Aircast Foundation Inc.

The Aircast Foundation Inc. (EIN 22-2784475, Naples, FL) is a narrowly focused $8.35M-asset private foundation dedicated exclusively to orthopedic medicine and science — prevention, healing, and rehabilitation research. It is not a general-purpose community funder despite its T20/Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE classification; every dollar tracked in its grantee data (18 grants, $1,022,548 total, averaging $56,808) went to orthopedic research institutions, professional societies, or individual physician-researchers (Rush University, Duke University, American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, Orthopedic Trauma Association, American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons). The single non-medical outlier is a $4,050 gift to Garden of Hope, confirming how tight the mission focus is. Grant seekers outside orthopedic research, sports medicine, or trauma care should not apply — fit is a hard filter here, not a soft preference. For those inside the mission, the foundation operates almost entirely through three institutional partners: OREF (Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation), AOSSM (American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine), and OTA (Orthopaedic Trauma Association). Each holds a named endowment funded by Aircast ($1M, $1.3M, and $600K committed respectively) and runs its own peer-reviewed competition; Aircast's board (chaired informally around contact Henry J. McVicker) reviews and ratifies awards at in-person meetings tied to AAOS (March), AOSSM (July), and a fall check-in (October). First-time applicants should treat this as a two-step relationship: apply through the relevant partner's grant program (e.g., AOSSM/Aircast Return to Play Clinical Research Grant, OREF-Aircast Orthopaedic Research Grant), not through a generic LOI to the foundation directly, since the foundation itself has no listed application form URL or portal. The foundation explicitly favors early-career investigators who have not yet received NIH funding in their specific research area, positioning itself as a bridge to larger federal awards (it cites 30 alumni investigators who went on to win NIH funding).

Grant sizes are bimodal. IRS/PF990 data puts the typical grant range at $4,050 (Garden of Hope) to $342,500 (American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine), with a median of $20,000 and an average of $70,505 across 9 tracked large grants; the foundation's own site cites a broader lifetime median of $15,000 and average of $57,000 across 172 total grants and awards since inception (~$7.7M cumulative through 12/31/2025). The grantee-level breakdown shows heavy concentration: American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine received $342,500 in a single grant, Orthopedic Trauma Association received $269,998 across 3 grants, and Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation received $266,000 across 2 grants — together these three institutional partners account for roughly 86% of the $1,022,548 in tracked grantee-level giving. Individual research grants to named investigators (Rush, Duke, AAOS, individual MDs/PhDs) run smaller, typically $5,000-$55,000. Geographically, the tracked grantee data shows Illinois receiving the most grant volume (13 of 18 grants, largely Chicago-based orthopedic institutions like Rush), with North Carolina (2), and single grants each to Florida, Minnesota, and Tennessee — but the foundation's stated "geographic_focus" tag (IL, NC, TN, FL) reflects where partner institutions and grantees sit, not a geographic restriction on applicants; recent 2025 grants also went to NYU and University of Pittsburgh researchers. Total annual giving has swung widely year to year: $447,747 (2020), $578,443 (2019, adjusted), $865,361 (2021), $384,116 (2022), a spike to $1,082,301 (2023), and roughly $230,000 self-reported for calendar 2025 — consistent with a foundation that pays out endowment commitments unevenly rather than on a fixed annual budget. Officer compensation is modest ($30,000 in 2023, $40,000 in 2021-2022), and the foundation runs no contributions-received revenue (2019-2023 show $0 in contributions), meaning its entire grantmaking capacity is funded by investment income (roughly $400,000-$530,000/year in net investment income) off its ~$8.3-9.9M asset base.

Aircast sits in an asset tier ($8.3-8.4M) essentially identical to its five listed NTEE peers, all generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" classified foundations with no public website or disclosed giving detail in this dataset. What distinguishes Aircast sharply is programmatic specificity: unlike its peers, it has a public website, a named mission (orthopedic research), a documented funded-studies archive, and formal co-funding relationships with three national medical societies. For a grant seeker, Aircast is far more addressable and predictable than its peer set — the tradeoff is a much narrower eligibility window, since the peers' generic classification suggests they may fund more broadly (though none currently publish enough data to confirm).

2025 was an active but modest-dollar year: the foundation reports distributing $230,000 in grants and awards, funding five named research grants of $25,000-$40,000 each to investigators at NYU (Bradley Lezak, MD — valgus force on the UCL during a batter's swing), University of Pittsburgh (Jonathan Hughes, MD — glenoid track dislocation plasticity; James Irrgang, PhD — IKDC Subjective Knee Form updates), Rush (Morgan Angotti, MD — anterior knee pain), and University of Tennessee (David Bernholt, MD — post-operative oral TXA after ACL reconstruction). The foundation's meeting cadence in 2025 included the AAOS annual meeting in San Diego (March), its own annual board meeting for officer/board elections (March), a Rosemont meeting with AOSSM on the Playmaker program (April), the AOSSM annual meeting in Nashville (July) where two Playmaker Award grantees were selected, an October review of 2025 outcomes and 2026 planning with AOSSM (including a Zoom session with the AOSSM Corporate Advisory Group), and a November meeting with a Rush study group on additional funding. In September 2025, Alie Hunter was named recipient of the TAF-sponsored scholarship at Duke under the Faegin Leadership program — a rare non-research grant type worth noting for applicants interested in leadership/scholarship tracks tied to Duke. No leadership changes or new program announcements were found; contact remains Henry J. McVicker per IRS filings. The foundation's news archive shows it publishes one annual "Brief Summary" recap each January, so the next substantive update should appear around January 2027 covering 2026 activity.

Do not submit a generic LOI directly to the foundation — it has no listed application_form_url or online portal, and its own site directs applicants toward its three partner programs. Concretely: (1) For sports medicine/return-to-play research, apply through the AOSSM/Aircast Foundation Return to Play Clinical Research Grant (up to $150,000, disbursed over 24-36 months) or the AOSSM Playmaker Award — both reviewed around the AOSSM annual meeting each July. (2) For pediatric or adult orthopedic condition research, apply through the OREF-Aircast Orthopaedic Research Grant program (see researchfunding.duke.edu listing and oref.org/for-researchers/funding-opportunities). (3) For trauma-related work, target OTA's grant cycle, where Aircast has a $600,000 committed endowment. Emphasize in any proposal narrative that you are early-career and have not yet received NIH funding in your specific research area — the foundation explicitly states this as a preference, likely because it positions itself as a stepping stone toward larger federal awards (it cites 30 of its historical grantees who went on to win NIH funding as a success metric). Frame your research in terms of practical, near-term clinical application (return-to-play timelines, fracture fixation, biomechanics of injury) rather than basic science with a long translational horizon — every funded 2024-2025 project (UCL biomechanics, ACL/TXA protocols, anterior knee pain, glenoid instability, knee outcome forms) is applied clinical research. A common mistake would be treating this as an open, direct-application foundation; because Aircast reviews are timed to partner conferences (AAOS in March, AOSSM in July, follow-up in October), missing those windows likely means waiting a full year. Given the small, relationship-driven structure (a single compensated officer, no dedicated program staff, board elected annually each March), warm introductions through OREF, AOSSM, or OTA program staff carry meaningfully more weight than cold outreach to the foundation's Naples, FL address or phone (239-269-6023).