William and Flora Hewlett Foundation - Grants and Major Donations

Grants and Major Donations

The foundation plays a key leadership role in the nonprofit sector. Although most grants tend to be less than $1 million, the Hewlett Foundation has made several notable gifts and grants.

In 2001, the foundation gave $400 million to Stanford University for humanities, sciences, and undergraduate education. At the time, the gift was the largest on record to a university.

In 2007, the Hewlett Foundation made a $113 million donation to the University of California at Berkeley to create 100 new endowed professorships and provide financial help for graduate students.

In 2008, the foundation awarded the Climate Works Foundation approximately $460,800,000.

Other notable projects include:

• Collaboration with the nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting to create California Watch, the state’s largest investigative reporting team dedicated solely to news within California.
• Collaboration with the Mellon Foundation to develop the field of OpenCourseWare. Through these efforts, MIT and many other educational institutions have made their curricular materials available to the public.
• Restoration of the Bay Area Salt Ponds and conservation of the Great Bear Rainforest in Canada.
• Seeding the Creative Commons project with $1,000,000.