Opportunity Education Foundation

Opportunity Education Foundation is a Ricketts-family operating foundation, not a conventional competitive grantmaker, and grant seekers should calibrate expectations accordingly. Founded in 2005 by Joe Ricketts (TD Ameritrade founder) after a visit to Tanzania, the foundation's board is entirely unpaid Ricketts family members and one general counsel (Joe Ricketts as Director/President/Treasurer, Todd, Laura and Peter Ricketts and Sylvie Legere as nonvoting directors, Alfred Levitt as Secretary and General Counsel) — there is no independent program-officer-led grants committee reviewing outside proposals. Day-to-day work is run by paid staff, Chief Innovation Officer Manuel Mattke (roughly $1.46M-$1.53M in reported annual compensation across recent filings) and Chief Learning Officer Raymond Ravaglia (roughly $320K-$390K), who oversee curriculum design and the e-learning platform rather than an application review process. The recorded grant history bears this out: the foundation's grantee data shows only 4 recorded grants totaling $2,330,824, and 3 of those 4 grants ($2,328,329, essentially the entire pool) went to 'Opportunity Education Foundation - A Tanzanian Ingo' — the foundation's own affiliated Tanzanian entity that operates the Quest Forward Learning secondary-school network. The single outside recipient identified, Quest Forward Academy Inc, received one grant of just $2,495, tied to use of the foundation's own curriculum. In practice this means unsolicited proposals from unrelated nonprofits are extremely unlikely to be funded; the foundation exists primarily to finance its own program delivery (curriculum development, e-learning tools, teacher professional development) in Tanzania and, secondarily, U.S. Quest Forward Academy charter/independent schools. First-time prospects should not expect an LOI-to-full-proposal-to-site-visit progression — there is no such pipeline documented anywhere in the foundation's public materials or IRS filings. The realistic path in is a partnership conversation: schools or education organizations in Tanzania (or elsewhere) interested in adopting the Quest Forward Learning curriculum, or U.S. charter/independent schools aligned with project-based, 'student-owns-their-learning' pedagogy, are the closest fit to what this funder actually supports.

Formal cash grants are a small slice of this foundation's spending. Across the 4 recorded grants in the data (totaling $2,330,824, average $582,706), the range runs from $2,495 (Quest Forward Academy Inc) to an average of roughly $776,110 per grant across the 3 payments to the Tanzanian INGO affiliate ($2,328,329 combined) — effectively a two-tier pattern of one large recurring institutional transfer and one token outside grant. Comparing 'grants paid' to 'total giving' on the Form 990s makes the pass-through structure explicit: in fiscal year 2023, grants paid was $782,348 against total giving of $5,754,894 — meaning roughly 86% of total giving ($4.97M) was spent directly by the foundation on its own programs rather than distributed as third-party grants. The three reported program areas confirm this: curriculum/e-learning development is the largest at $4,672,633 in expenses, direct Tanzania school grants at $653,988, and legacy classroom-materials distribution at $274,559. Revenue and assets have been volatile and donor-concentrated: contributions received closely track total revenue every year (e.g., FY2023: $6,200,100 of $6,247,416 revenue, or 99%; FY2022: $7,166,100 of $7,242,755, or 99%), confirming this is essentially a single-family-funded vehicle with negligible outside fundraising or investment income (net investment income was $0 in three of the last four reported years). Assets swung from a low of $213,770 in FY2020 (the same year revenue spiked to $20,640,750, an apparent one-time large contribution) up to $10,646,135 in FY2013 and currently sit at $6,229,443 (FY2023), with income of $5,821,453 and total reported assets of $5,993,374 in the most current IRS record. Grants paid has grown steadily from $653,988 (FY2020) to $789,376 (FY2022) and $782,348 (FY2023), while total giving has stayed roughly flat in the $5.3M-$5.8M range over the same window — suggesting a modest, incremental increase in the share of spending flowing to the Tanzanian network relative to internal program costs. Officer compensation of $1.78M-$2.0M per year is unusually high relative to a foundation this size, reflecting shared/allocated staff costs across the broader Ricketts philanthropic and Quest Forward organizational network rather than conventional grants administration overhead.

