Walton Family Foundation

The Foundation has a focus on expanding access to high quality K–12 education to promote a
lifetime of opportunity.

Average award: $100,000–$325,000
Total awarded: $492,441,707

Application Timeframe:

Deadline: Typically, in the spring, annually
Award Project Period: Not specified

Address: P.O. Box 2030
Bentonville, AR 72712

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 479-464-1570

Email: [email protected]

Walton Family Foundation is committed to helping high-performing charter management organizations
expand and replicate what works. It is also committed to investing more in small, independent operators who have new ideas about how to provide high-quality educational options to high-needs students. The Foundation believes entrepreneurs with new ideas can innovate, answer communities’ demands, and create great schools that meet each child’s unique needs.

The Foundation’s Public Charter Startup Grant program will fund high-quality and high-potential operators with plans to open new public schools in the Foundation’s target geographies (see below for target geographies as of 2020). These schools will strive to transform learning and significantly improve academic outcomes for K–12 students, particularly those from traditionally underserved communities.

Eligibility Details: 

 

Public charter schools with a majority of students from the following districts may apply:

• Arkansas: Any district
• California: Los Angeles Unified School District (see map online); Oakland Unified School District
• Colorado: Denver Public Schools
• Georgia: Atlanta Public Schools
• Indiana: Indianapolis Public Schools
• Louisiana: Orleans Parish School Board
• Massachusetts: Boston Public Schools
• New Jersey: Camden City School District
• New York: New York City Public Schools
• Oklahoma: Any district
• Tennessee: Shelby County Schools
• Texas: Houston Independent School District; San Antonio Metro Area Public Schools
• Washington, D.C.: District of Columbia Public Schools

Schools should:

• Demonstrate potential for delivering excellent academic results for K–12 students, as measured by standardized achievement tests.
• Seek to serve a significant percentage of low-income students.
• Not represent a for-profit entity.
• Have opened or plan on opening in the timeline outlined in the latest guidelines.
• Currently be authorized or expect to be authorized in a timeline within the current guidelines.
• Be in “startup” mode, which is the period that begins 18 months before opening and ends at the culmination of the school’s first year of operations.
• Draw a majority of its students from one of the Foundation’s targeted districts.
• Have not previously received Walton startup funding from any intermediary partner (see list online) or be eligible to be considered for Walton startup funding from another intermediary partner in the future.

• $673,718 to the Colorado League of Charter Schools (Denver, CO), an organization that works to improve student achievement by supporting Colorado’s charter schools, positively reshape the public school landscape, and advance opportunities for innovation and expanded high-quality public school choice.
• $300,000 to Charter Facility Solutions (Denver, CO), an organization that works to provide and facilitate affordable facility solutions that increase the number of high-quality public charter school
  seats for underserved Colorado students.
• $180,000 to Rocky Mountain Prep (Denver, CO), a network of public charter schools enrolling pre-K through elementary students.

Complete the eligibility form, available during the open application period.