In 2011, John Overdeck, cofounder and co-chairman of Two Sigma Investments, established the Overdeck Family Foundation along with his then-wife Laura, founder and president of Bedtime Math, an at-home mathematics program for children.
Since its launch, the foundation, which focuses on early childhood education, hands-on STEM education and K-9 programs, has become a significant funder in the ed giving space, disbursing over $356 million to organizations across the U.S. Last year, it awarded a total of $53.5 million to 93 grantees.
The foundation classifies roughly 75% of its grantmaking as direct impact support for organizations that “work directly with target populations,” said Anu Malipatil, vice president and founding team member, in a July conversation. “Our funding is aligned with an emphasis on innovation, growth or continuous improvement.” Investments in ecosystems, which constitute the remaining 25% of the foundation’s funding, flow to organizations focused on research and field building.
The recipients of the foundation’s funding reflect its belief that support for organizations generating immediate impact and initiatives that fall under the rubric of systems change can accelerate improvement in outcomes for all children. The need for this support is all the more acute as education funders brace for this fall’s expiration of the federal government’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, which has provided approximately $190 billion in education funding to states and districts since 2020.
“One of the key roles we see philanthropy playing is tending to short-term needs for kids who need better opportunities,” Malipatil said, “while also trying to set the stage for better conditions in the future.”
A data-driven funding philosophy
The son of a mathematician, John Overdeck received degrees in mathematics and statistics at Stanford University before embarking on a lucrative career on Wall Street. Bloomberg Billionaires Index pegs his real-time net worth at $6.2 billion. Laura is an alumna and former trustee of Princeton University, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree in astrophysics and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.
The Overdeck Family Foundation had $768 million in net assets at the end of 2022. From 2018 to 2022, it disbursed an average of 7.25% of its $230 million in noncharitable-use assets annually toward qualified distributions, 91% of which were grants.
There are four main investment areas at the foundation — Early Impact, Exceptional Educators, Innovative Schools and Inspired Minds, which funds hands-on STEM learning. A fifth area, Data for Action, harnesses data to improve educational outcomes for children and speaks to the Overdecks’ quant-driven grantmaking philosophy.
“The goal is to affect as many kids as possible with finite resources,” Laura told IP in 2019. “Even if you pool everybody together, it’s just a finite amount of resources and hours in a day. You just want to make sure it’s being directed to the highest impact that you can.” Three years later, John penned an IP guest post on formative assessments, which he described as capturing “real-time data on individual student learning through tools such as diagnostics, non-graded quizzes and worksheets,” and which can help students recover from COVID-era learning loss.
Laura filed for divorce from John in March 2022. Last August, the Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman reported that “the dissolution of the 20-year marriage could force [John] Overdeck to pay a multibillion-dollar settlement. The couple don’t have a prenuptial agreement, according to someone close to the matter, so they are currently negotiating a divorce settlement.” A lawyer for John Overdeck told Zuckerman that the billionaire was not looking to divest from Two Sigma, which has roughly $60 billion in assets under management.
In a statement to IP, a foundation spokesperson said, “The Overdecks’ divorce proceedings are not expected to impact the Foundation’s day-to-day operations or its commitment to its work.”
A strategic refresh
For its first decade, the foundation adhered to what Malipatil called a “fairly traditional” grantmaking model. “Each portfolio had its own way of funding, which meant less external clarity and transparency,” she said, “and we were primarily making small, one-year restricted grants, which our grantees told us were onerous to apply for and had limited impact on their organizations.”
But by 2019, John and Laura determined it was time for a change and tapped Malipatil to lead a strategic refresh. Malipatil saw “the importance of both direct impact and strong conditions and systems that can allow those programs to scale” in her roles before joining the foundation, which included serving as a Regents Research Fund Fellow at the New York State Education Department and being a Teach for America educator.
Malipatil worked closely with the Overdecks, who expressed an interest in measurable areas of impact that had relatively shorter timeframes. Staff told her that deep engagement with grantees was the most meaningful part of the work. And grantee leaders were “looking for more quality time with their program officer to dig into what the future could look like,” Malipatil said.
The foundation planned to announce the new strategy in March 2020 but paused the launch to roll out a $2.6 million COVID-19 rapid-response plan. Its self-described “venture-inspired funding model” officially went live in 2021 with a more unified focus across portfolios, a transparent approach to funding and a greater emphasis on multi-year, unrestricted and capacity-building support. John and Laura, Malipatil said, were “involved in every big decision point along the way.”
Malipatil and her team continually revisit the strategy. In February, the foundation published an overview of its 2024 funding strategy on its website. The document measured the foundation’s performance against goals in its 2023 Grantmaking & Impact Report, highlighted grantees’ work and provided updates across its four investment areas.
Strengthening ecosystems
A relatively new dimension of the foundation’s STEM grantmaking is support for organizations strengthening the STEM adult workforce. “A lot of STEM education happens out of school,” Malipatil said. “And one of the biggest challenges is a dearth of committed, ongoing and sustained talent. So we’ve tried to think about the role we can play in this area.”
Organizations that have received direct impact grants to support this work include Out Teach, which empowers teachers to use outdoor spaces for resonant cross-curricular experiences, and Science Buddies, which supports in- and out-of-school educators by providing resources to improve science projects. The foundation awarded an ecosystem grant to Afterschool Alliance, a Washington, D.C.-based organization committed to ensuring children have access to affordable, quality afterschool programs.
Speaking more broadly about the foundation’s efforts to strengthen ecosystems, Malipatil said, “We’ve tried to prioritize a few key things that we can do well, based on our internal capabilities, and where there’s opportunity in the field where others aren’t already contributing.” These areas include policy-building and narrative work, and helping organizations measure and communicate impact so “they can be eligible for government funding in a more evidence-driven era.”
Unfortunately, a substantial stream of government funding will dry up when the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER), which was created under the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, expires in September. Writing for Brookings, Marguerite Roza and Katherine Silberstein of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab pegged the average district’s single-year reduction in spending at over $1,000 per student, with schools in high-poverty communities being the hardest hit.
The Overdeck Family Foundation has been on the case for some time. Last June, The 74, a nonprofit education news organization, published a piece by Malipatil calling on the field to determine if and how allotted funding made a difference and where the remaining money should be spent. Now that the cliff is coming into view, the foundation is “playing an active role in the systems change space to ensure there is ongoing funding for STEM education after this fall,” Malipatil said.
Before we signed off, Malipatil cited two emerging priority areas, the first being the foundation’s efforts to understand the causes and solutions of chronic absenteeism. Earlier this year, it made a grant to the Ad Council Research Institute to develop a new messaging toolkit for states, school districts and principals based on research into what most resonates with parents and families to increase student attendance. In May, a White House press release cited the toolkit, which will be ready for the new school year this fall, as part of its Every Day Counts Summit tackling absenteeism.
And in early July, the foundation awarded $900,000 to fund three studies identifying how generative AI coaching tools can improve teacher quality and student learning, and disseminate those results to the education community. “We know the speed of AI adoption is quickly outpacing the field’s ability to carefully study the impacts on teaching and learning.” Malipatil said. “There will be more grantmaking in this area in the months and years to come.”
The foundation does not accept unsolicited grant proposals. However, organization leaders can sign up for its newsletter to be alerted of open calls or requests for proposals.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article incorrectly listed Marguerite Roza and Katherine Silberstein as working for the Brookings Institute. They are with Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab.
