Hewlett Packard Enterprise Foundation

Background

Hewlett Packard Enterprise was formed in 2015 when the original Hewlett-Packard Company divided into two publicly traded entities: HP Inc., focused on personal computing and printing, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, focused on enterprise information technology, servers, cloud services, and networking. The HPE Foundation was established during the division and received its tax-exempt recognition from the IRS in November 2015. The foundation’s promotional materials have described its philanthropic history as reaching back to employee-giving activities under the former Hewlett-Packard Company Foundation beginning in 1979. ^{3 1 4}

The HPE Foundation is legally and operationally distinct from two other major philanthropies connected to Hewlett-Packard’s founding figures. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a left-of-center philanthropy with more than $13 billion in assets, was established in 1966 by Hewlett-Packard co-founder Bill Hewlett and his wife, Flora, and operates independently of the company and the HPE Foundation. Similarly, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, founded in 1964 by HP co-founder David Packard and his wife, is a legally separate private foundation with approximately $7 billion in assets and no operational relationship to the HPE Foundation. ^{5 6}

As of fiscal year 2024, the HPE Foundation held approximately $97 million in assets and made $9.4 million in charitable disbursements. The foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications; grants flow exclusively to pre-selected organizations through employee-engagement programs and established partnerships. ^{7 2}

As of 2026, the foundation was led by Monica Batchelder, the chief sustainability officer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. ⁸

Activities

The foundation concentrates its grantmaking on three stated priority areas: health care and life sciences, community resilience, and DEI and human rights. ²

Since 2019, the foundation has partnered annually with Fast Forward, a San Francisco-based technology-industry nonprofit accelerator, for the HPE Accelerating Impact campaign. Under the program, each HPE employee receives a $25 donation credit directed toward a curated list of tech nonprofits selected by Fast Forward. Through five campaigns from 2019 to 2023, the program reportedly channeled more than $6.2 million to 68 nonprofits; the 2023 campaign raised $1.3 million and the 2024 campaign raised approximately $1.2 million. Organizations highlighted in the 2023 campaign included Allies Against Slavery; Restor, an open-data environmental platform; and Thorn, which uses artificial intelligence to combat online child sexual abuse material. ^{9 10 9 11}

The foundation also administers employee-nominated grants to local nonprofits through an internal platform called HPE Gives, with selection conditioned on demonstrated engagement by HPE employee teams with the nominated organization. The foundation also supported Village Capital (VilCap Inc.), a Washington, D.C.-based entrepreneurship accelerator, providing $235,000 in fiscal year 2023 general operating support. In partnership with Village Capital and Zuora, the foundation sponsored the “Sustainability Subscribed” accelerator program in 2023, which supported startups developing subscription-model technologies for climate change and sustainability. ^{2 12 4}

The foundation’s largest single grantee is the American Online Giving Foundation, through which employee matching contributions and community impact grants are pooled and distributed. The foundation contributed $3.9 million to the American Online Giving Foundation in 2023. Typical grants in recent years have ranged from $25,000 to $4.3 million, with disbursements concentrated in a small number of intermediary organizations. In fiscal year 2024, seven grants totaling $9.4 million were recorded. ^{12 12 7}

Other grant recipients have included Food Reasoning Houston, the American Red Cross, and LabStart Innovations. ⁷