SEATTLE — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is spending $30 million to help build 200 new charter schools for low-income students around the country.

The grant to the NewSchools Venture Fund, announced this week, is the foundation's second donation to the organization that supports nonprofit charter management organizations, which start and run charter schools, said foundation spokesman Eli Yim.

A $22 million Gates grant in 2003 gave NewSchools the money to help create five new charter management organizations. The NewSchools Venture Fund supports charter organizations running schools in California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., that enroll more than 26,000 students a year.

This year's grant will help support as many as 20 charter networks that are expected to start 200 schools and eventually educate 100,000 students in low-income urban areas in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C., the foundation said.

Yim said the $30 million grant is an expansion of support, not a renewal of the previous $22 million grant.

"We don't really renew grants," he said. "They came to us with a proposal for another grant."