Raikes Foundation

Jeff and Tricia Raikes created the Foundation in 2002. The foundation has set a deadline of 2038 to spend out its assets, creating a “spend down” model. The founders believe this model allows their foundation to make bigger bets on projects. ²

Areas of Focus

Education

The Raikes Foundation created the Building Equitable Learning Environment (BELE) Network, a group of ten nonprofits that work collaboratively with the goal of creating a three-year learning network to “advance equality in the schools they support.” ³ This group aims to support schools and systems to transform learning and teaching.

The University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science received a grant to create a new course, called Innovation in the Public Interest, which will focus on public interest technology. This grant was funded, in part, by the Raikes Foundation. ⁴

The Raikes Foundation was one of two funders of a program called the Manhood Development in Oakland, California. The Manhood Development course is taught solely by black male instructors and focuses on mentoring, social-emotional learning, and African and African American history to create a stronger sense of belonging among young black men at risk of dropping out of high school. ⁵

Impact-Driven Philanthropy

The Raikes Foundation uses impact-driven philanthropy as an approach to involve donors, allowing monetary gifts to have greater impact and for the newly rich to learn how to become “better givers.” This method differs from impact investing because it does not make a profit. ²

Homelessness

The Raikes Foundation funds initiatives to end youth homelessness. Along with other organizations and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, it provides funding for Seattle’s “End Youth Homelessness Now” Campaign, which launched in June 2019. ⁶

Controversy

Documents uncovered in April 2019 showed that prominent nonprofits, including the Raikes Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Campion Advocacy Fund, and the Ballmer Group hired a PR firm, Pyramid Communications, to create a campaign called #SeattleForAll. The PR firm was used to “conduct polling, create messaging, and disseminate the resulting content through a network of silent partners in academia, the press, government, and the nonprofit sector.” ⁷  

Critics alleged that the campaign disseminated misinformation and presented the PR firm’s findings as objective truth, the campaign’s key messages were misleading, and its findings were inaccurate. ⁷ The mayor’s office disseminated the campaign across the office’s social media channels. The media outlets that shared the campaign and its findings did not disclose they were funded by the same group of foundations that hired Pyramid Communications and the content was coordinated with Pyramid and the City of Seattle. “The inner workings of the #SeattleForAll campaign tell a clear story: a group of well-funded philanthropies hired a PR firm to produce misleading polling results, distributed them through the city’s main newspaper and other media outlets (many of which enjoy generous donations from those same philanthropies), and then concealed the fact that the messaging was part of a broader campaign coordinated with the city.” ⁷

A controversial busing program, funded by the Raikes Foundation and organized by the Seattle Times’ Project Homeless, provided bus tickets to homeless people to be “reunited” with their families. This program has met with controversy because some viewed it simply as busing homeless people out of Seattle and to have them live somewhere else in a mis-labeled family reunification program. ⁸

Founder and History

Jeffrey (Jeff) Raikes and his wife, Tricia, founded the Raikes Foundation in 2002. He was the chief executive officer of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and a former member of Microsoft Corporation’s senior leadership team. He is an alumnus of Stanford and joined the Board of Trustees in 2012, being elected chair in 2019. ⁹ Raikes and his wife have supported Stanford for many years and have established several funds and organizations within the university. ⁹

The money to start the Raikes Foundation came from both the Raikes’ work at Microsoft, when the company was in its infancy and where the two met.

Leadership

In December of 2025, it was announced that Zoë Stemm-Calderon would be the next Executive Director of the Raikes Foundation after serving as senior director for 4 years. Stemm-Calderon previously worked at Teach for America and the Gates Foundation. ^{10 11}

Financials

The Raikes Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax except private foundation. The Raikes Foundation reported $31,696,905 in expenditures in its 2017 fiscal year. ¹² The organization reported eight employees receiving over $50,000 in compensation. ¹³ The organization had over 150 direct charitable activities, including contributions to Planned Parenthood, totaling $16,965,267. ¹⁴

The foundation also funds several legal organizations, including Legal Counsel for Youth and Children and TeamChild. The foundation has also funded American Bar Association and Equal Justice Works projects. ¹⁵