Bemc Foundation

The BEMC Foundation is a tightly controlled, invitation-only private family foundation established in Greenwich, CT in November 2021, with an initial endowment of approximately $20.5 million. Officers James McClave (President/Director/Treasurer) and Emily Berger (Director/Secretary) — both associated with Jane Street Capital, a quantitative trading firm with well-documented ties to the effective altruism (EA) community — direct all grantmaking personally, with zero staff compensation and no public-facing application infrastructure.

The foundation's giving philosophy is legible entirely through its grantee portfolio: every dollar across four years of operation has gone to organizations within or adjacent to the EA ecosystem. Vox Media's Future Perfect Program, an evidence-based solutions-journalism initiative, received at least four grants totaling $3.67 million through 2023, plus an additional approximately $2.4 million in 2024. GiveWell — the canonical EA charity evaluator whose recommendations guide billions in charitable giving globally — received $1 million in an earlier grant cycle and $4 million in December 2024. There is no other documented grantee in the foundation's history.

The relationship model here is long-term and trust-based. Both grantees have received multi-year repeat funding without any public competitive process. First-time seekers must understand: this foundation maintains no public website (the bemc.org domain belongs to an unrelated North Carolina electric cooperative), no application portal, no disclosed deadlines, and no program-officer contact. BEMC Foundation's IRS-listed website is effectively a dead end for outreach.

The only realistic pathway to BEMC Foundation funding runs through deep embeddedness in EA networks — specifically through GiveWell's recommendation ecosystem, the EA Forum research community, or the Jane Street Capital and Anthropic investor networks. McClave's participation in Anthropic's Series A and B rounds signals possible emerging interest in AI safety and long-termist philanthropic priorities. Organizations working at the intersection of global health, EA evidence standards, AI safety, or high-quality public communication about effective giving are most likely to appear on BEMC Foundation's horizon. Any engagement should be framed using EA evaluation language — cost per outcome, counterfactual impact, scalability, and evidence base — not conventional nonprofit grant-writing idioms.

BEMC Foundation's giving has grown dramatically since its 2021 founding, accelerating from $611,527 in fiscal year 2021 to $6,418,054 in fiscal year 2024 — a 950% increase in four years. Total documented giving across fiscal years 2021–2024 amounts to approximately $10.5 million disbursed through six known individual grants.

Grant sizing reflects major institutional commitments rather than project-level support. The smallest documented award is $611,527 (FY2021, Vox Media Future Perfect). The largest on record is $4,000,000 (December 2024, GiveWell). The 2024 two-grant average was $3,209,027; the all-years average across six grants is approximately $1.74 million. There are no small or mid-range grants in the historical record — BEMC Foundation does not appear to make exploratory or pilot-sized awards.

Year-by-year: FY2021 $611,527 (1 grant), FY2022 $1,834,581 (1 grant), FY2023 $1,627,981 (2 grants), FY2024 $6,418,054 (2 grants). The jump from FY2023 to FY2024 is the most striking shift and appears driven entirely by the escalation of the GiveWell relationship.

Grantee concentration is extreme: 100% of documented giving has gone to exactly two organizations. Through 2023, approximately 78% of cumulative giving supported Vox Media's Future Perfect Program. In 2024, GiveWell received 62% ($4M) and Future Perfect approximately 38% ($2.4M) — marking a visible portfolio rebalance toward direct EA infrastructure over media. No education, environmental, health, arts, community development, or international development grantees appear anywhere in the record.

Geographically, all grants flow to Washington, DC-area and California-based organizations, reflecting GiveWell's San Francisco headquarters and Vox Media Future Perfect's Washington, DC operations. The foundation's asset trajectory tells the financing story: assets rose from $20.5M at founding to a peak of $37M in FY2023 — suggesting roughly $16M in additional capital contributions around FY2022 — before declining to $33.4M in FY2024 as disbursements outpaced investment income by $3.6M. Net investment income runs approximately $1.9M annually, which is insufficient to sustain the current giving pace, indicating intentional principal drawdown consistent with EA 'give more now' principles.

BEMC Foundation sits in a $33–34 million asset tier alongside four comparable private foundations in the Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category. Its giving intensity and strategic focus distinguish it sharply from similarly sized peers.