Opportunity Education Foundation sits in a cluster of similarly-sized international-focus private foundations with total assets in the $5.3M-$6M range, all of which are either single-family or founder-directed vehicles rather than open competitive grantmakers.

All five peers share Opportunity Education Foundation's defining trait for grant seekers: none have a listed website in this dataset, which typically signals a private or family foundation with no public-facing grant program rather than an active open funder. Grant seekers targeting this asset tier of international-focus foundations should expect the same pattern across the group — most dollars flow to founder-directed or affiliated programs, and cold outreach has a low probability of success without a pre-existing relationship or a very specific programmatic fit (in Opportunity Education's case, Tanzanian secondary education or Quest Forward curriculum adoption).

Public reporting on Opportunity Education Foundation is sparse for 2025-2026 specifically; the most substantive dated milestone found is the January 2020 announcement that the foundation doubled its Quest Forward Learning school network in Tanzania to roughly 34-35 schools, reaching over 3,000 students and 300+ teachers — no comparably sized expansion announcement has surfaced since. More recently, the domestic Quest Forward Academy Omaha campus (Nebraska is the only state appearing in this foundation's recorded grantee data) launched a free Summer Bridge Program aimed at helping incoming 8th graders prepare for 9th grade, though an exact 2025/2026 date could not be confirmed. Leadership has been stable across the most recent Form 990 filings reviewed: Manuel Mattke continues as Chief Innovation Officer and Raymond Ravaglia as Chief Learning Officer, with compensation for both trending down slightly year over year (Mattke from roughly $1.53M to $1.46M, Ravaglia from roughly $388K to $348K across the four most recent filings in the data). The board remains unchanged and entirely Ricketts family plus general counsel, with no reported turnover. No news of a major new single grant, capital campaign, or leadership transition was found for 2025 or 2026 in available search results; grant seekers should treat this as a foundation currently operating its existing Tanzania and U.S. network-school programs at a steady state rather than one in an active growth or strategic-pivot phase.

Because this foundation has no documented application process — its own record shows application_form_url, opportunities_url, and grants_page_url all empty, and application_instructions listed simply as none — the standard grant-writing playbook does not apply here. First, do not search for a portal or RFP; none exists on opportunityeducation.org or opportunityeducation.or.tz. Second, the only contact channel is direct outreach to info@opportunityeducation.org or the site's contact-us form; there is no dedicated grants inbox or program officer listed publicly. Third, given that 3 of the foundation's 4 recorded grants (99.9% of recorded grant dollars) went to its own Tanzanian affiliate, an unsolicited request for a cash grant from an unrelated organization is very unlikely to succeed — the foundation is not shopping for external grantees. The far better-aligned approach is a partnership pitch: organizations running or seeking to run secondary schools in Tanzania (or interested in adopting Quest Forward Learning's project-based, digitally delivered curriculum aligned to the Tanzania Institute of Education syllabus) are the closest match to what this funder actually resources. U.S. charter or independent schools interested in Quest Forward's 'student-owns-their-learning' pedagogy are the next closest fit, modeled on the small $2,495 curriculum-related grant to Quest Forward Academy Inc. Use the foundation's own language — 'quest-based learning,' 'student ownership of learning,' 'active learning, skill development, and formative feedback' — rather than generic education-funding phrasing; this signals familiarity with their actual program model rather than a mass-mailed proposal. There is no stated deadline or funding cycle (both fields are empty in IRS records), so outreach timing is flexible, but responsiveness to unsolicited inquiries is unproven and likely slow given how few outside grants this foundation has made historically. The single biggest mistake would be treating Opportunity Education Foundation like a mid-size open funder and investing in a full LOI-to-proposal cycle — no such review pipeline is documented anywhere. If the goal is securing cash grant funding for an unrelated education nonprofit, time is likely better spent on foundations with a demonstrated pattern of funding external organizations rather than this one.