Representatives of the 25 nonprofits receiving Microsoft’s first Community-First Grants pose for a photo Monday with company leaders in Redmond with Seattle Mariners star Cal Raleigh and the team’s mascots. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
The Lighthouse for the Blind is adding braille displays to its computer lab. Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery is taking its lessons to low-income schools. And Lake Washington High School is replacing band capes that date to the MS-DOS era.
Those are among 25 King County nonprofits that received $20,000 apiece from Microsoft in grants announced this week. It’s the first round of the company’s Community-First Grants, a $1 million program launched in September .
Microsoft said it received 813 applications.
“Boy, I think we hit a nerve,” said Jane Broom, Microsoft’s senior director of Community Affairs, during an event recognizing the nonprofits on the company’s Redmond campus, featuring Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh and team mascots.
The grants are meant for immediate needs, such as replacing a broken-down van or a failed freezer, Broom explained. Nonprofits that received or were invited to receive Microsoft corporate grants in 2026 weren’t eligible.
Funding and the tax debate: Nonprofits are dealing with rising costs and tighter budgets. As a group, their largest funding source is the state government, which is in the middle of an ongoing debate with members of the business community over taxes and economic competitiveness amid a budget crunch.
Microsoft is among the companies asserting that current and proposed taxes are hurting the business climate. It’s also the second-largest funder of the state’s nonprofits, said Brad Smith, the company’s president and vice chair.
“In my view, a healthy nonprofit community actually has aspects of support from more than one source,” Smith said in an interview after the event, noting that state grants are often at risk when a recession forces budget cuts.
Where the money goes: Demand is climbing for many of the grant recipients. At Community Lunch on Capitol Hill , which serves free hot meals, it’s up 40% this year, and the diaper bank at Byrd Barr Place has grown from 720 families in 2021 to 1,600, Microsoft said at the event.
Friends of the Issaquah Salmon Hatchery gives more than 700 tours during the salmon season. It will use its grant to bring lessons to classrooms, mainly at Title I schools, which serve large numbers of low-income students and often can’t afford a field trip to the hatchery, said Mark Clemens, the group’s executive director.
“If they can’t bring the school to the hatchery, we will go out to the school,” said Clemens, a former Scientific American art director, who was creative director of the Modernist Cuisine cookbook project before taking over the nonprofit in 2023.
One bonus for the group, which goes by the clever acronym of FISH, was the appearance of the Mariners’ salmon mascots, which joined the group onstage for a photo op when Clemens and his colleagues accepted its grant.
The Lighthouse for the Blind, a Seattle-based nonprofit that employs blind people in manufacturing, retail and other jobs, will use its grant to upgrade its computer training lab with Windows 11 PCs, braille displays and wireless keyboards, said Antonio Rozier, the nonprofit’s IT director.
The goal is to keep employees current on screen readers and other tools so they can work alongside sighted colleagues, Rozier said. The Lighthouse also has computer labs at its three manufacturing plants, and employees can use them for personal tasks, since some don’t have that equipment at home.
Rozier called the upgraded lab “a game changer for the future.”
The Lake Washington High School Band and Jazz Boosters will buy 150 uniforms for the school’s marching band, which returned in 2025 after a 40-year absence and has been performing in capes from 1981.
Microsoft’s company culture: Most of the company’s local giving is directed by its employees. Microsoft matches their donations up to $15,000 a year per person and adds $25 for every hour they volunteer, Smith said.
That program accounts for most of the $1.9 billion that Microsoft and its employees have given to about 13,000 Washington nonprofits over the past 30 years, he said.
“We let our people decide where the money goes,” Smith said.
Microsoft’s employee base is going through a period of major change. After layoffs in July and September , the company offered voluntary buyouts last month to about 60,000 people, roughly a quarter of its global workforce. Employees have described mounting pressure to use AI, stagnant pay and a growing sense of job insecurity, The New York Times reported .
Asked about the buyouts, Smith said it’s a good time for Microsoft to keep investing in the employee experience, and he described the giving program as part of that.
Silicon Valley companies may offer more free food as a perk, he said, but Microsoft matches employee donations, giving workers who often move to the region from elsewhere a way to get involved in the community.
This year’s Microsoft Give campaign in October, the company’s biggest month for employee donations, was again a success, Smith said, showing that “employee participation and employee giving is alive and well.”
Microsoft plans to open a second round of applications for the Community-First Grants in the spring of 2027.
