Steve and Connie Ballmer are splitting their Ballmer Group into three independent regional nonprofits—serving Southeast Michigan, Los Angeles, and Washington—each chosen because of personal ties to the couple.
The restructuring moves philanthropic decision-making from the national office to regional leaders who work directly on the ground, reflecting a belief that local teams understand their communities' needs better than distant funders.
What happened
Steve and Connie Ballmer are converting their Ballmer Group's three regional offices—MoveUp Southeast Michigan, MoveUp LA, and MoveUp Washington—into separate, independent nonprofits that will operate autonomously while remaining funded by the Ballmers. The transition will take place over the next year, with Ballmer Group CEO Terri Ludwig serving as a founding board member for all three while continuing to lead the national Ballmer Group.
Why it matters
The restructuring moves decision-making about donations closer to the people doing the work on the ground in each region, rather than centralizing it at a national level. This approach reflects a philosophy that local leaders understand their communities' needs better than distant funders—a model Ballmer Group CEO Ludwig frames as empowering regional teams to shape their own philanthropic priorities. The Ballmers have given away more than $8 billion over two decades, making this shift a significant change in how one of the country's largest private philanthropies operates.
What to watch
Each new organization will build its own board and establish its own endowment structure (still being worked out), while maintaining current grantee commitments without disruption. The Ballmer Group itself will narrow its focus to a smaller set of large, scalable national initiatives aimed at advancing economic mobility.
Steve and Connie Ballmer, who have given away more than $8 billion over the past two decades, are fundamentally restructuring how their philanthropy operates. The Ballmer Group, founded in 2015, is spinning its three regional offices into separate, independent nonprofits: MoveUp Southeast Michigan, MoveUp LA, and MoveUp Washington. Each will operate autonomously while remaining funded by the Ballmers, with the transition occurring over the next year.
The choice of regions reflects the couple's personal geography. Steve grew up in Southeast Michigan, the Ballmers own the Los Angeles Clippers, and Washington is their home. This personal anchoring is central to their reasoning: by moving decision-making closer to the people doing the ground-level work, they believe donations will be more responsive to local needs. Ballmer Group CEO Terri Ludwig, who joined the organization in 2019 from Enterprise Community Partners, will serve as a founding board member for all three new entities while continuing to lead the national Ballmer Group. Ludwig characterized the new organizations as startups rather than spin-offs, emphasizing their independent character despite shared funding.
Each regional nonprofit will build its own board and continue its existing work while adjusting to fit local needs. Critically, current grantees will retain their commitments without disruption, and Ballmer Group staff in each region will transition to the new organizations. The financial structure is still being determined, but an endowment is under consideration. Meanwhile, the national Ballmer Group will narrow its focus to a smaller set of large, scalable national initiatives. In a joint statement, the Ballmers said: "Our intention is to ensure that these local philanthropies can be permanent, ongoing resources in each region, while we concentrate our national efforts on advancing economic mobility in new ways."
The Ballmers' largest gifts illustrate the scale of their work: a $425 million gift to the University of Oregon to establish the Ballmer Institute for Children's Behavioral Health, a $237.5 million gift to Blue Meridian Partners for its Place Matters Initiative, and an up-to $165 million pledge to Communities In Schools to scale its student-support model to 1,000 new schools. Steve, the former Microsoft CEO (2000–2014), has an estimated net worth of $177 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The couple has maintained a lower philanthropic profile than peers like MacKenzie Scott (who has given $26 billion) and Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. However, Connie has stepped further into public view recently, donating $80 million to NPR in April—one of the largest gifts in public media history—after the Trump administration pushed Congress to slash roughly $1.1 billion from public broadcasting. Connie told the Wall Street Journal: "We need fact-based journalism, and we need local journalism."
The Ballmers' restructuring reflects a broader shift in how large-scale philanthropists think about local versus national giving. Rather than maintaining centralized control, they are formalizing what amounts to a trust in regional leadership—a move that CEO Terri Ludwig frames explicitly as empowering local teams to operate more like startups than spin-offs. The choice to anchor each region to a personal connection (Michigan origins, LA sports ownership, Washington roots) suggests the couple views geographic proximity and emotional investment as essential to effective grantmaking.
This philosophy aligns with advice Ludwig herself gives to newly wealthy philanthropists: start with the problem you care deeply about, find people closest to the challenge, learn from them, and refine over time. By devolving control to regional boards while maintaining funding, the Ballmers are institutionalizing that principle. The financial structure—including a potential endowment for each region—suggests they intend these organizations to outlive their active involvement, creating what they describe as "permanent, ongoing resources" in each region. The move also allows the national Ballmer Group to concentrate on scalable initiatives rather than managing three distinct regional portfolios.
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