Peery Foundation

Established in 1978 by Richard Peery, the Peery Foundation is a family-run, private grantmaking foundation based in Palo Alto, California. Its mission is to strengthen youth and families to build lives of dignity and self-reliance by investing in and serving social entrepreneurs and other leaders working to empower youth and families in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world. The foundation primarily invests in early to mid-stage social entrepreneurs who are effectively addressing the issues of poverty.

The Peery Foundation has developed four portfolios of grantees: Local, Regional, Global, and Ecosystems. Each portfolio has its respective goals and differences, but they all share an overarching set of values and themes around the people, the idea, and the impact. The foundation evaluates potential grantees based on the trustworthiness, experience, commitment level, and entrepreneurial ability of the people involved, the relative importance and scalability of the idea, and the potential impact of the organization.

The foundation's approach to grantmaking is grantee-centric, allowing grantees to dictate the structure of evaluation and accountability. Support of an organization can range from $1,000 to $100,000 in a given year. The Peery family continues to provide leadership to the foundation, both programmatically and on the board.