor-driven, social and environmental change projects in areas such as conservation, global health, public policy, international development, and education. Funders for Housing and Opportunity (FHO) is a project of NVF working to make homes safe, stable and affordable for the 12 million households that are housing insecure. Such efforts are an essential part of the nation's efforts to improve economic mobility, educational achievement, and health outcomes for all. The goal of FHO is for all Americans to be able to afford homes that serve as a stable foundation for successful lives, and that all communities are communities of choice and opportunity.

2016 (3 years)
$1,250,000

Established in 2015, the Climate Education Fund supports organizations that work toward connecting local concerns about the health, environmental, and economic well-being of their communities to climate change. By investing mostly in state-based organizations that represent communities of color, faith communities, young voters, and working families, the Fund seeks to build a strong base of support for climate policy solutions in communities significantly impacted by the effects of climate change. The Climate Education Fund helps these organizations build and grow their membership base, skills, and capacity to engage in advocacy on climate and clean energy policy initiatives. The Climate Education Fund is a project of the New Venture Fund, which manages a large and diverse grant portfolio for donors interested in collaborative grantmaking. MacArthur’s contribution to the Fund increases the pool of financial resources available for work to promote climate solutions. 

2016 (2 years)
$300,000

CREO Syndicate

New Venture Fund is a project and fiscal management organization that seeks a healthier, more equitable world across a range of social and environmental issues. New Venture Fund supports the CREO Syndicate, a nonprofit organization incorporated in 2015 that provides education, transaction expertise, resource-sharing services and opportunities for collaborative investing to the growing network of qualified family offices, private investors and advisors for the purpose of mobilizing investment capital for climate and environmental needs. The CREO Syndicate is growing its current membership base to a sustainable operating model, with the goal of accelerating and optimizing the deployment of environmentally targeted patient capital to drive momentum in the private investment community on an ongoing basis. CREO’s strategic positioning as a trusted, mission-driven aggregator of opportunities for capital providers and recipients is essential to unlocking financial leverage for climate mitigation.

2016 (1 year 6 months)
$225,000

Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education

The Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education (PSIPSE), a project of the New Venture Fund, is a donor collaborative that was established in 2012 with leadership from the MacArthur Foundation. The overarching goal of the PSIPSE is to improve the quality of secondary education and learning outcomes for poor and marginalized youth in the developing world. In working toward this objective, PSIPSE has a three-fold goal to foster innovation, facilitate systemic change, and enhance learning to catalyze broader change in secondary education. Award funds will help to support efforts to systematically advance a collective learning and influencing agenda that builds off of the emerging evidence from projects funded to-date. Award funds will help to ensure financial stability and will assist in implementation of the new strategic plan.

2016 (2 years)
$400,000

The Fund for a Safer Future (the Fund) was established in 2011 to bring new funding, energy and ideas to the gun violence prevention movement, and to enlarge the base of support for gun policies that prioritize public safety over the individual rights of gun ownership. The Fund is a project of the New Venture Fund, which manages a large and diverse grant portfolio for donors interested in collaborative grantmaking. Member donors, including the Joyce, MacArthur, and True North foundations. MacArthur’s contribution to the Fund increases the pool of financial resources available for work to promote sensible gun policies and to help attract other donors to these efforts.

2015 (2 years 7 months)
$252,000

Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education

Managed under an administrative agreement by Arabella Advisors, The New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) established in 2006, conducts public interest projects and provides professional services to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change through strategic philanthropy. The New Venture Fund (Fund) provides the Partnership to Strengthen Innovation and Practice in Secondary Education (PSIPSE), a donor collaborative established in 2012, with fiscal sponsorship and project hosting services that enable PSIPSE to advance its agenda of improving access to quality secondary education in developing countries. The Fund hosts the PSIPSE's operations and provides financial account management and oversight, human resource management, and other services. It employs a full-time Coordinator to support and advance the objectives of the collaborative and maintains a restricted fund to receive tax-deductible donations to support PSIPSE activities.

