Scratch Foundation
New York, NY · EIN 46-2612143. Reported 67 grants totalling $1,840,000 to 53 organizations across tax years 2021-2024, on Form 990 Schedule I.
Does this grantmaker accept applications?
Its tax return does not say, and we will not guess. Private foundations file Form 990-PF, which asks outright whether they fund only organizations they select themselves -- 78% say yes, and that one answer is what lets the rest of this site tell you which foundations are worth approaching. Grantmaking charities like this one file a regular Form 990 instead, and the IRS never puts the question to them. Anyone claiming to know the answer from the filing is inventing it.
Three things in the filing do bear on it:
- What kind of organization it is. For Scratch Foundation, the IRS classifies it under science & technology rather than as a grantmaker (NTEE U41) -- it is an operating charity that also makes grants.
- How spread out its giving is. 53 distinct organizations, with 30% of the dollars going to the largest single recipient. That is genuinely spread out -- the mark of a funder making many independent decisions rather than underwriting one institution.
- How much its list changes. 28% of one year's grantees are funded again the next, across 3 year-to-year transitions. That is below the 57% median for grantmaking charities, and well below the 67% private foundations manage. A list that turns over this much is one a newcomer can realistically join.
How big are its grants?
The median reported grant is $15,000. Half of what it reported fell between $15,000 and $25,000; the smallest was $6,000 and the largest $240,000. If you are asking for materially more than the top of that range, you are asking the wrong organization.
Every organization it funded
This is the complete list from its filings, largest first. Recipients are grouped by the EIN the filer reported, not by name, so an organization that was typed differently in two years appears once rather than twice.
| Organization | Location | Total received | Grants | Years funded | Last |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston College Trustees | Chestnut Hill, MA | $550,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| President and Fellows of Harvard College | Cambridge, MA | $256,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Clubhouse Network Inc | Roxbury, MA | $100,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Center for the Innovative Training of Youth Inc | New Orleans, LA | $95,000 | 3 | 3 | 2024 |
| Steam for Vietnam Foundation | Foster City, CA | $55,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Mississippi State University | Ms State, MS | $45,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Dev Color | Concord, CA | $35,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Hampton University | Hampton, VA | $30,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| People for Public Leadership Inc | Dover, DE | $30,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | Cambridge, MA | $25,000 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| University System of Maryland | Adelphi, MD | $25,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Stanislaus County Office of Education | Modesto, CA | $23,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Bridges to Science | Katy, TX | $21,000 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Codecrew | Memphis, TN | $17,500 | 2 | 2 | 2024 |
| Avid Center | San Diego, CA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Boolean Girl Inc | Arlington, VA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Brstem Institute | Zachary, LA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Code Savvy | St Louis Park, MN | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Codeva Inc | Richmond, VA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Cornell University | Ithaca, NY | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| East Fort Worth Montessori School | Fort Worth, TX | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Friends of Lindblom | Chicago, IL | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Girls Who Code Inc | New York, NY | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Hidden Genius Project | Oakland, CA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Hayward Unified School District | Hayward, CA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Humble Independent School District | Humble, TX | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Lomie G Heard Elementary School | Las Vegas, NV | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance | Augusta, ME | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Maker Prep | Princeton, NJ | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Museum of Science | Boston, MA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools | Nashville, TN | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| New York Hall of Science | Corona, NY | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Nextech Org Inc | Indianapolis, IN | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Panucation | Boise, ID | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Regents of the University of California at San Diego | La Jolla, CA | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Somerset Community Action Program | Somerset, NJ | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| St Vrain Valley School District | Longmont, CO | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Televisa Foundation Inc | Doral, FL | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Trussville City Schools | Trussville, AL | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| University of St Thomas | St Paul, MN | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| University of North Florida | Jacksonville, FL | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| University of Texas at Austin | Austin, TX | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Youth for Technology | Louisville, KY | $15,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Ausometech Industries LLC | Staten Island, NY | $11,500 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Codeart Inc | Miami, FL | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| DC Health and Wellness | Washington, DC | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2023 |
| Erie Center for Arts and Technology Inc | Erie, PA | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Inspireher STEM | Columbia, SC | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Northeast Florida Regional STEM2 Hub Inc | Fleming Island, FL | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Ps 94 the Kings College School | Bronx, NY | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
| Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development | N Little Rock, AR | $10,000 | 1 | 1 | 2022 |
| Deaf Kids Code | W Lafayette, IN | $9,500 | 1 | 1 | 2021 |
| Maine Indian Education (pleasant Point Assembly Passamaquoddy School Commit | Calais, ME | $6,500 | 1 | 1 | 2024 |
10 of 53 (19%) received money in more than one year over the 4 years we hold. Remember the $5,000 floor: an organization funded every year at $3,000 shows up here as never funded at all.
