Arnold Ventures

• If your work sits within criminal justice, health care, infrastructure, public finance, or higher education and career pathways, the foundation asks that requests align with those core areas, so a project outside them is unlikely to fit.
• About 8 in 10 of its grants fall between $19,500 and $550,000, and half are about $130,000 or less, so a modest request in the lower part of that range is the most realistic size; its largest grant in the filings was $12,500,000, which is not a ceiling.
• Most proposals reach it through direct outreach, and it also issues formal Requests for Proposals from time to time, so watch for one, but the filing does not set out submission steps, so making contact first is sensible.
• In the filing, 80% of its grant dollars to organisations went to organisations it had also funded in an earlier filing, which suggests existing relationships carry real weight.
• Its grants are mainly in District of Columbia, New York, California and Massachusetts, but no geographic focus is stated, so organisations elsewhere should not assume they are excluded.

The largest grants to organisations in the foundation’s latest filing:

• City Fund · To provide general operating support to support grantee's efforts to partner with local leaders to create innovative public school systems, with the overall goal of improving the quality of public education in cities across the united states.
  $12,500,0002024 tax year
• MDRC · To support grantee to develop and advance multiple strategies to significantly increase its organizational impact in areas including: (i) strengthening connections between its research and policymakers; (ii) building a more rigorous approach to technical assistance; (iii) advancing its leadership on the use of new evaluation methodologies and data; and (iv) leveraging data efficiently for evaluation, decision-making, and program improvement.
  $5,000,0002024 tax year
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology · To support j-pal north america, including by funding landmark randomized evaluations, expanding the capacity and diversity of researchers who work on randomized evaluations, translating findings into actionable insights that inform policy at scale, and institutionalizing the use of evidence as a driving force behind u.s. policymaking.
  $3,500,0002024 tax year
• Accelerate - The National Collaborative for Accelerated Learning · To support grantee's states leading recovery grant program.
  $3,322,0002024 tax year
• Center for Effective Public Policy · To provide training and technical assistance for the public safety assessment and pretrial reform.
  $3,014,1082024 tax year
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology · To support the abdul latif jameel poverty action lab north america in its work to generate randomized controlled trials that measure the impact of social programs and policies.
  $3,000,0002024 tax year
• Vera Institute of Justice · To support the restoring promise initiative that partners with state departments of corrections to design and facilitate rigorous evaluation of reimagined housing units for incarcerated young adults in a way that centers human dignity, safety, and race equity.
  $2,000,0002024 tax year
• Johns Hopkins University · To continue to develop and publicly disseminate policy options to regulate and control drug spending.
  $2,000,0002024 tax year

Grants to organisations listed in the foundation’s Form 990-PF filings. Grants to individuals are not shown.

Figures from the foundation’s IRS Form 990-PF filings. Assets are at fair market value at year end. The document icon links to each year’s filing on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.