Arnold Ventures
/OVERVIEW: Arnold Ventures, the philanthropic LLC (limited liability corporation) of John and Laura Arnold, takes a venture philanthropy approach to giving in a number of fields, including criminal justice reform, health and public health, education, infrastructure, and public policy research and advocacy.
IP TAKE: Arnold Ventures is one of the largest philanthropies in the U.S., making hundreds of millions in grants annually. Its signature approach is to correct “systemic failures through evidence-based solutions.” Arnold is dedicated to maximizing impact, and isn’t shy about engaging with political giving, funding 501(c)(4) organizations, joining funding collaboratives, and participating in public-private partnerships.
This funder exercises a proactive approach to grantmaking and generally does not accept unsolicited proposals, though Arnold does “periodically issue calls for projects.” RFPs, when open, tend to be meticulously detailed. Stay informed of RFPs by subscribing to Arnold’s newsletter. For those interested in researching past grantees, Arnold’s grants database is well-organized. All told, smaller organizations will have difficulty engaging this funder, and only organizations that closely align with Arnold’s mission and desire for “evidence-based” projects will be considered for funding.
PROFILE: Established in 2010, Arnold Ventures originally took the form of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation after the couple signed the Giving Pledge. In 2019, the Arnolds created Arnold Ventures, a limited liability corporation (LLC) that oversees the grantmaking operations for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Action Now Initiative, and the Arnolds’ donor-advised fund. The LLC works to “invest in evidence-based solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.”
Arnold Ventures has evolved and expanded significantly in a short period of time, as its prolific grantmaking embraces new areas of interest. The LLC currently divides its grantmaking into nearly a dozen funding buckets, including health, criminal justice reform, democracy, climate, higher education, journalism, and affordable housing. The LLC’s grants database reveals several intersecting issue areas.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
Arnold Ventures’ Criminal Justice program addresses the justice system that “puts people of color at risk, disproportionately harms low-income people, limits the potential of juveniles caught in the system.” The foundation targets problems at every stage of the justice process across several initiatives stated below:
Policing grants, with “American policing at a crossroads,” support projects that address policing accountability, which invests in research, and community safety, which invests in rethinking the role of police.
Grants for Pretrial Justice seek to reform the entirety of the pretrial system. AV’s investments in pretrial justice invest in policies that work to “decarcerate, protect individuals’ constitutional rights, advance community safety, and promote racial justice.” AV established the National Partnership for Pretrial Justice, a community of experts that work towards eliminating unjust pretrial detention.
Grants for Public Defense invest in initiatives that aim to improve “access, quality and independence of counsel.”
Community Supervision grants support research into reasons for probation and parole violations and how they can be reduced, as well as “advocacy that uncovers and remedies economic and racial disparities.”
Grants for Prisons aim to create a “strategy for reforming state and federal prisons.”
Reintegration grants support “policies that will allow people to clear their records, reduce barriers to successful reintegration, and eliminate the severe and long-lasting collateral consequences of a criminal conviction.”
Past grantees include the ACLU, Coalition for Public Safety, and the Innocence Project, among many others.
Grants for Health, Women and Girls
Arnold Ventures’ Health grants support efforts to “improve healthcare delivery, lower costs, and reduce disparities in access.” Though Arnold Ventures does not have a program dedicated to women and girls, some of its health giving overlaps with women’s reproductive health, which advances women’s empowerment and economic development. Arnold Ventures features several health initiatives that intersect with its research and advocacy interests:
Grants for the Opioid Epidemic aim to treat the crisis as a “public health issue, not a criminal justice problem” in order to “save lives and reduce the economic, social and criminal justice costs of the opioid epidemic.”
Grants for Contraceptive Choice and Access promote fair and equitable access to birth control.
Grants for Drug Pricing aim to ensure that the price of prescription drugs are accessible and affordable to all.
Grants for Commercial Sector Prices work to lower the prices paid for hospital and physician services by eliminating surprise bills, increasing strong market power, and exposing anti-competitive market practices that effect patient-consumers.
Grants for Medicare Sustainability support “policy changes that would bring the program’s spending and revenue in line while ensuring the program continues to meet beneficiaries’ needs.”
Organ Donation grants work to “help more patients access lifesaving organ transplants” through government accountability.
Grants for Provider Payment Incentives aim to “re-orient the healthcare system toward delivering higher-quality, less-costly care that improves health outcomes and reduces the burden imposed on patients by unnecessary or less-effective treatments.”
Grants through the Clinical Trials subprogram works to make sure that the clinical research that the FDA uses to make its decisions is not only transparent, but well-designed.
Complex Care aims to improve the coordination for dual-eligible beneficiaries by backing state and federal policies that support cohesion between the two for safer health outcomes.
Past health grantees include Alliance for Health Policy, Center for Healthcare Transparency, and Drug Policy Alliance, among others.
Grants for Education
Arnold Ventures’ education focus works to support and promote the success of students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. While it does not appear to have a dedicated program for K-12, as it does for its higher education funding, the foundation has made several grants to both.
Grants for K-12 Education
This funder’s K-12 grants, which occur across intersecting initiatives and programs, work to “bring together local school leaders and university researchers to tailor promising innovations in curriculum.” The foundation works to identify successful and innovative education programs across the country and “tailor them to struggling communities so they can reap the same benefits.”
Grants for Higher Education
Higher education grants work to support “policies that promote value and quality in higher education.” Data in higher education, higher education quality and accountability and research into effective student success practices are all stated sub-initiatives of the foundation’s investments into higher education grantmaking.
In light of this focus area, Arnold Ventures is dedicated to advancing policies that “promote value and quality in higher education,” believing that “by partnering with institutions of higher learning” in order to identifying stumbling blocks. Once it has “identified effective practices,” Arnold Ventures aims to work with related systems to “scale those practices to fit their needs.”
Past education grantees include The City Fund, Charter Fund, and StudentsFirst Institute.
Grants for Economic Development and Community Development
Arnold Ventures’ work in democracy and civic engagement primarily revolves around Public Finance. It works to ensure that public funds are “allocated through a fair and equitable process to programs that strengthen communities.”
The foundation’s Tax Policy work advocates that such policies should be based on “evidence, not special interests, and support the needs and priorities of communities.” It funds organizations that “study tax policies, evaluate their effects, and seek to identify sound strategies to improve economic mobility and address inequality.”
Retirement Policy grants support “research on public and private retirement plans to gain insight into how to improve those systems” and “efforts to improve the retirement security of workers,” including “public programs that automatically enroll employees into IRAs and commitments by policymakers to increase funding for pension plans.”
Arnold has also launched its Policy Lab to “pair public officials with data analysts and social scientists to learn more about taxpayer needs and demand for state services.”
Past grantees include the Bipartisan Policy Center, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Important Grant Details:
Arnold Ventures’ grants generally range from $50,000 to $10 million. Arnold’s grantmaking is driven by evidence-based policy, research, and advocacy. It invests heavily in research efforts, conducts randomized controlled trials in social policy, and supports ongoing advocacy to bring its results to the attention of lawmakers. Grantseekers may search its Grants Database for more information on its grantmaking habits.
Arnold Ventures does not accept unsolicited applications except when it releases requests for proposals. Deadlines may vary.
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