Updated at 1 p.m. January 5 with additional FY2016 grants reported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Pacific Northwest team awarded $68 million in 76 grants to more than three dozen organizations in 2016.

This report excludes multi-year grants approved prior to 2016 and global health/development grants to organizations based locally, such as PATH, foundation officials explained. In total, including global grants, the foundation has awarded nearly $1.5 billion to Washington-based nonprofits, school districts, agencies and universities in the last five years.

Based on total grant dollars, the top five recipients in 2016 were:

• Building Changes: $6,360,000 to provide support for systems innovation and sustainability of progress made in making family homelessness brief and one time in three demonstration communities of King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties; $2,903,040 to sustain a data-driven culture in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties and help more homeless families find a safe place to call home; $900,000 to to support the development of Schoolhouse Washington, a partnership to address the academic and housing needs of pre-K-12 students in Washington state; and $100,000 to support the development of a framework to coordinate, align and rationalize all investments and work surrounding the Tri-County Family Homelessness Initiative for the next three years, 2016-2018.
• University of Washington Foundation: $6,470,875 to support publicly available coursework for early learning teachers and leaders; $320,000 to to develop understanding of the county's data systems by providing expertise in state-of-the-art technology and methods in large-scale data manipulation and analytics, cloud and cluster computing, statistics and machine learning, and visualization; and $159,667 to support research on higher education opportunities in the central Puget Sound (WA) area and to understand student and workforce needs for higher education in the region.
• Philanthropy Northwest: $6,523,515 to support provision of technical assistance and grants to build the community engagement and multi-sector collaboration capacities of community philanthropy organizations in Washington state.
• League of Education Voters Foundation: $2,221,000 to provide general operating support for the League of Education Voters Foundation; $50,000 to provide general operating support for the League of Education Voters.
• State of Washington Department of Early Learning: $2,177,000 to support preschool quality improvement efforts.

Read more in the Gates Foundation's Community Impact Notes from Washington State (December 2016) and search the foundation's awarded grants database for more information.