The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation
VC Fund
Menlo Park, United States
The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation is a VC fund in Menlo Park focused on Non Profit and Association. William H. Draper, III and Robin Richards Donohoe began investing together in the venture industry in 1994 concentrating on building companies in India. Since 1994, they have invested in over one hundred early stage information technology investments both in India and the United States. In 2010, the Foundation joined forces with Robert S. Kaplan, formerly vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs and currently professor of leadership at Harvard Business School. Together the team raised their second fund inviting fourteen innovative philanthropists to join the fund.
- Total investments:
- 160
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 49%
- Fund size:
- $65M
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invests in
Stages The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invests in
Countries The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| See all 8 contacts → | |||
Round size
- Seed
- $83k–$3.8M
- Grant
- $100k–$1M
- Venture - Series Unknown
- $300k–$3M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Non Profit 64 (40%)
- Association 26 (16%)
- Health Care 26 (16%)
- Education 23 (14%)
- Legal 11 (7%)
Stage
- Grant 93 (58%)
- Seed 29 (18%)
- Venture - Series Unknown 16 (10%)
- Series A 3 (2%)
- Series B 2 (1%)
Country
- United States 99 (62%)
- India 6 (4%)
- Kenya 5 (3%)
- United Kingdom 5 (3%)
- Uganda 4 (3%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Zeryn Sarpangal
Chief Financial Officer
|
Chief Financial Officer | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Benjamin Fels
DRK Entrepreneur
|
DRK Entrepreneur | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
|
Christy Chin
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Craig Lee
Managing Director
|
Managing Director | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
Robert Steven Kaplan
Co-Chairman
|
Co-Chairman | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
| See all 8 team members → | ||||
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Energiesprong is a revolutionary, whole house refurbishment and new built standard and funding approach. | Grant / Jun 10, 2026 | ||
| Farm to Feed is a food supply chain company that is providing a digitally-enabled solution to food loss/waste. | $1.3M / Seed / Oct 18, 2025 | ||
| Honeycomb Credit is a developer of a peer-to-peer lending platform allowing friends and family to fund small businesses. | $6M / Seed / Jun 18, 2024 | ||
| The Chancery Lane Project uses contracts, a massive system that underpins the global economy, to tackle climate change, turning net zero targets into actionable agreements to limit greenhouse gas reductions. It mobilizes law firms across the globe to create and embed climate clauses into contract law to help mitigate carbon emissions at theirsource and accelerate net-zero carbon outcomes amongst those industries and sectors most responsible for climate change. | $100K / Grant / Jan 01, 2024 | ||
| BelleVie's vision is a world where those who receive and provide support are valued and thrive. BelleVie's radically different operating model of self-managing teams was inspired by the successful Buurtzorg model of nursing in the Netherlands. Unlike other care providers who are digitising a broken operating model, BelleVie addresses theroot cause, fixing the operating model and then digitising that. | $2.2M / Seed / Nov 28, 2023 | ||
| Africa can – and must – help cover our world's growing food needs. We invest in farmers and dare them to dream big. Emata is revolutionising the way smallholder farmers in Africa access financing. Our loans are specifically designed to empower farmers to invest in their farms and increase their revenue. We make this possible by utilisingend-to-end digital processes, AI-powered alternative credit-scoring and partnerships with agricultural intermediaries like cooperatives and aggregators.Emata is a licensed Microfinance Institution. Visit us at our offices in Kampala and Mbarara for a coffee! | $2.4M / Seed / Sep 14, 2023 | ||
| The American Journalism Project is a new venture philanthropy organization dedicated to local news. By providing course-altering investments and venture support to civic news organizations, we are building a new public service media that is governed by, sustained by and looks like the public it serves. | $5M / Grant / Jul 18, 2023 | ||
| Reboot Rx is a nonprofit health tech startup dedicated to fast-tracking the development of affordable cancer treatments using repurposed generic drugs, AI technology, and innovative funding models. | $1M / Grant / Apr 04, 2023 | ||
| Fundi Bots provides hands-on science-education, practical Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education to children and youth in classrooms, communities, and universities. These tools and resources help accelerate learning outcomes for African students.Its students learn how to build robots, which radically improves schoolcurriculum knowledge and classroom performance, provides hands-on vocational skills and career development, and empowers students to be forces of change in their communities. | Grant / Apr 01, 2023 | ||
| Ignite Reading is a literacy tutoring organization that helps students with reading progress. The organization partners with schools and districts nationally to provide K-8 students with reading instruction grounded in the science of reading. Schools in its program receive a dedicated team of virtual tutors trained in an evidence-based foundationalreading skills curriculum rooted in the Science of Reading. Tutors meet virtually every day with students in targeted time, 15-minute sessions. | $10M / Series A / Feb 01, 2023 | ||
| See all 160 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
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FAQ
What does The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invest in?
The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invests primarily in Non Profit, Association and Health Care startups, most often at Grant and Seed stage. Most of the 160 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What round sizes does The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invest in?
The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation typically joins rounds of $83k–$3.8M at Seed, $100k–$1M at Grant and $300k–$3M at Venture - Series Unknown. These are whole funding-round sizes, not The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation's own check, which is rarely disclosed: the 10th–90th percentile of the confirmed public funding rounds The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation took part in.
How do I contact The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation?
Public channels for The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
Who are the partners at The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation?
The team at The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation includes Zeryn Sarpangal (Chief Financial Officer), Benjamin Fels (DRK Entrepreneur) and Christy Chin (Partner), among 8 team members tracked by Shizune. The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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