Dive Brief:

• The Hastings Fund, a new education foundation created with $100 million dollars from Netflix founder Reed Hastings, has launched, distributing grants totaling $1.5 million dollars to help students of color access higher education.
• Neerav Kingsland, an advocate for charter schools who led New Schools for New Orleans, has been tapped to head the fund.
• Previously, Hastings served on California's State Board of Education and is known as being a supporter of charter schools, helping start the NewSchools Venture Fund as well as the Aspire Public schools charter network.

Dive Insight:

Compared to philanthropic efforts in education by billionaires like Bill and Melinda Gates, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, or Wal-Mart's Waltons, Hastings is just getting started.

Few details have been released about The Hastings Fund, but it's a good sign that one of the first moves made by the foundation is aimed at leveling disparity in access to higher education. A lack of racial diversity continues to plague Silicon Valley, and one way to remediate the issue is to even out access to education for students of color.

Still, given Hastings' background of charter school advocacy, it will be interesting to see who ends up benefitting most from the new fund. As of now, it's not yet clear where its primary area of focus within education may be.