Ayers Foundation

Ayers Foundation (legal name on IRS filings; publicly branded as the Ayers Foundation Trust) is best understood as two funders in one. The dominant activity is an in-house operating program — the Ayers Scholars Program — that embeds full-time College Access Counselors and Student Success Coordinators directly into 40 partner high schools across 28 rural Tennessee counties, tracking students from 8th grade through college completion. Outside nonprofits cannot 'apply' for this program in the traditional sense; it is delivered by foundation staff, not granted out. The second, smaller stream is discretionary charitable giving, and this is where most grant seekers should focus. That stream is heavily concentrated: of $9.69M in recorded grants across 77 awards, three recipients — Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee ($3.53M), Belmont University ($3.0M), and Vanderbilt University Medical Center ($450K) — account for nearly 72% of all recorded dollars, reflecting deep, longstanding relationships rather than open competition. Every purpose code in the top-50 grantee list reads 'GENERAL/OPERATING,' indicating a strong preference for unrestricted support over restricted project funding. The board is entirely family- and community-governed (President Janet Ayers, Vice President Dr. Michael Price, Secretary Dr. Agenia Clark, Executive Director Susan Johnson Rhodes, and several Ayers/Lynn/Ingram family directors), all serving at $0 compensation — a lean, informal structure with no dedicated grants-management staff. The IRS filing states applications are accepted at any time with no specific form required, and the foundation's own website provides no downloadable application or portal, confirming the process is relational: a direct letter, email, or phone call to the Parsons, TN office is the norm. First-time applicants should recognize the foundation's practical geographic core — Davidson, Decatur, Henderson, Lawrence, Perry, and Unicoi counties are named explicitly in the IRS restrictions field — and that entry-level asks in the four- and five-figure range (the bulk of the 77 recorded grants) are far more realistic than matching the handful of seven-figure anchor gifts. New applicants without an existing Ayers family or community relationship should expect a longer cultivation runway, ideally through a shared local connection in the Decatur County/Parsons area or through one of the foundation's established institutional partners.

The foundation's per-grant typical size (IRS 990 aggregate) shows a median of $22,500 and an average of $131,791 across 38 discrete grants, with a full range from $150 to $1,735,000 — a strongly bimodal distribution of a few very large institutional gifts alongside a long tail of small community grants. At the grantee level (aggregating repeat gifts to the same organization across years), the top 50 recipients total $9,686,097 across 77 grants, averaging $125,793 per recipient. Geographically, Tennessee dominates with 71 of 77 grants (92%), versus 4 in Missouri and 2 in New York — almost certainly reflecting alumni or family ties rather than open-ended national giving. By program area, higher-education and college-access institutions capture the large majority of dollars: Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee ($3.53M), Belmont University ($3.0M), Lipscomb University ($417K), East Tennessee State University ($400K), Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education ($260K), the Foundation for the College System of Tennessee ($42.6K), Freed-Hardeman University ($25K), and Union University ($9,500) together total roughly $7.68M — about 79% of all recorded giving. Health and human services follows at roughly 9% (Vanderbilt University Medical Center $450K, Ballad Health Foundation $200K, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital $100K, Centerstone Foundation $120K), with the remainder spread across civic/community causes (Hermitage Foundation $200K, Tennessee State Museum $200K, Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee $100K, Second Harvest Food $67,511, several county United Way chapters, Boy Scouts councils, and small church and civic gifts as low as $150-$1,635). Total giving has swung considerably: $7.99M (2020), $8.14M (2021), $7.59M (2022), then a sharp contraction to $2.63M (2023) as total assets fell from a peak of $12.2M (2022) to $9.72M (2023) and $9.45M (2024) — a period that coincides with founder Jim Ayers' 2025 passing. Contributions received also swung from $8.4M-$11.5M annually (2020-2022, largely family/corpus contributions funding the giving) down to $97,879 in 2023, suggesting the founding family's active infusions have slowed. Grant seekers should size requests to the median ($22,500) rather than the average, which is skewed upward by anchor institutional gifts.

Ayers Foundation sits among a cluster of similarly-sized private foundations classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, though the peer set here is matched purely on asset size (~$9.4-9.5M) rather than mission, and public data on the peers' actual giving and application posture is sparse.

