NewSchools Venture Fund

The NewSchools Venture Fund is a non-profit venture philanthopy fund that invests in educational entrepeneurship projects at the K-12 levels in United States public schools. NewSchools offers expertise and administrative support as well funding, both through Charter Accelerator Fund, which helps establish charter school systems, and through its Performance Accelerator Fund, which supports entrepreneurial projects in established school systems. The organization invests in both not-for-profit and for-profit projects, focusing its portfolio on projects that have the potential to benefit underserved children.

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New Schools was founded in 1998 by social entrepreneur Kim Smith and venture capitalists John Doerr and Brook Byers, with the intention of taking the entrepreneurial energy they had seen in the technology sector and unleashing it in education. It is now led by CEO Ted Mitchell, a veteran educational reformer.

The organization has received a US$30 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help develop additional charter schools.