Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Grants

Overview

Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation seeks to dramatically improve the lives of underserved communities across the globe by supporting scalable, innovative, and impact-first solutions that leverage existing systems and stakeholders. Our goal is to find social entrepreneurs with dynamic products or services that have a proven ability to positively impact the lives of underserved people, and nurture those organizations at the early stages by providing capacity, capital, and community.

Our application process is designed to be open and accessible, and we accept applications year round from across our priority geographies and sectors. Borrowing from our venture capital legacy, we find exceptional entrepreneurs and provide them with: 

• Capacity: The core of DRK’s model is deep and extensive operational and technical support for each portfolio organization, both through dedicated hands-on Board service and specialist capacity-building resources for fundraising, board and organizational development, leadership, financial support, and scaling strategy,
• Capital: DRK provides up to $300,000 USD in either unrestricted grant funding or investment capital over a three-year period, and
• Community: DRK convenes our portfolio and alumni annually, facilitating connections and community. 

We invite you to learn more about what we fund and our selection process, and to share your solution with us through our online application.

 What are the attributes of a strong DRK candidate organization?

• Problem-first: Organizations addressing an urgent or critical social or environmental problem in an innovative fashion and in a way that directly benefits underserved populations.
• Systems-thinking: Organizations with solutions work within existing systems, leveraging existing stakeholders, infrastructure, and incentives to grow their impact.
• Scalable: Organizations with solutions can scale significantly, in that they can grow exponentially over time to directly impact a minimum of 10,000 lives within the next five years, and ambitions to grow well beyond that.
• Geographically aligned: Organizations operating in our priority geographies of Africa, Europe, India, and the United States, although we will also consider opportunities in Latin America in select situations.
• Independent entities: Organizations that are structured as independent nonprofit or impact first, mission-driven for-profit entities, including US 501(c)3 and its non-US equivalents, C corporations, B corporations, hybrid organizations, and fiscally sponsored organizations where there is a plan to spin out.
• Financially sustainable: Organizations that have at least a growable stream of earned income revenues or plans to develop an earned income revenue stream in the immediate future.
• Measurable evidence of impact: Organizations that are developing solutions based on data and clear evidence of what works, and through their pilot(s) have a demonstrated ability to clearly and effectively measure their impact on underserved populations.  

What stage of growth does DRK Foundation typically fund?

• Early stage: Organizations that are early stage, which we define as post-pilot and pre-scale. This typically means:
  • Your program, product or service is already being used in the market or in the field, 
  • You have early indication that your model is having its intended impact on the beneficiary populations,
  • Your organization is relatively young (ideally between two and five years old, although we will consider both younger and older organizations).

What is not eligible for DRK funding?

• Idea stage or pre-pilot / pre-product stage organizations, or post-Series A stage organizations.
• Solutions that do not have a primary or predominant focus on supporting a vulnerable, marginalized, or otherwise underserved community
• Innovations that do not integrate with or otherwise seek to align with established stakeholders or distribution channels in the targeted sector.
• Place-based models or organizations that otherwise do not plan to expand or scale their impact in an exponential fashion to achieve their mission.
• Projects or programs housed within another organization (e.g., fiscal sponsor), unless there is an explicit plan to spin out said project or program as a standalone entity in the immediate or near-term future.
• Organizations primarily focused on awareness, advocacy, policy change, or field-building campaigns.
• Organizations with sole focus on the development of research without accompanying direct intervention (e.g., think tanks).
• Programs without an explicit focus on efficacy and/or impact measurement.
• Programs promoting religious doctrine.
• US 501(c)4 organizations, S-Corps, Partnerships (LPs or LLPs), LLCs, or investment funds.

Organizations may re-apply up to twice, no sooner than one year after a decline notification from DRK regarding any previous applications.

DRK reviews approximately 2,225 applications every year. DRK funds a total of approximately 20 organizations every year, drawn from all of our priority geographies and across a wide variety of sectors.

DRK does not reinvest in organizations or provide additional capital after the initial investment period.