Albert Haller Foundation

The Albert Haller Foundation operates as a closed-intermediary funder rather than a conventional open grantmaker. Established in 1992 from the roughly $8-9 million estate of local businessman Albert Haller, its sole purpose is enhancing "the welfare of the citizens of Clallam County," and it delegates screening entirely to the United Way of Clallam County ((360) 457-3011 / impact@unitedwayclallam.org), which reviews requests and forwards recommendations to Haller's five-member board (President Gary Smith, VP Richard J. Schneider, Secretary/Treasurer Dave Blake, and directors Martin "Marty" Brewer and Regan Nickels). Applicants are effectively pitching two audiences at once — UWCC's screening criteria and the board's founder-intent lens — and organizations that already hold a UWCC Impact Partner relationship have a structural advantage entering the Haller cycle.

Grantee data shows the board strongly favors organizations already delivering basic needs — food, housing, clothing, medical care — over pilot or innovation-framed programs. Of 257 tracked grants totaling $2,131,333, the pattern is one of sustained, repeat relationships: most top grantees (food banks, health clinics, school districts, Boys & Girls Club) show funding in three or four of the last several tracked years, not one-off gifts. First-time applicants should expect to build a track record over time; a first ask should be modest and tightly scoped, since the median individual grant is just $5,000, and framed in the founder's own language around enriching the lives of "the poor and needy of Clallam County."

The clear outlier in the portfolio is Peninsula College Foundation, which has received $300,000 across four $75,000 grants for "Promise" scholarships — proof the board will make large, sustained institutional commitments once trust is established, but only for programs serving Clallam County residents. Capital projects and general operating support are both represented in the grant history, but human-services and basic-needs organizations carry the plurality of grant count. Organizations outside the food/housing/health/education cluster, or based outside Clallam County, are a poor structural fit — the foundation's own eligibility language restricts funding to Clallam County residents and 96.5% of tracked grants (248 of 257) went to Washington-based recipients.

Haller's grantmaking capacity is tied almost entirely to investment performance rather than fundraising: contributions received were just $2,500 in FY2023, $20 in FY2021, and $0 in several other years, meaning essentially all new capital comes from the endowment's own returns. Total giving ranged from $494,136 (FY2019) to a peak of $649,680 (FY2022), tracking market cycles closely — net investment income swung from $214,515 (FY2020) to $834,423 (FY2021) to $224,657 (FY2023). Grants actually paid ran $430,500 (2019) → $464,000 (2020) → $555,333 (2021) → $569,000 (2022) → $543,000 (2023), a roughly 26% increase over the five-year window despite a dip in the most recent filing. Assets stood at $7.43 million in the FY2023 Form 990-PF but the current IRS/BMF record shows $9,001,537, indicating continued market recovery since.

At the individual-grant level, typical awards run $2,000-$75,000 with a median of just $5,000 and an average of $7,733 across 60 recently tracked awards — consistent with the broader 257-grant/$2,131,333 dataset (average $8,293). The gap between median and average reflects a handful of large, multi-year institutional grants pulling the mean up: Peninsula College Foundation's four $75,000 "Promise" scholarship grants ($300,000 total) and a single $50,000 award to the Shipley Center (senior wellness) sit far above the $5,000-$15,000 range that covers most of the grantee roster.

By program area, food security is the largest concentration outside education: the county's five main food banks (Port Angeles, Sequim, Makah, Forks, New Hope) drew $269,175 combined — about 13% of total tracked dollars — across 20 separate grants. Education, driven overwhelmingly by the Peninsula College commitment, accounts for roughly $498,000 (23%) of the top-50 grantee total. Human-services/basic-needs organizations (United Way, Healthy Families, First Step Family Support Center, Sequim Community Aid, St. Vincent de Paul chapters) represent the largest share by grant count, though individually smaller ($8,000-$35,000 range). Geographically, 96.5% of tracked grants (248 of 257) went to Washington organizations; the small out-of-state clusters (AZ, HI, MA, MN, MT, TX) are almost certainly Clallam County "Promise" scholarship recipients now attending out-of-state colleges rather than general-purpose grantees.

