# The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

> The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation is a VC fund backing Non Profit. See 57 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Menlo Park, United States
- Total investments: 57
- Last investment: Jun 2026
- Lead investor: 33%
- Fund size: $65M
- Last fund: Jun 2016
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/draper-richards-kaplan-foundation
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/drkfoundation
- Website: http://www.drkfoundation.org/

The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation is a VC fund in Menlo Park focused on Non Profit and Education. 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.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. Shizune tracks 8 team members at The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/the-draper-richards-kaplan-foundation?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $250k–$3.8M |
| Grant | $50k–$5M |
| Series A | $6M–$12M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Non Profit | 16 | 28% |
| Education | 9 | 16% |
| Health Care | 8 | 14% |
| Legal | 7 | 12% |
| Association | 6 | 11% |

87 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Grant | 28 | 49% |
| Seed | 20 | 35% |
| Venture - Series Unknown | 4 | 7% |
| Series A | 3 | 5% |
| Series B | 1 | 2% |

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United States | 34 | 60% |
| Uganda | 4 | 7% |
| India | 3 | 5% |
| United Kingdom | 3 | 5% |
| Ghana | 2 | 4% |

13 countries tracked in total.

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| William H. Draper | Co-Founder, Co-Chair | 1 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/william-h-draper-2 |
| Zeryn Sarpangal | Chief Financial Officer | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/zeryn-sarpangal |
| Benjamin Fels | DRK Entrepreneur | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/benjamin-fels |
| Christy Chin | Partner | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/christy-chin |
| Craig Lee | Managing Director | 0 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/craig-lee |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Energiesprong | Energiesprong is a revolutionary, whole house refurbishment and new built standard and funding approach. |  | Grant | Jun 10, 2026 |  |
| Farm to Feed | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 |  |
| Emata | 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 |  |
| American Journalism Project | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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 |  |

10 of 57 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Ceniarth](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ceniarth-2) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Norrsken Evolve](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/norrsken-accelerator) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [OMERS Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/omers-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Praxis](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/praxis-2) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [Ulu Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ulu-ventures) — VC Fund, 2 deals together
- [54Co](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/54co) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

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## FAQ

### What does The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invest in?

The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation invests primarily in Non Profit, Education and Health Care startups, most often at Grant and Seed stage. Most of the 57 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation's check size?

The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation typically joins rounds of $250k–$3.8M at Seed, $50k–$5M at Grant and $6M–$12M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds The Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation participates 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 William H. Draper (Co-Founder, Co-Chair), Zeryn Sarpangal (Chief Financial Officer) and Benjamin Fels (DRK Entrepreneur), 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 Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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