Unlike most of its size-matched peers, which show no public website, grants page, or disclosed giving activity, Ayers Foundation is unusually transparent and active — it operates a full public-facing program (the Ayers Scholars Program), publishes an annual report, and maintains a communications cadence (podcast, press releases) well beyond what a typical $9.4M family foundation manages. That visibility, combined with its explicit IRS statement that applications are accepted anytime with no required form, makes it comparatively more approachable than peers who show no evidence of accepting unsolicited inquiries at all.

The most significant recent development is the 2025 passing of founder and chairman Jim Ayers, the FirstBank entrepreneur who established the foundation in 1999; the Trust has since published a memorial page and, in September 2025, named Trevor Teague as the inaugural winner of the new Jim Ayers Torchbearer Award (nominations opened July 24, 2025). Leadership continuity rests with President Janet Ayers, who has led since 2007, alongside Executive Director Susan Johnson Rhodes and a family-and-community board. On the program side, the Ayers Scholars Program expanded for the 2025-2026 school year into seven additional counties — Clay, Hancock, Hardeman, Johnson, Lake, Van Buren, and White — bringing total coverage to 28 of Tennessee's most economically distressed rural counties and roughly 40 partner high schools, with more than 30,665 alumni served to date. A June 2025 outcomes release reported that nearly two-thirds of the Class of 2024 in Ayers-served high schools pursued college, technical training, or military service immediately after graduation, a gain the foundation frames as roughly five times the statewide improvement rate, alongside a 93% FAFSA completion rate for its scholars (19 points above the state average). In January 2025, the Trust was named to the 'Best Places to Work in Tennessee' list by Best Companies Group and the Tennessee SHRM chapter. Communications activity has continued into 2026: a second season of the foundation's 'TENNtalks' podcast launched in May 2026, alongside a press push (May 11, 2026) highlighting scholars being 'First in FAFSA' for Tennessee's nation-leading completion rates. A 2025 Annual Report was released December 18, 2025. No new discretionary grantmaking initiatives, RFPs, or changes to the informal application process have been announced; the organization's public communications remain almost entirely focused on the Scholars Program rather than its broader charitable-giving stream.

This is not an RFP-driven funder — there is no online portal, downloadable application, or published deadline, and the IRS filing confirms applications are accepted at any time with no specific form required. The realistic entry point is a direct letter, email (info@theayersfoundation.org), or phone call (731.847.0632 / 731.847.4970) to the Parsons, Tennessee office, briefly describing the organization and the specific request. Because the board is unpaid and family-run (President Janet Ayers, VP Dr. Michael Price, Secretary Dr. Agenia Clark, plus Ayers/Lynn/Ingram family directors) with no dedicated grants staff beyond Executive Director Susan Johnson Rhodes, keep proposals short and concrete rather than building an elaborate application packet — a one-to-two-page letter of inquiry outlining organizational mission, the specific ask, and expected impact is more likely to get read than a lengthy formal proposal. Given that every recorded grant purpose in the data is 'GENERAL/OPERATING,' lead with an unrestricted operating-support ask rather than a narrowly scoped project budget. Geographic fit matters heavily: the IRS restrictions field names Davidson, Decatur, Henderson, Lawrence, Perry, and Unicoi counties specifically, and 92% of recorded grants go to Tennessee organizations — out-of-state nonprofits without a Tennessee tie should not expect a response. Do not approach the foundation as a channel for 'partnering' on new college-access programming; the Ayers Scholars Program is delivered directly by foundation-employed counselors in 40 partner high schools, so schools or districts interested in becoming a partner site should reach out to the Ayers Foundation Trust about a program partnership, not submit a grant proposal. Sizing matters: the median individual grant is $22,500, and the vast majority of the 77 recorded grants are well under $50,000 — align the ask with that median rather than with the handful of seven-figure anchor gifts to Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee or Belmont University, which reflect decades-long relationships. Given the sharp drop in total giving from roughly $7.6-8.1M annually (2020-2022) to $2.63M (2023) amid founder Jim Ayers' 2025 passing, applicants should also be sensitive to the possibility of a constrained or transitional giving capacity in the near term and frame requests modestly. A warm introduction through an existing grantee (e.g., a partner university, community foundation, or county United Way) will materially improve odds given the relationship-driven, low-formality process.