Humanity United

Humanity United is a philanthropic foundation, not an investment firm. Programmatic grantmaking and strategic direction are led by Managing Partner Srik Gopal, who reports to the board chaired by founder Pamela Omidyar. The Omidyar Group's investment portfolio is managed separately through entities like Omidyar Network, which handles the family's impact investing and venture capital activities.

Humanity United is one of several entities within The Omidyar Group, the family office ecosystem established by Pierre and Pamela Omidyar. It operates independently from Omidyar Network, which focuses on impact investing, and Luminate Group, which addresses governance and democracy. Each entity has distinct leadership and legal structures, though they share a common wealth origin in the eBay fortune.

Humanity United is structured as a private 501(c)(3) foundation. While it is part of the Omidyar family's broader organizational ecosystem, it does not manage the family's investable assets or function as a single-family office. Its mandate is exclusively philanthropic, targeting human rights abuses through grants, advocacy, and field operations.

Humanity United does not make for-profit investments and does not fund political campaigns or lobbying directly. Its programmatic boundaries exclude issues outside forced labor, human trafficking, and peacebuilding — for example, it does not work on climate mitigation or public health, though those issues intersect with its mandate in specific supply chain contexts.

Humanity United actively co-funds with other philanthropic institutions. A prominent example is the Freedom Fund, a collaborative donor vehicle it co-founded in 2014 with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation and other partners to pool resources for anti-slavery work in hotspots including India, Ethiopia, and Thailand. The organization operates on a model of coalition-building rather than solo grantmaking.

Humanity United primarily makes direct grants to operating nonprofits, advocacy groups, and research institutions. It does not commit capital to investment funds as a limited partner. However, through umbrella collaborations like the Freedom Fund, it participates in pooled philanthropic vehicles that aggregate donor capital and regrant it to frontline organizations.

The wealth backing Humanity United originates from the eBay fortune created by Pierre Omidyar, who founded the online auction platform in 1995 and took it public in 1998. Pamela Omidyar, a co-founder of Humanity United, was married to Pierre Omidyar during the period the foundation was established. The family's assets are held and managed separately within The Omidyar Group network.