The Cyber Initiative: Looking back at a decade of cyberpolicy

The Cyber Initiative was launched in 2014 to build a more robust and capable cyber policy field. Initially a five-year commitment, the initiative was extended for another five years to continue supporting the people and organizations working on critical cybersecurity issues. In a decade of grantmaking, the initiative supported more than 100 grantee partners with charitable contributions totaling over $160 million.

The foundation entered this work knowing that cyber challenges wouldn’t be “solved” in just a decade. Instead, the Cyber Initiative set out to create a field that could stand on its own after the initiative’s planned exit. To achieve a more robust cyber policy field, the initiative invested in a core set of institutions with deep expertise, cultivated a talent pipeline to produce a diverse array of experts, and supported the development of organizations and experts capable of translating and disseminating the cyber policy to broader audiences.

To truly get a sense of a decade of work in the cyber policy field, we commissioned several external projects to better understand what the initiative accomplished and share the things we learned along the way.