The Stories Behind the Numbers
At the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, we strive to keep our eyes set not just on our goals, but also the journey. We are guided by what we learn from our grantee partners, who are deeply rooted in their communities, hold invaluable wisdom, and are closest to both the challenges and the solutions. Their commitment and creativity inspire us daily as they strive to make the world more vibrant, equitable, and sustainable. Learning from them allows us to grow in understanding and ensure that our support truly aligns with the transformative work they lead.
Since 1988, our foundation has been a steadfast supporter of organizations across the globe. As we close out 2024, we are pleased to note that in the past 10 years alone, the foundation has distributed approximately $500 million. This includes our strategic investments in the past year to amplify arts and culture; protect our environment and ecosystems; and empower young changemakers. All told, our current active grants in these three areas comprise:
Our 2024 Year in Review offers a snapshot of the data behind our growing commitments, while highlighting a few exemplary organizations and leaders who are applying their passion, expertise, and innovative spirit to bring about lasting improvements in their communities. At a time of urgent challenges and profound uncertainties in our world, we hope you’ll join us in celebrating what’s possible when people come together, wholeheartedly engage, and take action to bring about meaningful change. After all, it is through collective hope and unwavering belief in each other’s potential that we create a brighter future for all.
Lara Littlefield
Executive Director, Partnerships & Programs
Arts & Culture: Greater Funding, More Grantees
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Arts groups and cultural organizations have continued to struggle in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Audiences have been slow to return, costs have ballooned, and donation levels have not nearly recovered. A study we co-sponsored found that, on average, the budgets of these organizations are at half their pre-pandemic levels. At this critical juncture, with the health of our local arts communities still in jeopardy, we stepped up in 2024 by increasing our arts and culture funding by 12%—to a total of $27 million in active grants across Washington state—and nearly doubling the number of organizations we support.
This sector is an urgent priority for us not only because arts and culture are critical to our local and state economies, but because when this sector struggles, businesses and tourism suffer, jobs disappear, towns and urban centers decline, and entire creative communities are threatened. It is also an urgent priority because art, theatre, literature, dance, music, and cultural events are the very soul of healthy, thriving communities, helping to create connections between people and shape our understanding of the world.
This past year, our priorities included increasing access through free and low-cost admission, supporting new work from emerging artists, creating and enhancing cultural venues, celebrating a broad range of artistic disciplines and cultural traditions, and strengthening organizations that serve LGBTQ+ creators, Indigenous and rural communities, people of color, and people with disabilities.
One of our partners, Shunpike, is a nonprofit that supports artists and community arts programs in downtown Seattle, acts as a fiscal sponsor for over 200 small arts organizations so they can receive tax-deductible donations, and offers artists free advisory services from business professionals.
“We’d like to see the creative sector help define what the future of Seattle looks like.”
Line Sandsmark, Executive Director
Shunpike
The Community Accelerator Grant program, administered by ArtsFund and now in year two, disbursed $10 million in unrestricted funding to 811 arts and cultural organizations in 37 of 39 total Washington counties in 2024—a 21% increase in grantees from the previous year. The straightforward and equitable application process and guidance from a community advisory panel helped funding reach even more groups that are enriching lives across the state—from youth choirs and public radio stations to theatre companies, film festivals, artist collectives, and community museums. One recipient of Community Accelerator Grant funding is Indigenous Performance Productions, which creates opportunities for Indigenous artists to tell their own stories at live venues across the country, nurture Indigenous communities, and build sustainable careers.
“I see so much joy and so much interconnectedness through the stories that are emerging from Indigenous communities across Washington. And this is by and large new to the vast majority of people. And so there's so much reason for celebration, we have come so far but we have so far to go as well.”
Andre Bouchard (of Kootenai/Ojibwe/Pend d’Oreille/Flathead Salish descent), Intercultural Activist and Founder
Indigenous Performance Partners
Environment & Ecosystems: From Local to Global
We take an expansive approach to our environmental grantmaking, given how intricately our ecosystems at the local, national, and global levels are interconnected. We employ the power of network effects, investing in organizations that act as nodes of influence that generate impact across the globe through connections and collaborations.
In the Pacific Northwest, we invested this past year in protecting our unique biodiversity, with a focus on natural climate solutions—ecosystem-based conservation, restoration, and management measures. Farther afield, we continued to fund national conservation efforts in the United States as well as cutting-edge research and innovation with a vast global reach. Many of our partners are working on the front lines of conservation work, while others, like The Earthshot Prize, elevate the stories of eco-innovators and provide a platform to support locally led solutions that can have global impact.
