Google Awards $23 Million in Grants to 7 Non-Profits to Boost Innovation

Internet giant Google gave out $23 million in grant money to seven non-profits last week. The non-profits selected do vastly different work, but all have the same issue when it comes to innovation. Most non-profits do not have money in their annual budgets to set aside for innovation.Â Google hopes their investment will change this problem.

Some of the seven nonprofits selected include the World Wildlife Fund, a Smithsonian Institution project, Charity Water, and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. The World Wildlife Fund plans to use $5 million to develop animal tagging technology to prevent illegal poaching. The Smithsonian plans to use $3 million to create a library of DNA sequences to identify products that are made from poached animals.

Google asked each non-profit how much funding it would require to produce results in the next one to three years. Using the answers given, they determined how much funding each non-profit would receive, according to Jacquelline Fuller, Google’s director of charitable giving and advocacy.