Supported Programs
Today’s youth are left searching for clarity, understanding, and reassurance. Misinformation, inappropriate content, and cyberbullying are linked to negative long-term effects. Online manipulation increases our youth’s vulnerability and their dependence on digital connection. We support organizations with meaningful reach that deliver engaging, educational, and fact-based content for young audiences.
Grantees undergo a rigorous screening process to ensure the kids media content they produce, distribute, amplify, or provide access to, complies with best practices for our target population.
We are currently not accepting applications at this time.
Current Grantees:
First Stop News
Co-Hosts Ryan Willard and Kelsey Russell at First Stop News' Studio, New York City.
First Stop News offers a fresh twist on a traditional news format, delivering fast-paced, digestible content to tweens and young teens across the country. Through compelling interviews, informative overviews, and entertaining moments, First Stop News creates a positive foundation of news and media consumption for the next generation. Led by veteran executives in children's media from industry leaders like NBC News, CBS News, The Today Show, The New York Times, and Nickelodeon, content is published regularly in addition to a weekly newsletter.
In the two years leading up to the launch of First Stop News, a robust Maverix Audience Study study of parents and parent-supervised children (8-12) to understand news viewing habits. After watching the pilot episode, 71% of parents and kids said they would prefer First Stop News over any other kids news medium and 80% rated the pilot “like” or better.
“It was little, short bursts of information, it was upbeat, it was younger. I think the way they spoke was age appropriate, rather than feeling kind of stiff like traditional news.”
— Mom of 11-year-old twins
“I think a lot of kids would want to watch this version of news.”
— Girl, 9 years old
A Documentary Film
The Drug in Our Pocket
Currently in pre-production, this feature documentary examines how smartphones, designed to connect us, have radically reshaped childhood, adolescence, and mental health. Through intimate conversations with young people, parents, and leading experts, the film reveals a generation that is thoughtful, articulate, and increasingly aware of how digital environments shape their attention, emotions, and sense of self.
The film traces how attention has been intentionally fragmented by tech, emotional development altered, and agency gradually outsourced to devices carried everywhere. Grounded in neuroscience, psychology, and lived experience, THE DRUG IN OUR POCKET closely examines the phone as an active force shaping behavior, development, and identity, and frames a growing cultural reckoning with digital tech. The film closes with a clear provocation: what would it take to reclaim attention as a form of agency and build culture that supports young people in thinking, relating, and choosing for themselves?
Loyalty Foundation
Loyalty Foundation was founded in 2019 by former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney David Neeman. The foundation provides free laptop computers and in-person and virtual learning opportunities during Out of School Time (OST) to K-12 students in under-resourced communities across the U.S. This includes e-sports, technology education, and digital skills program learning.
https://www.loyaltyfoundation.orgLoyaltyFoundation.o