The main focus of our funding is education. We interpret "education" broadly to include literacy programs, job and life skills training for adults, tutoring and other supports for academically struggling children, technology and science education, some athletic or music programs and any viable program that helps provide individuals with the knowledge, skills and training necessary to help them become productive, self-sufficient members of the community.

Since our definition of education is broad it will be helpful to know that we also look for the following four criteria in deciding which educational opportunities to fund. The ideal candidate will meet all four criteria.

1) Positive impact upon socio-economically disadvantaged people

We are looking to fund programs that assist people who are lacking basic necessities, particularly as relate to success in school and ultimately in life. We seek to equalize some of these differences to help empower people to acquire basic life skills, ideally while still in school, but also in programs that assist adults past school age. To qualify for funding, grantee programs must serve a minimum of 50% economically disadvantaged people, while the vast majority of programs funded serve 75% or above.

2) Donation must be efficiently and productively utilized

We will closely scrutinize the amount of administrative overhead of any program brought before us. We are looking for those programs that realize disproportionate results relative to the dollars invested. It is important to us that as much of our donation as possible go to helping those who need it. We will look for organizations that are highly successful at managing administrative costs.

3) Project lies within our geographic areas of focus

Our foundation prefers to work closely and on a personal level with our grantees, and thus restricts our domestic funding to organizations located within Austin. Due to our founder's heritage, we are currently only looking at international projects serving residents of India.

4) Project has a measurable outcome

We require a gauge to know whether our funding efforts have been successful. For this reason, we look for projects with clearly defined and measurable outcomes. For examples of the types of outcomes we request, please see our Evaluation page.