Blend Family Foundation

Blend Family Foundation is a small, unstaffed, family-directed private foundation — not a program-staffed institutional grantmaker. It is run by two officers sharing the Blend surname (Michael Blend, President; Stanley Blend, Secretary), both drawing zero compensation, operating out of a San Antonio, TX mailing address (711 Navarro St, Ste 600, c/o Stanley Blend) despite directing the large majority of its dollars to California, Washington, and New York nonprofits. There is no functioning foundation website (blend.org now redirects to a domain-parking listing), no published mission statement, no listed application form, and IRS filings record 'application_instructions' as none on file. Every one of its five closest asset-tier peers in the Philanthropy & Grantmaking category also lacks a public website — this is a structural pattern at the ~$5.3M-asset family-foundation tier, not a Blend-specific gap. Grant seekers should treat this as a relationship-driven funder: 164 unique organizations received support across the visible grant history, with the same names recurring 2-4 times (Crossroads School, Homeschool Now, Sunsar Maya, Kehillat Israel, Best Buddies International, Canada Helps), suggesting the Blends maintain an ongoing personal giving list rather than running an open competitive cycle. The one outlier — a single $217,462 gift to Vote America — shows the foundation can make a large, concentrated bet when a cause resonates strongly, alongside a long tail of $46-$5,000 gifts that look like personal/board-network giving (synagogue, alma mater, local school foundations, GoFundMe-style causes). First-time applicants have no formal on-ramp: there is no LOI portal, deadline, or funding cycle on record. The realistic path in is a warm introduction — through the Jewish federation network (San Antonio and Greater LA chapters are both funded), through civic/voting-rights coalitions (Vote America, Represent Us, Take Back the Court Foundation, Everytown Support Fund all appear as grantees), or through California/Pacific Northwest nonprofit circles where 134 of 276 recorded grants (CA 98 + WA 36) were sent. A mailed letter to the registered address, referencing a specific shared connection or cause overlap, is more likely to be read than a cold digital submission.

On a recipient-aggregated basis, Blend Family Foundation has made 276 recorded grants to 164 unique organizations totaling $1,295,563, averaging $4,694 per recipient relationship. Looking at individual grant line items (68 tracked), the size distribution is wide: minimum $46, maximum $217,462, median $775, average $9,321 — the gap between the $775 median and $9,321 mean confirms a small number of large gifts (Vote America $217,462; Jewish Federation of San Antonio $185,000 across 2 grants; Sunsar Maya $103,000 across 4 grants; Crossroads School $97,854 across 4 grants; Homeschool Now $85,000 across 4 grants) sit atop a long tail of sub-$5,000 gifts to schools, synagogues, and local causes. Geographically, of the ~218 grants with identified state, California takes 98 (45%), Washington 36 (16.5%), New York 26 (12%), with DC, Georgia, and Texas at 12 each (5.5%), and Colorado at 10 (4.5%) — Hawaii, North Carolina, and Oregon each receive 4. This maps closely to the foundation's stated geographic_focus of CA/NY/WA, even though its legal domicile is San Antonio, TX. By cause, the visible top-50 grantee list clusters into: civic engagement/democracy (Vote America, Take Back the Court Foundation, Represent Us, Everytown Support Fund, California League of Conservation/EcoVote — roughly $307K, ~24% of total tracked giving), Jewish communal life (Jewish Federation of San Antonio, Jewish Federation of Greater LA, Kehillat Israel, Yeshivat Leva Hatorah — roughly $253K, ~20%), education (Crossroads School, Homeschool Now, Smart Tuition, Duke Donations, Lone Star College Foundation, Santa Monica and El Segundo education foundations — roughly $206K, ~16%), and racial/social justice (Black Girls Code, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Equal Justice Initiative — roughly $41K, ~3%), with the remainder spread across health/disability (Special Olympics Texas, Best Buddies International, City of Hope), military-family support (Folded Flag Foundation), and international relief (World Central Kitchen, UN Foundation, Edhi). Total annual giving has grown substantially with the endowment: from $23,400 (2012) and $85,381 (2015) to $254,728 (2019), a pandemic-year spike of $679,356 (2020), then settling to $287,700-$333,074 (2021-2023) as assets stabilized near $5.3M-$5.5M. FY2024 shows $326,941 in revenue against an estimated $360,354 in charitable disbursements (per third-party 990 parsing), meaning the foundation is currently distributing slightly more than its investment income in a typical year.

