Skees Family Foundation

OVERVIEW: The Skees Family Foundation focuses its global and U.S. grantmaking broadly on poverty alleviation with grants supporting education, job creation, basic needs and initiatives for women and girls.

IP TAKE: The Skees Family Foundation’s modest unrestricted grants serve communities where they are likely to have the greatest impact. This funder supports a broad range of poverty alleviation strategies in targeted regions of the developing world and the U.S., including education, job creation, sustainable development and women’s initiatives. Skees doesn’t accept proposals for funding, but it gets positive reviews for being responsive, culturally sensitive and open-minded. A connection to the family, the foundation’s staff or a past grantee might open the door here.

PROFILE:  The Skees Family Foundation established in 2005 by Suzanne Skees, daughter of Ohio lawyer Hugh Skees, to carry on her family’s tradition of philanthropy. This San Francisco-based funder’s mission is “to end global poverty by partnering with community-based organizations to create fulfilling jobs and build job readiness through vocational or entrepreneurial training.” The foundation supports organizations in the United States, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands. Its global development grantmaking centers on poverty alleviation, education and job creation

The Skees Family Foundation offers two types of grants.

  • Seed Grants are awarded for one-year and range from $5,000 to $10,000. Organizations must have an annual budget of $25,000 or less to qualify. Grants provide unrestricted funding.

  • Catalyst Grants are awarded for three years and total $45,000. These are reserved for groups with annual budgets ranging from $500,000 to $1 million. Grants provide unrestricted funding.

The foundation also makes social impact investments in its areas of interest.

Grants for Global Development

Global development is the main focus of the Skees Foundation’s grantmaking. The foundation names education, job creation and poverty alleviation as focus areas but does not name further specific priorities for its giving.

  • Education grants focus on creating opportunity in least-developed areas and tend to support programs and initiatives that help students move toward well-paying jobs and careers.

    In Haiti, the foundation has given to Anseye Pou Ayiti, an organizations that provides teacher training and professional development in disadvantaged areas. Other education grantees include the Asante Africa Foundation, Sri Lanka’s Educate Lanka, Teach North Korean Refugees and Summer Search, which helps low-income U.S. students develop the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond.

  • Grants for job creation overlap with giving in other global development areas by focusing on business and entrepreneurship education and training for STEM careers. Giving also prioritizes initiatives serving severely underserved communities and regions.

    One grantee, Upaya Social Ventures, works in Asian nations to run accelerator programs that “build high potential businesses that benefit and employ the poorest and most marginalized people.” Grants have also gone to Tech Me, a technology skills training program in Nigeria and Agora Partnerships, which provides “resources and materials to entrepreneurs who are working to build businesses in order to solve social and environmental challenges that local communities face” in Latin America.

  • Grants for poverty alleviation focus on the development of sustainable livelihoods, food systems and health and hygiene infrastructure in the poorest areas of developing nations.

    In Kenya, the foundation has supported Eggpreneur, which works to “build sustainable egg farming ventures that help families end the cycles of poverty.” Grants have also supported the Grameen Foundation, Idea4Africa and Preserve International, which aims to “solve the problem of seasonal hunger through training on food preservation techniques.”

Grants for Women and Girls

The Skees Foundation prioritize women and girls across all grantmaking areas, supporting programs for women’s education, career development, entrepreneurship and more.

A grantee in Malawi, AGE Africa, supports academically gifted girls as they complete secondary school and pursue postsecondary opportunities. In Kenya, another grantee, the BOMA Project, gives women “the tools they need to start small businesses” and “graduate” from poverty. Other grantees supporting initiatives for women and girls include Zambia’s Embrace Her Personal and Financial Growth, Women Lead Nepal and the Destiny Foundation, which “works to rescue young women from sex trafficking and/or sexual exploitation and provide them with training and employment opportunities.”

Grants Food Systems, Housing, Work and Opportunity and Violence Prevention

A portion of the Skees Foundation’s funding works to help poor communities in the U.S. in the areas of hunger, housing and career development through education and vocational training. As with Skees global grantmaking, women and girls are prioritized in this work. It is worth mentioning that some of the foundation’s U.S. giving supports faith-based initiatives.

The foundation’s U.S. grantees include the Catholic Committee of Appalachia, the Dayton Christian Center, Ohio’s Good Shepherd Ministries and Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, all of which work broadly in human services. The foundation has also supported Home First, which works to house and create opportunities for the poor and homeless of Santa Clara County in California.

Important Grant Details:

Sees Family Foundation grants generally range from $1,000 to $15,000.

  • This funder’s work is global in scope, but it also makes grants for organizations working to alleviate poverty in the U.S.

  • A significant portion of grants support initiatives for women and girls.

  • Grantmaking for education, job creation and poverty alleviation overlap, with many grantees working in at least two of these focus areas.

  • For additional information about past grants, see the foundation’s nonprofit partners page.

  • This funder does not accept unsolicited proposals.

Submit general inquiries to the foundation via email at info@skees.org.

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