Amherst Foundation

Amherst Foundation is the corporate philanthropic vehicle of The Amherst Group, an Austin-based real estate investment firm managing roughly $18.5 billion in debt and equity strategies and 44,000+ single-family homes across 21 states (as of 12/31/2023). Its only two listed directors, Sean Dobson (Amherst Group's Founder/CEO) and Steve Gorman, are uncompensated, and the foundation runs with no paid grants staff. This matters because a third-party database classification for this foundation describes a focus on 'small and medium-sized business development and workforce training' with 'On-the-Job Training Grants' — but a review of 12+ years of Form 990-PF grant records shows zero grants matching that description. Actual giving is split into two tiers: (1) marquee, recurring strategic gifts to national medical-research institutions — Dana-Farber Cancer Institute received two grants totaling $1.1 million, and the Prostate Cancer Center Foundation received two grants totaling $90,000, both patterns suggesting durable, leadership-directed relationships rather than open competition; and (2) a long tail of small gifts ($52 to $25,000) to disaster relief, hunger relief, education, veterans' causes, and Austin-area human-services nonprofits, consistent with an employee charitable-giving match program that amplifies personal donations by Amherst Group's 1,500-1,700 staff to 'secular and apolitical' 501(c)(3)s. The foundation is explicitly invite-only and does not accept or review unsolicited applications — there is no LOI form, portal, or published guidelines anywhere in its public footprint, including its own single informational page at amherst.com/amherstfoundation. First-time, unaffiliated applicants should not expect a cold proposal to be reviewed. The realistic paths in are: an existing personal or professional relationship with Amherst Group leadership or staff who can direct a matched gift; strong alignment with cancer or rare-disease research, where the foundation has returned to the same institutions multiple times; being headquartered in or serving Central Texas, which accounts for 11 of the 25 tracked grants (44%); or being positioned to benefit from an opportunistic disaster-relief response, as happened after Hurricane Ian in 2022.

Total assets stood at $2,550,446 in FY2024, down from a $2,867,594 peak in FY2022. Revenue is driven almost entirely by irregular capital contributions from the parent company rather than steady investment income: $128,858 (2024), $87,581 (2023), a one-time $3,940,000 (2022), $310,000 (2021), and $456,112 (2020). Annual giving mirrors those infusions with a lag — total giving hit $1,280,825 across 12 grants in 2022 (funded by that year's $3.94M contribution), then collapsed to $365,184 across 26 grants in 2023 and roughly $161,000-$166,000 across 10-11 grants in 2024 per GrantExec and Instrumentl 990 parses — an 88% decline in two years. Grant sizing is bimodal: cumulative top-tracked-grantee data spanning multiple years (25 grants, $1,710,152 total, $68,406 average) is skewed heavily by the $1.1 million Dana-Farber relationship, while the median of the 23 distinct disbursement line items on record is closer to $5,000; GrantExec's FY2024-only snapshot shows a median of $4,000 across a $1,000-$65,000 range. Individual employee-matching-style gifts run from $52 to $25,000; strategic institutional grants run from $50,000 (Capital City Fund for Education) up to $1,100,000 (Dana-Farber, across two grants). Geographically, Texas dominates with 11 of 25 tracked grants (44%), reflecting the Austin headquarters; New York and California each account for 3; Massachusetts has 2 (including the Dana-Farber gifts); Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia each have 1. By dollar volume, medical and cancer research absorbs roughly 72% of tracked giving ($1.24M of $1.71M) — Dana-Farber ($1.1M), Prostate Cancer Center Foundation ($90K), Fibrolamellar Cancer Foundation ($25K), and the Firefly Fund/NPC1 ($25K); disaster relief and hunger relief each account for about 9% ($150K to Hurricane Ian survivors, $150K to Feeding America); education totals roughly $83,000 (Capital City Fund $50K, Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation $18K, ReadWorks $15K); military/veterans causes total $25,000 (Navy SEAL Foundation); the remainder (~$21,000 across 8+ grants) is small housing and human-services gifts. Officer compensation has been $0 in every year on record except 2015 ($36,332), confirming an all-volunteer, director-run structure.

Peers were matched by asset size (~$2.55M) within the Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category rather than by programmatic focus, and the comparison mainly reveals how atypical Amherst Foundation's funding volatility is even among similarly sized closed foundations.

