About Tinker Foundation
To promote the development of an equitable, sustainable, and productive society in Latin America by providing funding to organizations working to address the region’s most pressing challenges.
Focus Areas
Rule of law / justice sector strengtheningAccess to justice for vulnerable and marginalized groupsJudicial selection, training, and assessmentFoundational learning (early literacy and numeracy)Teacher training and coachingDiagnostic and formative evaluationsCapacity building, applied research, and policy/practice changeGraduate field research support and academic exchange
Who They Fund
small-scale coffee producerssmall-scale fishers / coastal fishing communities
About Tinker Foundation
The Tinker Foundation Inc. centers its grantmaking on Latin America, with a clear emphasis on policy and practice change in education, democratic governance, and sustainable resource management. A defining feature of its portfolio is the mix of institutional grants and field-based support: it funds organizations working on access to justice, foundational learning, water governance, fisheries management, forestry value chains, and related research and exchange. Several recent grants show how that strategy works in practice. In education, the foundation supported Fundación SUMMA with $103,000 for scaling effective pedagogical practices in Panama and improving the educational system from within, and Laboratorio de Educação with $100,000 for expanding a methodology for improved middle-grade reading comprehension. In governance, it gave $121,000 to Transparencia Brasil for strengthening accountability and access to justice within Brazil’s public defenders offices, and $113,000 to Observatorio Nacional Ciudadano for making alternative justice count. The portfolio also includes region-specific work outside the classroom and courtroom. Grants to Futuro Latinoamerica and Fase focused on water as a human right and access to clean and secure water, while other awards supported fisheries resilience, environmental crime disruption, and graduate field research through university-based programs.
What Tinker Foundation Funds
Education is a major thread in the foundation’s portfolio. It gave $112,000 to Universidad Marcelino Champagnat for peer tutoring for accelerated learning recovery in Metropolitan Lima, and $109,000 to Fundación Crisalida Internacional for supporting early and remedial education in Guatemala and Honduras. It also backed Atentamente Consultores with $100,000 for social-emotional learning for lower-elementary school students and their educators in the Yucatán Peninsula. The democratic governance side focuses on justice systems and legal access. Tinker awarded $130,000 to Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez for studying the impact of information and communication technologies on access to civil justice in Chile, and $119,000 to Tierraviva for strengthening access to justice in Paraguay’s Chaco Region. Sustainable resource management is another consistent area. The foundation provided $155,000 to Asociación San Sustainable Agriculture Network for community-based monitoring and assurance for small-scale coffee producers in Planadas, Tolima, Colombia, and $145,000 to Fundación Getulio Vargas for fisheries agreements as an instrument for participatory management of biodiversity resources.
Financial Snapshot
Annual Giving
$2.9M
Total Assets
$84.6M
Total Revenue
$6.8M
Total Expenses
$4.7M
Typical Grant Size
Most grants fall between $15K and $97K, with a median of $41K.
25th Percentile
$15K
Median
$41K
75th Percentile
$97K
Geographic Reach
National16 states funded
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Headquarters
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Where Tinker Foundation Funds
Top 10 recipient countries by grant volume for Tinker Foundation.
| Rank | Country | Grants | Total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United StatesDomestic | 95 | $3.7M | 38.1% |
| 2 | Mexico | 24 |
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