The Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation is a private grantmaking organization founded by Craig McCaw and his then-wife Susan McCaw. The foundation provides grants to organizations that carry out projects primarily relating to education and health but also some environmentalist and international relations-focused projects from organizations including The Nature Conservancy, Climate Leadership Council, and Council On Foreign Relations. ¹

Craig McCaw sits on the board of overseers at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, while Susan McCaw is the organization’s vice-chair. Both individuals are also named partners of the left-of-center Audacious Project. ^{2 3}

Background

The Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation is a private grant making organization founded in 1999 by Craig and Susan McCaw. Craig McCaw is a telecommunications entrepreneur who was chairman and CEO of McCaw Cellular Communications before the company was sold to AT&T in 1996. Susan McCaw is a former investment banker and the former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Austria from 2005 and 2007 under the George W. Bush administration. ^{4 5}

Grantmaking

The Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation provides grants to organizations that carry out projects primarily relating to education and health, but it also funds some environmental and international relations projects.

The McCaw Foundation gave a total of just over $5 million to The Nature Conservancy, the world’s largest nongovernmental conservation organization, which ranked 15th on the 2022 Forbes list of the 100 largest U.S.-based charities. Craig McCaw is a former global board member of the organization. ^{6 7 8 9}

The foundation has given total of $500,000 to Teach for All, and $1.25 million to Teach for America, a teacher placement and training organization founded in 1990 that trains students in universities to teach in schools for a two-year period. It has been criticized for a distinct shift from a cross-ideological policy of support for excellence in education toward prioritizing left-of-center ideological values. ^{10 11}

The McCaw Foundation gave $500,000 to the Climate Leadership Council (CLC) in 2017. CLC is a left-of-center organization of former government officials, intellectuals, and businessmen who advocate for a carbon tax. ¹²

The foundation has given a total of $350,000 to the Council On Foreign Relations, an invitation-only think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. ^{13 14 15}

The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation (also known as the Clinton Foundation and originally named the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation) is a global philanthropic organization created and run by former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea Clinton. The McCaw Foundation gave between $10,001 to $25,000 to the foundation in 2014. ^{16 17}

The McCaw Foundation has made several grants to educational institutions including a total of $1.3 million to the Khan Academy, $515,000 to the Seattle Academy, $100,000 to the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy, and another $1.3 million to Harvard Business School. ¹⁸

People

Craig McCaw is the chairman and CEO of the investment management firm Eagle River, Inc. He was formerly chairman and CEO of McCaw Cellular Communications, which he sold to AT&T in 1996. He also restructured Nextel Communications and founded Nextel International, a mobile telecommunications service. He also co-founded and was chairman of the wireless broadband company Clearwire Corporation, and is the founder of the Grameen Technology Center. Craig McCaw was chairman and principal funder of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation. ¹⁹

Susan McCaw served as the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Austria from 2005 to 2007 during the George W. Bush administration. She was president of SRM Capital Investments and worked as an associate in Robertson Stephens Venture Capital Group. She is on the board of directors for multiple organizations including Teach For America, the Air Lease Corporation, Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. She also sits on the Khan Academy Global Advisory Board and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. ²⁰

Craig McCaw sits on the board of overseers at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, while Susan McCaw is the organization’s vice-chair. The Hoover Institution began as an archive; today it holds millions of primary documents for scholars studying 20th-century history, including some of the largest archive of documents about the history of the Soviet Union. ²¹

Craig and Susan McCaw are also listed as individual partners of the Audacious Project, a project of the TED Foundation that funds organizations intended to catalyze positive large-scale social impacts. From its founding in 2018 to 2020, the Audacious Project spent almost $2 billion. ^{22 23}

Financials

The foundation had a total revenue amount of $3.7 million in 2019, $2.8 million of which came from the sale of assets, while $800,000 came from dividends, and $160,000 from “other” income. CSMF’s expenses amounted to just under $9 million in 2019, however; its total charitable disbursements came to just over $11 million. The foundation’s asset value was $28 million by the end of 2019. ²⁴

The foundation’s revenue dropped in 2020 with the organization receiving $500,000 from the sale of assets, $400,000 from dividends, and $89,000 from other income, meaning the organization had a total revenue of approximately $1 million in 2020. Its total expenses amounted to just over $3 million, and its charitable disbursements were slightly more than $3.2 million. The organization’s total asset value amounted to more than $12 million by the end of the year. ²⁵

According to the foundation’s 2019 tax return form, the organization has invested heavily in corporations including Google, in which it has invested approximately $2.4 million according to the organization’s end-of-year book value. The McCaw Foundation also invested around $350,000 in book value in Change.org, a website that hosts petitions generally related to politics or public policy. ²⁶

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11. Ahmari, Sohrab. “How Teach for America Lost Its Way.” Commentary Magazine. October 17, 2017. Accessed May 9, 2023. https://www.commentary.org/articles/sohrab-ahmari/teach-america-lost-way/.
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14.  “Centennial Book.” Council on Foreign Relations. September 13, 2021. Accessed May 9, 2023. https://www.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/centennial-book.pdf.
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17. “A vast network for donors.” Washington Post. Accessed May 9, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/clinton-foundation-donor-list/.
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19. “Craig McCaw.” The Nature Conservancy. Accessed May 9, 2023. https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/who-we-are/our-people/craig-mccaw/.
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21. “Overseers.” Hoover Institution. Accessed May 9, 2023. https://www.hoover.org/about/who-we-are/overseers.
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26. Craig and Susan McCaw Foundation. Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990-PF). 2019.