Siegel Family Endowment

The foundation is funded by the personal fortune of David Siegel and holds over $400 million in assets. As of September 2023, the Siegel Family Endowment has made $11,384,500 of grants in 2023, ¹ including $300,000 to the left-of-center Center for American Progress, $250,000 to the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, $1,000,000 to the Center for Rural Innovation, $250,000 to Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, $200,000 to Jobs for the Future, $100,000 to JUST Capital, $200,000 to the NewSchools Venture Fund, $150,000 to Aspen Institute, $250,000 to Transcend Education, and $250,000 to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. ¹ In 2022, the Siegel Family Endowment made $24,791,535.50 of grants. ² It also contributed $5,000,000 to the New Venture Fund from 2020 to 2022. ^{3 4 5}

Background

The Siegel Family Endowment was founded in 2007 as the Siegel Charitable Foundation and was renamed the Siegel Family Endowment in 2011 when it was granted charitable status. The foundation was founded by David M. Siegel, the founder of Two Sigma, a financial services company that is also paid to operate the finances for the Siegel Family Endowment. Siegel provided initial funding for the organization and continues to fund the organization with his personal wealth. As of 2021 the foundation managed over $415 million in assets. ⁶

The foundation describes 2012 to 2014 as its inaugural grantmaking years, listing its early grant recipients as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), New York City FIRST, and the Scratch Foundation (then called Code-to-Learn). In 2015, the foundation hired its first executive director, developed its first mission statement, and developed its funding interest areas of “computational thinking, EdTech, and career readiness.” In 2016 the foundation added “Open Learning” as a funding interest area and from 2017 to 2018 the foundation “doubled down on our commitment to the computer science movement by incubating CSforALL in-house.” From 2021 to 2022 the foundation stood up its internal research team and hired its first cohort of research fellows, publishing several whitepapers including one titled “Schools as Community Infrastructure, which offers a vision for schools and learning as vital public goods.” ⁵

According to left-leaning philanthropic consulting company Arabella Advisors, the Siegel Family Endowment is focused on understanding and shaping the impact of technology on society. ⁷ The far-left concept of equity is at the heart of the Siegel Family Endowment’s work and is integrated into every step of the grantmaking process. ⁸ Siegel Family Endowment supports a the far-left concept of a more equitable society, ⁹ has published reports on economic issues it believes are race-based, ¹⁰ supports research regarding the undefined concept of misinformation on social media platforms, ¹¹ and supports investments regarding the far-left concept of economic inequity. ¹² The endowment believes the Juneteenth holiday should be used to narrow what it identifies as racial housing gaps. ¹³

Leadership

The Siegel Family Endowment is funded by the personal fortune of David Siegel, a computer scientist and businessman who co-founded Two Sigma, a technology and financial services company. Two Sigma is paid over $500,000 annually to manage the foundation. Siegel received a Ph.D. from MIT where he worked in the school’s artificial intelligence (AI) lab, and serves on the boards of Cornell Tech and the MIT Corporation. ¹⁴

Katy Knight is the executive director and president of the Siegel Family Endowment. ¹⁵ She has been the executive director of the Siegel Family Endowment since June 2019 and has worked at the endowment in various capacities since January 2019. Previously, she worked at Two Sigma, Google, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and as an intern at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). ¹⁶

Knight has claimed that the far-left concept of equity needs to be infused throughout the building process of artificial intelligence (AI) for the public interest ¹⁷ and participated in an online event hosted by left-leaning philanthropic consulting company Arabella Advisors about the development of artificial intelligence systems and language models for philanthropic organizations. ⁷

Organizations Funded

The Siegel Family Endowment funds a variety of left-of-center political advocacy groups and think tanks throughout the United States while also funding various technology education efforts. Organizations funded by the foundation include the ACLU Foundation, the American Friends Service Committee, the Bloomberg Center on Cities, the Center for American Progress, the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, Center on Rural innovation, Citizens Committee of NY, Constellation Center for Equity in Computing at Georgia Tech, the New Venture Fund, and the Aspen Institute. ¹⁸

The endowment has also issued grants to the American Friends Service Committee, American Jewish Committee, Rebuild by Design, the Bloomberg Center on Cities at Harvard University, the National Conference on Citizenship. ¹⁹

Siegel Family Endowment sponsors a cohort of partner research fellows who are researchers, academics, and policy experts at various institutions. Its 2022-2023 class of fellows includes participants at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Stanford University, the left-of-center Center for American Progress, Mozilla Foundation, Princeton University, the University of North Carolina, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Data and Society, Aspen Institute, New York University, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and others. ²⁰ The endowment is partners with Building21, CSforALL, and Stanford’s d.school. ² It also supports Columbia University’s eLab program ²¹ and Mozilla’s Data Futures Lab. ²²