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David Bohnett Foundation Grant-Making Process To Change Starting January 1, 2018

The following is the full text of a letter sent out by the David Bohnett Foundation on October 5, 2016

Dear Friend:

In 1998, fresh off the sale of my company, GeoCities.com, I created the David Bohnett Foundation with an initial 30 million dollar endowment, well considered key program areas and a mission of ‘improving society through social activism.’

In the nearly 20 years since then, the Foundation has succeeded beyond my expectations; distributing grants totaling over 100 million dollars to thousands of grantees nationally. We have been proud to play a supporting role in so many of the social justice causes to which you and I have dedicated our life’s work. From securing marriage equality and other LGBT civil rights, to working to eradicate the national scourge of gun violence … from making innovative music education available to all of our children to empowering the next generation of public policy entrepreneurs, the David Bohnett Foundation has been honored to partner with you, and thousands of other non-profits, to make the world a better place. Together we’ve established a philanthropic record of which we can all be proud. I certainly am grateful to have been able to do this work.

In addition to honing our activism, we’ve learned a lot about grantmaking since 1998 and that’s why I am writing to you today. Beginning on January 1, 2018, the David Bohnett Foundation will move to an ‘invitation only’ grantmaking process. We believe that this will allow us to better target our grantmaking towards the institutions and organizations that best reflect our funding priorities. We have made this decision after much thoughtful deliberation and a review of practices of other foundations of our size and maturity. While this will change how we conduct our grantmaking process it will not change who we are or what we believe in. We intend to continue to fund in our traditional programs areas to help foster positive social change.

Many thanks for all that you do and I look forward to continuing our work together.

Regards,
David C. Bohnett
Chairman