Siegel Family Endowment Awards Over $16.3 Million to Strengthen Workforce Innovation, Infrastructure, and Philanthropy

NEW YORK, Dec. 17, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Siegel Family Endowment, a foundation focused on shaping the impact of technology on society, announced over $16.3 million in grants to support organizations working at the intersection of workforce innovation, infrastructure, and effective philanthropy.

"As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies continue to reshape our society, it's crucial that we support organizations that look at how technology is implemented across education, work environments, and policy," said Joshua Elder, vice president and head of grantmaking of Siegel Family Endowment. "Our latest grants reaffirm our commitment to building a more inclusive technological future by supporting comprehensive research, shaping human-centered policies, and fostering community-driven innovation to ensure these advancements benefit everyone."

Organizations receiving grants include:

Scaling the Understanding of AI's Impact on the Workforce
To deepen our understanding of how AI and emerging technologies are transforming work, Siegel Family Endowment is supporting research and programs that examine the hiring, management, and monitoring of workers, as well as the overall worker experience. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth will fund individual researchers to examine how AI might impact workers and their working environment. MIT's Work of the Future Initiative continues its groundbreaking research on technological change in the workplace and its special focus on generative AI. Additionally, the AFL-CIO Technology Institute is developing new approaches to leverage worker expertise to improve AI-driven workplace technology.

Siegel is also supporting the Economic Policy Institute, Center for American Progress, and Data & Society to advance understanding around evidence-based policies that can shape AI's impact on the workforce, worker data rights, and more. Siegel's support to Upwardly Global compliments this work by expanding an innovative pilot that leverages responsible AI to ensure job seekers from all backgrounds have access to skill-aligned work and opportunities to thrive in a rapidly evolving economy.

Advancing the Public Interest Technology Infrastructure
With this support, Siegel is leading the way in building the infrastructure for a public interest technology ecosystem—one that creates the conditions for technologists to thrive and innovate for societal good. This includes a grant to support the Public Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN) to build, diversify, and strengthen vital talent pipelines, including support for Regional Hub Fellowships and PIT career fairs. It includes supporting the launch of Foundation for Civic Knowledge (a sponsored project of Res Publica US, Inc.), which will put rare, expensive GPU resources into the hands of mission-driven organizations, providing a critical boost to nonprofit partners. Additional investments in organizations like All Tech Is Human, Govern for America, TechCongress, Code the Dream, and the #BlackTechFutures Research Institute are building robust pathways into and networks within the public interest technology ecosystem, spanning both public and private sectors.

Efforts to explore the digital infrastructure that society relies upon and reimagine the way communities own their digital experiences are being led by organizations including New_ Public, Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, Center for Democracy & Technology, Aspen Digital, NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics, and Creative Commons. Their work focuses on helping communities take control of their digital experiences, ensuring everyone has fair access to technology, and finding ways to make the online space more trustworthy and welcoming for all.

Strengthening Philanthropic Impact
As part of its effective philanthropy efforts, Siegel is supporting initiatives that leverage technology to strengthen the overall nonprofit ecosystem and facilitate knowledge sharing among its peers. Their support in JustFund is streamlining grantmaking processes, while Candid is improving demographic data collection in the sector. Project Evident is enhancing the social sector's ability to scale impact through the integration of emerging technologies, and The GovLab's Data4Philanthropy initiative is building out a new "science of questions" and developing innovative approaches to the use of data across the sector.

About Siegel Family Endowment:
Siegel Family Endowment employs an inquiry-driven approach to grantmaking that is informed by the scientific method and predicated on the belief that philanthropy is uniquely positioned to address some of the most pressing and complex issues facing society today. Our grantmaking strategy positions us to be society's risk capital. We support high quality work that will help us derive insights to timely questions and has high potential for future scale. Our focus is on organizations doing work at the intersection of learning, workforce, and infrastructure. We aim to help build a world in which all people have the tools, skills, and context necessary to engage meaningfully in a rapidly changing society. Siegel Family Endowment was founded in 2011 by David Siegel, co-founder and co-chairman of financial sciences company Two Sigma.

SOURCE Siegel Family Endowment