Haller sits closest in scale to First Fed Foundation — both are Olympic Peninsula-based funders giving roughly $550K-$650K a year — but Haller is more restrictive geographically (Clallam County residents only, vs. First Fed's broader Peninsula footprint) and routes all screening through United Way rather than accepting direct applications. Norcliffe and Murdock are order-of-magnitude larger regional funders that Haller-scale grantees could graduate to once they exceed the roughly $1.2M organizational-budget threshold Murdock requires, but neither offers Haller's hyper-local, food-and-basic-needs focus. For most Clallam County nonprofits, Haller and First Fed together form the realistic core funding base, with Norcliffe and Murdock as stretch targets for larger capital or strategic-project asks.

The most recent confirmed award cycle closed in fall 2024, when the board distributed $350,000 across more than 50 Clallam County organizations at its annual ceremony, with individual awards including $10,500 each to Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County, St. Matthew Lutheran Church, First United Methodist Church, and Makah Food Bank, and $10,300 to United Way of Clallam County itself. That followed a 2023 cycle totaling $505,000 when combined with scholarship and endowment commitments ($330,000 in core organizational grants, $100,000 in scholarships, and a $75,000 endowment gift to Peninsula College), and a 2021 cycle awarding $350,000 to 42 organizations. Board president Gary Smith has been quoted at multiple ceremonies reflecting on founder Albert Haller's legacy: "He helped a lot of people when he was alive, and he's helped a lot of people now that he's gone. He had a lot of foresight."

No 2025 or 2026 award announcements, leadership changes, or new program initiatives turned up in available news coverage or search results as of this research — the foundation maintains a low public-communications profile between its annual fall award ceremonies (historically held at Sequim's or Port Angeles' community venues, e.g., the Lincoln Center) and does not appear to issue press releases outside local newspaper coverage of the ceremony itself. Board composition has been stable across the tracked filings, with Gary Smith as president throughout and Richard J. Schneider, Dave Blake, and Martin Brewer as recurring officers; Regan Nickels appears as the most recently added director, while Jane Pryne and Rob Clark appear only in earlier filings, suggesting a board transition sometime in the past several years. Given this pattern, the next major public activity to watch for is the fall 2026 award ceremony, likely announced via the Sequim Gazette and Peninsula Daily News in October or November.

Haller does not accept direct applications — every organizational request must route through United Way of Clallam County, which opens its intake window in June (a third-party foundation directory cites a July 1, 5:00 PM deadline for that cycle; confirm the exact current-year date directly with UWCC, as it shifts slightly year to year). Because UWCC pre-screens on behalf of the Haller board, the strongest applicants are already UWCC Impact Partner agencies with an existing relationship and clean financial reporting (990s, budgets, board rosters) on file — building that relationship well before the June window opens is more valuable than any single application tactic.

Haller's own guidance limits each organization to one application per cycle, so consolidate multiple program needs into a single, clearly itemized request rather than submitting separate asks. Past successful applications broke multi-purpose requests into explicit dollar lines (e.g., Sequim School District's "$11,000 for Student Basic Needs Fund... $20,000 to jump start the CTE program"), which both demonstrates budget discipline and gives the board flexibility to fund one line if not both.

The single most common mistake for first-time applicants is over-scoping the ask: the median award is $5,000, and the bulk of the portfolio clusters between $2,000 and $15,000. Requests should match that scale unless the organization is proposing a genuinely capital-level project, where the ceiling runs to $75,000 for the very largest, most established relationships (e.g., Peninsula College Foundation, Shipley Center). Language matters — proposals that explicitly connect to Haller's founding purpose ("enrich the lives of the poor and needy of Clallam County") and to food, housing, clothing, or medical-care outcomes align most directly with what the board has consistently funded for over three decades.

Insider guidance also flags two differentiators reviewers respond to: documented collaboration with other Clallam County agencies (shared referral networks, co-located services, joint programming) and a clear accounting of volunteer hours and community engagement tied to the program. Both should be stated explicitly and quantified in the narrative rather than implied. Finally, expect a multi-year relationship rather than a single transaction — nearly every top grantee in the dataset shows funding in three or four consecutive tracked years, so plan to reapply annually and report back on outcomes to build the renewal case.