What the money was for
Taken verbatim from the purpose column of its filings, largest first. This is the closest thing to a statement of what it funds, in its own words.
- Boston College
Continue the work of bringing creative coding through ScratchJr to millions of children and educators all over the world. - Trustees of Boston College (devtech Research Group)
Development and facilitation of free coding workshops for kids, localization of materials to increase cultural relevance, and to scale your engagement with educators. - Harvard University
This award would support the updating and redesign of the Creative Computing Online Workshop to relaunch in 2024, the co-design of a Scratch Education Collaborative workshop, presenting at the 2024 Scratch Conference, and continued engagement between the Scratch Foundation and the Creative Computing Lab, including internship and research opportunities for your undergraduate and graduate students at Harvard. - Dev Color
Corporate sponsorship of DevColor 2021 conference - MIT Office of Engineering Outreach Programs
Office of Engineering Outreach Program corporate sponsorship - Deaf Kids Code
Support of their Scratch Equity Toolkit resource and subsequent workshop in Dec'21.
What kind of organizations it funds
By each recipient's own IRS classification, for the 36 of 53 recipients we could match to a registered organization. These are assigned categories, not our guesses -- Schedule I reports the recipient's EIN, so this is a lookup rather than a name match.
Giving by year
| Tax year | Grants reported | Total | Median grant |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 3 | $69,500 | $25,000 |
| 2022 | 14 | $390,000 | $15,000 |
| 2023 | 29 | $825,000 | $15,000 |
| 2024 | 21 | $555,500 | $11,500 |
Tax years, not calendar years, and the most recent year is usually incomplete -- Form 990 arrives about a year after the year it covers, so a low final year means late paperwork rather than a grantmaker winding down.
Where its money goes
51% of its giving went to organizations in Massachusetts. Community foundations and federated funds are usually the most geographically bounded funders there are -- being outside the footprint is normally disqualifying in a way that a weak programme fit is not.
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Funders that support the same organizations
These grantmakers and private foundations gave to organizations this one also funded. Shared grantees are the strongest signal available that two funders have overlapping priorities -- and a funder already backing your peers is a far warmer prospect than one that merely lists your cause.
How to approach this grantmaker
- Look for a published programme first. Unlike most private foundations, organizations of this kind often do run open, deadlined grant cycles with written guidelines. Its own website is the authority on that; this page is the authority on who it has actually paid.
- Check you are its size. The median reported grant is $15,000 -- and because grants under $5,000 need not be reported, it very likely writes smaller cheques than this page can see.
- Check you are in its geography. Its giving concentrates in Massachusetts.
- Read the recipient list for organizations like yours. If nothing on it resembles your work, that is a real answer and a cheap one to get.
Related guides
Where these numbers come from
Everything above is taken from Scratch Foundation's own Form 990 Schedule I filings, which the IRS publishes in bulk. We used 4 returns (tax years 2021-2024). Nothing here is scraped, inferred or estimated.
On its most recent return it told the IRS it made grants to 17 section 501(c)(3) organizations and 4 other organizations. That is the filer's own count for one year; the totals above cover every year we hold.
Address of record on the latest return: 459 Columbus Ave 1112, New York, NY, 10024.
EIN 46-2612143 · See the original filings on ProPublica · How we build this
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