Michael & Susan Dell Foundation Grant

Overview

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has always recognized the power of providing grants to partner organizations that we knew were already working hard to improve the lives of urban children living in poverty. By aligning with organizations that are already making a difference, we continue to make an immediate impact on the lives of thousands of children.

There’s no shortage of challenges in education, family economic stability and childhood health. To meet these challenges head on, it’s essential that we’re nimble in our approach. That’s why we use a range of financial tools and structures to support our work. In addition to our core grant making, we also use a selective, mission-driven impact investment strategy to help develop specific products and tools, as well as spur new markets that serve the poor, and we employ direct service agreements when an opportunity calls for specialized expertise.

We seek to fund projects that directly serve or impact children living in urban poverty, particularly in the areas of education, family economic stability (including microfinance) and childhood health.

Programs

• Urban Education: We're committed to helping underserved students improve academic performance and increasing access to quality education.
• College Success: One of our founders' original goals for the foundation was to ensure that disadvantaged students have the same opportunity to get to and graduate from college or university.
• Family Economic Stability: Financial stability can help families break the cycle of poverty and ensure better health and education for their children. Only in India and South Africa.
• Health and Wellness: Our goal is to improve the health and wellness of all children by increasing access to healthy opportunities while building demand for healthy options.

Our education programs create pathways out of poverty for families. Access to high-quality schools, access to the right classroom tools and technology, and support to close the graduation gap—it all makes a difference.

Schools and programs in are supported in the U.S., India, and South Africa. Program foci in the U.S. are detailed below.

• Quality Schools: the foundation increases access to quality education in the U.S. by fostering great schools and helping them grow. This includes partnering with organizations to grow great schools and helping local education agency leaders empower schools to meet the needs of low-income students.
• Classroom Supports: more than half of U.S. students from low-income backgrounds are below basic proficiency in literacy and math. We give teachers access to resources that help improve instruction and close gaps like this. We also connect different sources of student data so that teachers can gain a full picture of student academic performance, progress, and needs. We work with partners to provide those tools, equipping educators to analyze each student’s academic achievement and change direction as needed.
• College Success: through Dell Scholars and other college success programs, we provide the right support at the right time so these students can succeed in college and open the door to a lifetime of opportunity.

Applications can be accepted anytime, but require coordination through ASUF. Contact RODA for more details if interested in applying. 

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has approved grants ranging from $500 to several million dollars. As a guideline, the foundation generally will not fund more than 25 percent of a project’s budget or more than 10 percent of an organization’s total annual operating expenses.

Foundation priorities: The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation only accepts unsolicited proposals for specific areas within the education, family economic stability and childhood health sectors in select countries where we work, namely the United States, India and South Africa.