BEMC Foundation's FY2024 giving-to-assets ratio of approximately 19% is exceptionally high for a foundation this size — the IRS minimum distribution requirement is 5%. This pace signals either a spend-down orientation or the expectation of ongoing capital infusions from principals. By contrast, the only two peers with public program information — Brindle Foundation and Gilchrist Foundation — operate more conventional open-application models with defined geographies or industry niches. Brindle's annual September deadline and published grantee list represent the accessible end of the spectrum; BEMC Foundation represents the opposite extreme. The three peers with no public information (Zide, Ridgway, Ajana) likely reflect the more typical private family foundation posture of quiet, invitation-only giving without BEMC's EA-ecosystem visibility.

December 2024 was BEMC Foundation's most consequential grant period on record: a $4,000,000 award to The Clear Fund dba GiveWell — the largest single grant in the foundation's history, representing more than double its entire FY2023 disbursements. Simultaneously, Vox Media's Future Perfect Program received approximately $2.4 million, bringing the FY2024 total to $6,418,054 across two grants. This 298% year-over-year increase drew down approximately $3.6 million of endowment principal and is the strongest signal yet that the foundation is accelerating its EA-aligned giving.

In March 2024, a CNN Politics investigation identified James McClave as a significant donor connected to a pro-Biden political dark-money network through Arabella Advisors-connected vehicles. The reporting independently confirmed McClave's profile as an early Anthropic investor (Series A and B rounds) and his operational ties to Jane Street Capital, bringing brief but significant public attention to a previously obscure donor.

The foundation's transparency history crystallized in July 2023, when Future Perfect publicly disclosed for the first time that McClave and BEMC Foundation were its primary current funders — a connection absent from prior years' disclosures despite the foundation having served as Future Perfect's anchor funder since its FY2021 inception. No leadership changes have been announced: McClave and Berger have held all officer roles since the foundation's November 2021 ruling date. No new grantees beyond the original two appear in any available 990 filing through FY2024 (most recent filing received November 2025).

The BEMC Foundation operates as an invitation-only grantmaker with no public application portal, no stated deadlines, no published criteria, and no active public website. Conventional grant-seeking approaches — foundation directory applications, cold LOI submissions, program-officer emails — will not reach this funder. For organizations working in EA-aligned spaces, however, several concrete strategies exist.

Build credibility within the GiveWell ecosystem first. GiveWell has now received at least $5 million from BEMC Foundation across two documented grants, and the relationship appears to be deepening. Organizations that receive a GiveWell Top Charity recommendation, appear in GiveWell's published intervention research, or contribute to GiveWell's evidence base enter the same credibility orbit that BEMC Foundation monitors. Being listed among GiveWell's 'standout charities' or actively collaborating on randomized evaluations would likely register.

Publish rigorously on the EA Forum. Jane Street Capital is among the primary employers of effective altruists in finance. McClave and Berger are operating within this ecosystem. Substantive EA Forum posts on cost-effectiveness analyses, intervention evidence reviews, and global health research surface directly to this donor cohort in ways that traditional grant directories do not.

Align language to EA evaluation criteria. Every BEMC Foundation grant purpose has been stated in EA terms: 'high-impact opportunities for saving and improving lives' and 'fund operations' of evidence-based programs. Proposals should lead with cost per DALY or cost per outcome metrics, counterfactual analysis, and scalability arguments — not organizational history or community testimonials.

Optimal timing: September through December. The December 2024 GiveWell grant and the fiscal-year-end pattern suggest major grant decisions are executed in the fall semester. Network-building and relationship-cultivation efforts should aim to produce substantive dialogue by mid-year so that any emerging interest can mature before year-end decision cycles.

Avoid misdirected outreach. The registered address (c/o Dungey, 1 Sound Shore Dr, Suite 204, Greenwich, CT 06830) and phone number (631-414-4000) are administrative/registered-agent contacts. No program-staff email has been made public. The bemc.org domain is an unrelated North Carolina electric cooperative. Direct outreach to these contact points is unlikely to reach McClave or Berger and may mark an applicant as not having done basic due diligence.