The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation seeks to dramatically improve the lives of people and the world around us through innovative strategies, systems changing approaches, and disrupting technologies.  Our goal is to find social entrepreneurs with dynamic ideas and nurture them at the early stages with maximum leverage and total commitment.
Prospects for our portfolio of social enterprises come from a vast field of compelling ideas and dedicated leaders. We concentrate our selection on the capabilities of the founder/leader, the scalability of the model, and the potential impact of the organization on the world.
We have an open application process and accept applications year round. Borrowed from our venture capital legacy we find exceptional entrepreneurs, provide them with 3 years of unrestricted capital (totaling $300,000) and provide rigorous on-going support by joining their board of directors for the 3 years and partnering with the leader to help them to build capacity in their organization and scale their impact.  We invite you to learn more about what we fund, our selection process, and to share your idea with us through our online application.
We look for exceptional entrepreneurs
We seek out entrepreneurs who exhibit characteristics of extraordinary leadership: vision, intelligence, influence, ambition, discretion and follow-through. Draper Richards Kaplan entrepreneurs have proven track records that demonstrate a full spectrum of competencies.
We look for potential to scale 
To affect meaningful change upon the major challenges of our time, we need big solutions to big problems. We support social enterprises — non-profit, for-profit and hybrid organizations — that can expand enough to directly benefit a large number of beneficiaries and impart enough momentum to influence broader systems that encumber progress. Scaled organizations act as models to other groups in the sector and have the clout to affect policy, public opinion, and economies.
We look for sustainable impact
We look for leveraged solutions that will create lasting positive change. We look for game-changing ideas that create better opportunities and outcomes for the future.