William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

OVERVIEW: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is one of the largest charitable organizations in the United States. Hewlett makes grants for racial justice, women’s empowerment, greater government transparency and accountability, and more effective policymaking processes. It also makes environmental grants to supports climate change initiatives, clean energy and land conservation. Other grantmaking focuses on K-12 education, arts and community development efforts in the Bay Area.

IP TAKE: Hewlett, a GUTC signatory, values grassroots groups in global development, but mainly tends to support larger NGOs with which it has longstanding commitments. Those commitments can make it difficult for newcomers to secure funding. Grantseekers should note that this is a foundation that deeply values better data, so it funds a lot of research, assessment and data collection projects.

Hewlett strives toward transparency, and though somewhat bureaucratic — understandably, due to the large scope of its work — likes to work closely with grantees. It invests in back-and-forth communication with the intention of better supporting grantees. According to GrantAdvisor, there is a seven- to eight-year turnover at Hewlett, so make sure to acquaint yourself with program officers that retain institutional memory even if they’ve moved on to another organization. Patience can pay off here. This is an excellent funder to know.

PROFILE: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation was established in 1966 by Bill Hewlett, cofounder of Hewlett-Packard, with a “loose charter mandating perpetual existence… as a charitable, religious, scientific, literary or educational foundation for the purpose of promoting the wellbeing of mankind.” A signatory of the GUTC Pledge, this nonpartisan organization prioritizes the advancement of education for all, the environment, developing countries, the health and economic wellbeing of women, performing arts, strengthening Bay Area communities, and making the philanthropy sector more effective. The foundation’s current grantmaking programs are Economy and Society, Education, Effective Philanthropy, Environment, Gender Equity and Governance, Performing Arts, Racial Justice, San Francisco Bay Area and U.S. Democracy. It also maintains a Special Projects grantmaking area.

Grants for Racial Justice

Racial Justice is one of Hewlett’s newer grantmaking programs with a dedicated strategy. Grantmaking here “begins internally” and is guided by Hewlett’s “Culture, Race, and Equity team, which identifies and promotes practices, programming, and grantmaking to advance racial justice.” In this vein, Hewlett is working toward deepening its culture and and internal commitment” in tandem with funding in this area. While Hewlett has a dedicated racial justice program, it conducts all grantmaking through a racial equity lens.

Funding related to racial justice occurs across several focus areas and intersects with topics like climate change, K-12 education, building public trust in our democracy, and women’s reproductive rights.
Grantmaking from this program has gone to Solidaire, Color of Change Education Fund, PolicyLink, Race Forward, the Asian American Journalists Association, the New Venture Fund’s Fair Representation in Redistricting Initiative and the Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice Initiative at City College, New York.

Grants for Women and Reproductive Rights

Hewlett makes grants for women and girls’ causes via its Gender Equity and Governance initiative. This program’s purpose is to “to foster inclusive societies so that all people, and especially women and girls, are able to fulfill their life aspirations.”

This program features a new Reproductive Equity strategy focused on the U.S. from 2024–2027. In the post-Dobbs era, the foundation’s new shift in strategy focuses on long-term reproductive equity, as well as on “abortion care and contraception among those facing the greatest barriers,” which include LGBTQ and BIPOC people.

The foundation’s current geographic priorities for this funding area are sub-Saharan Africa, Mexico and the U.S., and its specific goals include reproductive health and justice, economic opportunity, government responsiveness and accountability and the development of policy towards these ends.
Recent grantees include the African Population and Health Research Center, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Grants for Climate Change and Environmental Conservation

The Hewlett Foundation’s Environment program works to “protect people and places threatened by a warming planet by addressing climate change globally, expanding clean energy, and conserving the North American West.”

Its Climate and Energy strategy focuses on a crosscutting approach towards current multinational and multi-industry climate commitments in order to help meet current targets. This work seeks to ensure that “the global average temperature increase (remains) well below 2°C above preindustrial levels, facilitating a sustainable and equitable transition to a low-carbon economy” and address any bottlenecks.
- In 2008, Hewlett launched a $1 billion, joint climate-funding initiative, the ClimateWorks Foundation.
- In July 2024, Hewlett refreshed the foundation’s Global Climate Initiative Strategy through 2029. Beyond the U.S., this work also works to hold China, India and the European Union to their climate commitments.

Its Western Conservation strategy works to “protect the extraordinary natural resources of the Western United States and Canada, and back efforts to build broad public support and empower citizens who care about the conservation of land, water and air in the West.” Its goal is to conserve at least 320 million acres of land by 2035. Past grantees include $1.5 million to Water Foundation, $200,000 to Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, and $300,000 to Yurok Tribe for The Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program.
Additionally, Hewlett, along with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, David and Lucile Packard and Rockefeller foundations, and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, heads a fund called Invest in Our Future that works to ensure that local groups and organizations benefit from the opportunities created by three recent federal bills: the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.

Recent environmental and climate grantees include the Water Foundation, Justice Outside, and the Humboldt Area Foundation, among many others.