Four of the five asset-matched peers have no discoverable website, mirroring Amherst Foundation's own minimal public footprint and reinforcing that this is a class of small, unstaffed, closed family or corporate foundations rather than open competitive grantmakers. T-Serve Foundation is the one exception with a live public site, making it the marginally more approachable peer for an outside inquiry, though none of the five show evidence of a formal open-application process. Amherst Foundation's real point of difference is funding volatility: its giving is tied to discretionary contributions from a large corporate parent (The Amherst Group, ~$18.5B AUM) rather than a steady ~5% payout of a stable endowment, producing the 88% two-year decline described above — a pattern typical family foundations of this size do not usually show.

No dated 2025-2026 press coverage specific to this Austin-based Amherst Foundation surfaced in this research; most search results under the same name refer to unrelated organizations, including the Amherst Education Foundation and Amherst Central Alumni Foundation (Massachusetts and New York school-district groups) and the UMass Amherst Foundation, none of which have any connection to the Austin, TX private foundation covered in this report. The most recent verifiable activity comes from Form 990-PF filings rather than news: FY2024 giving of roughly $161,000-$166,000 across 10-11 grants (per GrantExec and Instrumentl 990 parses), down sharply from FY2023's $365,184 across 26 grants and the FY2022 peak of $1,280,825 across 12 grants, which was funded by a one-time $3.94 million contribution from the parent company that year. The corporate parent, The Amherst Group — led by foundation director Sean Dobson as Founder/CEO — reported managing $18.5 billion in real estate debt and equity strategies and 44,000+ single-family homes across 21 states as of December 31, 2023, the most recent scale figure publicly available, providing context for the balance sheet behind the foundation even though the foundation itself holds only $2.55 million in assets. Leadership has been stable: Sean Dobson and Steve Gorman are the only directors listed across the available filings, and both remain uncompensated. No new program announcements, staffing changes, or website updates were identified. The foundation's own web page, hosted at amherst.com/amherstfoundation, reads as a static corporate-giving summary rather than an actively maintained grants portal, and the domain amherst.org — associated with this foundation in some third-party data — actually belongs to the unrelated Amherst (NY) Chamber of Commerce.

This is not an open-call funder, and any outreach should be treated as relationship-building rather than proposal submission. Both GrantExec and CauseIQ confirm Amherst Foundation 'does not accept unsolicited applications' and operates invite-only; there is no LOI form, portal, or published deadline anywhere in its public footprint. The highest-probability channel for an unaffiliated nonprofit is the parent company's employee matching-gift program: if any board member, major donor, or volunteer works at The Amherst Group (Austin-based real estate and mortgage investment firm, roughly 1,500-1,700 employees, offices at 401 Congress Ave and 1141 Shady Lane in Austin and 620 Fifth Ave in New York), have that person initiate a personal gift so it can be matched, rather than approaching the foundation directly. Match your ask to what has actually recurred rather than what a generic funder profile suggests: cancer and rare-disease research is the closest thing to a standing priority (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute received two separate grants totaling $1.1 million; Prostate Cancer Center Foundation received two grants totaling $90,000; Fibrolamellar Cancer Foundation and the Firefly Fund/NPC1 each received $25,000), so organizations in adjacent lanes — pediatric or rare cancers, hospital systems with active research arms — have the clearest precedent. Central Texas nonprofits have a real edge: 44% of tracked grants (11 of 25) went to Texas-based or Texas-serving organizations such as Capital City Fund for Education, Crossroads Community Services, Foundation Communities, Rebuilding Together Austin, and Westlake Softball, consistent with the Austin headquarters. Disaster response appears opportunistic rather than programmatic — the $150,000 Hurricane Ian relief effort in 2022 ($1,000 each to 150 affected individuals) shows the foundation can move quickly on a relevant disaster, but this is not something an organization can apply into ahead of time. A common mistake to avoid: do not frame a proposal around 'small business development' or 'workforce training' — that description appears in some third-party foundation databases (apparently derived from an IRS activity code) but does not match a single actual grant across 12+ years of 990 filings, and leading with it signals a lack of primary research. Because the foundation is entirely volunteer-run (zero officer compensation in nine of the last ten filed years), do not expect a program officer to respond to inquiries; any real dialogue will run through Amherst Group's corporate offices, not a dedicated foundation staff. Finally, calibrate expectations to the funding trend — giving fell from $1.28 million in 2022 to roughly $161,000 in 2024, so this is currently a shrinking rather than growing giving budget.