Around the globe, and here in the Pacific Northwest, marine and terrestrial ecosystems are facing extreme challenges due to human-driven impacts. We are inspired by the frontline organizations protecting biodiversity through science and technology to improve our understanding of the natural world and advance conservation efforts. We hold relationships with organizations working across the Pacific Northwest, particularly those partnering with Indigenous Peoples, the original stewards of the land.
The Pacific Northwest is our backyard, but we also understand the interconnectivity of ecosystems across the country. We fund organizations in the United States outside of the Pacific Northwest; directly and through partnerships with organizations like the U.S. National Science Foundation.
Through both direct support for grantees and through funding opportunities, we focus on developing organizations who embrace the interconnectivity of research and innovation for our planetary health. These efforts include scientists researching how to help coral adapt to climate change in the Great Barrier Reef or sampling mycorrhizal fungi from Ghana to Ecuador. Their work is local, but what they learn can have significant implications for conservation globally and in their own backyards.
The Partnership to Advance Conservation Science and Practice (PACSP), a collaboration between our foundation and the National Science Foundation (NSF), supports cutting-edge research that can inform on-the-ground efforts to protect biodiversity and demonstrate measurable impact. In 2024, the second year of the program, PACSP funded $16 million in applied conservation projects, up from $8 million in 2023. Because of the incredible potential of the selected projects and the deep expertise and enthusiasm of the researchers and field practitioners, we were excited to renew the partnership for a third year.
One PACSP awardee, a team from UC Santa Cruz, UC Riverside, University of Montana, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Geological Survey, is using DNA sequencing to learn the genetic ancestry and geographic origins of grizzly bears, an endangered species in the western United States. The data, generated from samples in museums as well as current populations, will be tremendously helpful in planning and refining conservation efforts.
“If we can essentially build a 23andMe for bears, we can figure out where do bears come from? What is their genetic ancestry?”
Joanna Kelley, Principal Investigator
University of California Santa Cruz
In 2024, we were also pleased to support California-based Conservation Science Partners (CSP), which provides environmental organizations, government agencies, and other entities around the world with advanced geospatial analysis, ecosystem and wildlife population modeling, conservation planning, and training. CSP’s approach and expertise are critical tools in the race to mitigate massive biodiversity loss due to threats such as habitat loss and climate change. CSP is working with partners in Washington state, British Columbia, and Kenya to test and deploy advanced machine learning techniques to reduce the cost of deploying sensors to remote locations for wildlife population management.
“To be able to conserve sensitive wildlife species, you need the best available information on how many there are and where they are.”
Justin Suraci, PhD, Senior Scientist
Conservation Science Partners
Investing in Young Changemakers
We know that young people today are navigating complex global challenges. We also know that they bring fresh perspectives and questions to the assumptions and practices they inherit. We believe that youth organizing and leadership, particularly among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, will be critical to the well-being of our communities and the health of our society and democracy for generations to come. We also trust young activists and leaders to understand what they and their peers need in order to feel engaged and inspired.
We are partnering with Rhizome, which was founded in 2021 by 90 teenagers across the country to boost civic engagement in high schools and communities, on its Civic Service Fellowship program. The program works to create student-led civic engagement teams across Washington state and will serve as a pilot for expanding the concept to every high school in the country over the coming decade.
“That we know that we will be here eighteen months from now allows for a level of confidence and relationship building that is just fundamentally creative and more trusting.”
Jacob Merkle, Co-Founder
Rhizome
Also on the state level, we announced a new $5 million commitment to expand our support for programs that nurture the next generation of civic leaders and activists through training, civic engagement, and youth organizing. We initiated a request for proposals that prioritizes programs that are youth led or co-designed, intergenerational, and engage young people from historically underserved backgrounds or rural areas of the state. We anticipate announcing the award recipients in the first half of 2025.
“Mobilizing young leaders across Washington state has impact on mental health, it has impact on education outcomes, it has impact on their local community.”
Anh Nguyen, Director, Arts, Youth, and Communities
Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
Looking Ahead
We are energized by the successes and exciting progress underway, and we are committed to refining our grantmaking strategies to generate even greater impact as we learn and grow. Our top priorities—arts and culture, the environment, and youth leadership—call for ongoing and multi-generational partnership and commitment from all of us who care about the region we call home as well as the health of our interconnected world.
As we consider what 2025 may bring, we feel immense gratitude toward the organizations and leaders working to better our community and planet. While the journey may not always follow a straight path, we are honored to walk and learn alongside passionate partners who are steadfast in their commitment to a better future.