Grants for Education

Education funding at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation aims to “help educators, schools and communities turn schools into places that empower and equip every student for a lifetime of learning, and to expand access to open educational resources.” It is organized around two strategies: K-12 teaching and learning and open educational resources.

Grants for K-12 Education

Hewlett’s K-12 teaching and learning program supports “states, districts, schools, teachers and students” as they “prepare every student to set and achieve their own, authentic goals.” Subinitiatives in this program include innovation in teacher practice, education systems, and advocacy.

The open educational resources initiative invests in the development of high quality open resources in the U.S. and promotes these resources “as a way to increase educational access and equity in the developing world.”
Past grantees include OCAD University, the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and iCivics.

Grants for Higher Education

Hewlett supports higher education through its education, the environment, performing arts, U.S. democracy and San Francisco Bay Area programs.

Its education program prioritizes K-12 teaching and learning and open educational resources, supporting both teacher education and the development of free, high-quality educational materials that are available online to educators around the world. Education grantees include teacher preparation programs at Stanford and Michigan State University and the OER Graduate Network of the Open University.
Hewlett’s environmental program aims “to protect people and places threatened by a warming planet by addressing climate change globally, expanding clean energy and conserving the North American West,” which includes a focus on environmental education and research. One past higher education grantee in this area is Stanford University, which used funding to study carbon dioxide removal in the state of California.

Grants for Arts and Culture

The Hewlett Foundation’s Performing Arts program prioritizes the San Francisco Bay area, supporting “meaningful artistic experiences for communities.”

Grants for Communities support “a broad range of performing arts forms and practices that are relevant to and reflective of people living throughout the region,” especially those that reflect demographic and economic diversity.
Grants for Artists directly support individual artists and collectives seeking to “evolve business models,” “seize opportunities presented by the changing ways art is created, distributed and financed,” and “embrace collaboration across artistic boundaries and sectors.”
Grants for Youth supports arts education for Bay Area youth by directly funding school arts programs and advocating for public policy that increases investment in the arts.
Grants through Sector-Wide Support provide capacity-building grants for Bay Area groups working in arts advocacy and infrastructure.

Grants for Housing and Community Development

The Hewlett Foundation’s Bay Area Communities program prioritizes disadvantaged communities and supports nonprofits working to solve the area’s “most pressing problems.”

These include leadership development, neighborhood revitalization, teen pregnancy, student achievement and teacher retention.
Past grants have gone to the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California and the Urban Habitat Program, an Oakland-based organization that works “to advance equitable transportation, land use and housing policies” throughout the Bay Area.

In education, Hewlett has joined forces with five other Bay Area funders to form PropelNext, a collaborative effort to “enhance the ability of organizations to collect, use and apply data for ongoing improvement and learning.” PropelNext has provided general operating support for Enterprise for Youth, Generation Citizen and the Oakland Leaf Foundation, which aims to “cultivate community transformation through creative education for youth and families.”

Grants for Civic Engagement and Democracy

The Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. Democracy grantmaking program aims “to strengthen America’s electoral and governing institutions and, in doing so, build public trust in our democracy” by reducing toxic political polarization. IP’s interview with U.S. Democracy Program Director Ali Noorani sheds further light on this giving area through 2024, as the election year ramps up, and beyond.

The program’s current sub-initiatives are Trustworthy Elections, which makes grants to improve the accessibility and security of elections nationwide.
National Governing Institutions funds initiatives to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of the legislative and executive branches of U.S. government in light of increasing polarization.
Grantees of the democracy program include the Center for Responsive Politics, the Truman Center for National Policy and the New Venture Fund’s Voting Rights Lab.

Grants for Nonprofits

The foundation’s Effective Philanthropy program primarily seeks to “strengthen the capacity” of Hewlett grantees, as well as philanthropy in general.

Knowledge for Better Philanthropy, a substrategy, supports organizations that “produce independent, high-quality knowledge about practical matters facing foundations.” Hewlett’s grantees in this space range from academic centers to investigative journalism — so long as work encourages “a spirit of inquiry that promotes dialogue and debate.” This work reports on nearly every focus area and subject that the foundation funds.
Listening and Feedback, a crucial part of Hewlett’s learning, strives to incorporate grantee feedback, as well as “understand the connection between feedback and better results.”

Important Grant Details:

Hewlett Foundation grants are often substantial and typically range from $100,000 to $2 million. While a significant portion of its grantmaking centers around the San Francisco Bay Area, it also funds organizations across the United States and internationally.

To get a broader sense of the types of organizations Hewlett supports and at what level, explore its grants database.
The foundation regularly posts calls for proposals, but it is also proactive in its grantmaking, and reaches out to potential grantees that are doing good work in sync with its goals.

While Hewlett accepts unsolicited letters of inquiry, it rarely funds projects in response to them; however, it looks at inquiries and its staff often engages with grantseekers who are referred by existing grantees. Contact the foundation with further questions, (650) 234-4500.

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