2015 (2 years 3 months)
$300,000

Dangerous Speech Project

The award supports the Dangerous Speech Project ("the Project"), a project of the New Venture Fund, as it tests new ideas that aim to identify and diminish speech that has the potential to catalyze intergroup violence and respond to harmful speech that is unlikely to catalyze violence without engaging in censorship. Given that speech is increasingly anchored in the digital environment and mediated by companies, a particular focus ofthe project is studying and addressing speech occurring on social media platforms. Two areas of work are funded through the award. First, the Project is working with leading technology companies such as Facebook and Twitter, conducting research and advising them on how to make their platforms less hospitable to hateful and dangerous speech. Second, the Project is creating accessible, high-quality online tools for monitoring and countering dangerous speech to help ensure that the growing number of civil society organizations and others interested in addressing dangerous speech around the globe have the resources to guide their efforts. Grant money supports a portion of staff salaries, travel, and the development of online resources.

2015 (1 year)
$1,998,000

New Venture Fund is a non-profit organization that provides professional services to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change, assisting in the launch of new organizations, projects, and programs, and helping to execute donor-developed projects. This grant provides continued funding for the Connected Learning Alliance to bring to scale digital media and learning projects and spread Connected Learning to new audiences, with a focus on Cities of Learning.

2014 ( 7 months)
$200,000

New Venture Fund is a non-profit organization that supports public interest projects in the U.S. and abroad. It provides professional services to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change, and helps launch new organizations, projects, and execute donor-developed projects. It is currently incubating the MacArthur-supported Connected Learning Alliance (CLA), a new collaborative effort whose goal is to ensure the scale-up of digital media and learning projects and the spread of Connected Learning to new audiences. This grant funds communications activities designed to spread the use of open badges for learning.

2013 (2 years 8 months)
$200,000

New Venture Fund is a non-profit organization that supports public interest projects in the United States and abroad. The J. Christopher Stevens Virtual Exchange Initiative is a multilateral, public-private endeavor designed to achieve the largest-ever increase in people-to-people educational exchanges between the U.S. and the broader Middle East. Using technology and an approach to education grounded in principles of Connected Learning, it is committed to cultivating a new generation of globally-minded and culturally-sensitive youth. This grant supports the launch of the initiative, including establishing a governance structure and meetings with experts in the Middle East.

2013 (1 year)
$3,800,000

New Venture Fund is a non-profit organization that provides professional services to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change, helping to launch new organizations, projects, and programs, and to execute donor-developed projects. New Venture Fund will use this grant to establish and make operational the Connected Learning Alliance (CLC), a new organization whose goal is to ensure the that digital media and learning projects are brought to scale, and that the Connected Learning concept spreads to new audiences. Over time, the CLC is expected to provide the infrastructure to support a learning agenda for the digital age.

2013 (1 year)
$500,000

New Venture Fund is a non-profit organization that supports public interest projects in the United States and abroad. It is supporting a project for the digital media and learning initiative to plan and launch a new center whose goal is to ensure the spread of digital media and learning projects and the framework of Connected Learning. The Fund will use this grant to continue to develop a variety of partnerships across government, philanthropy, industry, and entertainment to help spread the Connected Learning approach; and to launch a campaign to directly engage youth in Connected Learning.

2013 (2 years)
$400,000

The Fund for a Safer Future was established in 2011 to bring new funding, energy and ideas into the gun violence prevention movement and to enlarge the base of support for gun policies that prioritize public safety over the interests of pro-gun advocates. Early activities include building an influential coalition of elected officials, faith leaders, and law enforcement professionals; developing clearer messages to engage the media and public’s attention; and hiring a national director to provide strategic leadership and coordination of policy work in key states. The Fund is a project of the New Venture Fund.

2012 (1 year)
$500,000

The non-profit New Venture Fund supports public interest projects in the U.S. and abroad, providing professional services to institutions and individuals seeking to foster change; and helping to launch new organizations, projects, and programs, and to execute donor-developed projects. The Fund will use this grant to plan and launch a new center whose goal is to ensure the scale-up of digital media and learning projects and the Connected Learning framework: taking the lead in creating a national audience for Connected Learning; helping the demonstration sites disseminate their practices and products; and facilitating the spread and adoption of other digital media and learning projects.

2011 (1 year)
$250,000

The New Venture Fund (NVF) manages a large and diverse grant portfolio for donors seeking to work through an intermediary or for groups of donors interested in collaborative grantmaking. This grant will support The Fund for a Safer Future, a project NVF, which is a funders’ collaborative established to support new strategies for reducing gun-related injury and death in the U.S. Specifically, this grant will support the launch of a new gun violence prevention organization and the development of a new communications strategy.