All five closest peers sit within $3,400 of Blend's $5,333,718 in assets and share its NTEE 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' classification — this is a cohort of small, single-family trusts and foundations clustered at nearly identical endowment size, likely a function of how the comparison set was built (asset-banded peer matching) rather than shared strategy. Notably, none of the five peers has a website on record either, reinforcing that Blend's lack of public infrastructure is typical for this tier rather than an anomaly grant seekers should read as unusual. Because none of these peers publish giving totals or focus-area detail, Blend Family Foundation is actually the most transparent of the group by virtue of its IRS 990-PF grant-level detail — the practical peer benchmark for applicants is not these five trusts but other small, founder-run family foundations funding civic/Jewish/education causes in the same CA/NY/WA corridor.

No 2025-2026 news, press releases, or public announcements were found for Blend Family Foundation — it maintains no active website, blog, or social presence, and no grant database shows disbursement records more recent than the FY2023-2024 Form 990-PF filings reflected in the platform's own data (assets $5,333,718 as of FY2024, down slightly from $5,422,290 in FY2023 and $5,460,494 in FY2022, alongside net investment losses relative to distributions). Leadership has been stable and unchanged across all filings reviewed: Michael Blend as President and Stanley Blend as Secretary, both uncompensated, with no evidence of staff additions, board expansion, or a program-officer hire. The most notable recent-era activity visible in the data is the concentration of large single-year gifts — the $217,462 grant to Vote America and the $185,000 combined gift to Jewish Federation of San Antonio — both of which, given the foundation's small size, likely represent 2024-era or late-cycle decisions tied to election-year civic engagement and local Jewish community priorities respectively, though exact grant years are not broken out in the available data. The domain blend.org, previously listed as the foundation's website, currently 302-redirects to a domain-marketplace listing on atom.com, indicating the foundation has either let the domain lapse or never used it for a live site. Grant seekers should not expect a public program announcement or open call in the near term; this remains a quiet, low-profile, closely-held family giving vehicle.

There is no published application process, no LOI portal, no deadline, and no listed grants/programs page for Blend Family Foundation — 'application_instructions' is blank on file, and third-party funder databases (GrantStation, TheShareWay) show empty or archived profiles rather than active guidelines. Do not submit through a generic online form; none exists. The realistic route in is a mailed letter of inquiry to the registered address (711 Navarro St, Ste 600, San Antonio, TX 78205, C/O Stanley Blend) or a warm introduction through a shared board member, donor, or grantee-network connection — the recurring names on their grantee list (Jewish Federation chapters, Crossroads School, Homeschool Now, Best Buddies International, Canada Helps as a giving platform) suggest an established personal network drives most gifts rather than open solicitation. Applicants with the clearest thematic fit are: (1) Jewish communal and educational organizations, especially in San Antonio and Greater Los Angeles; (2) civic-engagement and voting-rights nonprofits (the foundation's largest single gift, $217,462, went to Vote America, and it also funded Represent Us, Take Back the Court Foundation, and Everytown Support Fund); and (3) K-12/higher-ed institutions and education-access nonprofits in California, Washington, and New York. A common mistake would be treating this as a formal institutional funder expecting a full grant proposal, budget narrative, and multi-page application — the grant-size distribution (median $775, with 68 tracked individual gifts ranging $46-$217,462) and zero officer compensation both point to founder-directed, informal giving where a concise, personal one-to-two-page letter explaining mission fit and a specific funding need will outperform a lengthy formal packet. Because 86.7% of FY2024 expenses went to charitable disbursements against modest overhead, the foundation is genuinely giving away most of what it earns rather than accumulating — but with only $326,941 in FY2024 revenue and total assets of $5.3M, requests should be scaled to the $2,000-$25,000 range typical of the bulk of their gifts; a request pitched at their single $217,462 outlier is unrealistic without an unusually strong personal connection to a cause the Blends already prioritize (civic engagement in an election year, or Jewish community infrastructure). Given the total absence of a public cycle, persistence via a single well-targeted, personally-referred letter is more productive than repeated unsolicited digital outreach, which this foundation shows no infrastructure to even receive.