# Crankstart Foundation **Stub — fill out.** The private philanthropic vehicle of [[Michael Moritz]] and his wife, the writer Harriet Heyman. Crankstart is one of the largest and least publicly visible funders in San Francisco, and it is the financial substrate beneath Moritz's civic-political activity in the city — the reason his name recurs in local ballot fights without appearing on most committee filings. Known giving spans university scholarships (notably a large undergraduate scholarship program at Oxford), the Booker Prizes, the ACLU (a $20M endowment gift and bequest challenge with Heyman), and a wide range of San Francisco social-service organizations. ## Why it sits in this KB The foundation matters here as the **structure that separates charitable giving from political spending in the same donor's portfolio**. Crankstart is the philanthropy; [[TogetherSF]] and its successors were the politics. Keeping the distinction visible is the point — conflating a donor's foundation with their electoral vehicle is a common analytical error, and Moritz's case is a clean example of a donor who ran both. ## To expand - Annual giving totals and the Form 990 record - The Oxford scholarship program's scale and terms - Which San Francisco service organizations depend on Crankstart money, and what leverage that creates - Harriet Heyman's own role and whether she warrants a page - Whether any Crankstart grantee overlapped with TogetherSF's political targets ## See Also - [[Michael Moritz]] - [[TogetherSF]] - [[Sequoia Capital]]