Bollier Family Foundation

The Bollier Family Foundation is a small, founder-directed private foundation — President/Treasurer John Bollier and Vice President/Secretary Joan Bollier are its only listed officers, both uncompensated, with no program staff, no grants manager, and no public grants portal (the foundation's IRS record lists no application instructions and no grants-page URL). That structure signals a foundation that runs almost entirely on personal relationships and the Bolliers' own networks rather than a competitive open RFP process. Of the $1.63M in tracked giving across 55 grants, one recipient — Gonzaga University — accounts for $1.4M, or 86% of total tracked dollars, tied to the family's landmark gift funding the John and Joan Bollier Family Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, which opened in Fall 2021. That single relationship dwarfs everything else the foundation does financially.

The remaining roughly $235,000 spread across 54 grants reveals two distinct, recognizable interest clusters. First, heavy-civil-construction and engineering education: $50,000 to California State University Sacramento's civil/construction engineering program and $27,000 combined to the Beavers/Bearers Charitable Trust (an industry association tied to heavy civil construction) — both traceable to John Bollier's career as retired CEO of Stacy and Witbeck, Inc., a national heavy-civil railway construction firm. Second, Pacific Northwest human-services and Catholic-education grantmaking clustered tightly around Bend and Portland, Oregon (38 of 55 grants, 69%, went to OR organizations): homeless shelters (Path Home, $29,000 across 3 grants), food banks, Meals on Wheels, Easterseals, and Catholic schools serving low-income youth (De Lasalle North Catholic High School, St Andrew Nativity School).

First-time applicants should understand this is not a foundation built to discover new grantees through a portal — it is built to formalize and sustain giving relationships the Bolliers already have, either through their construction-industry network or their home community in Central Oregon. Organizations with no prior connection to John or Joan Bollier, Stacy and Witbeck, Gonzaga University, or the Bend/Portland nonprofit community face a steep uphill climb; a warm introduction or board-level connection is far more likely to succeed than a cold letter of inquiry.

Bollier Family Foundation's grantmaking has grown alongside its asset base. The foundation received a $6,539,205 contribution in 2020 and a further $2,500,000 in 2021, building total assets from $2,326,110 (2019) to $11,587,859 (2021); assets have since held steady around $11.2M-$11.6M (2022: $11,534,564; 2023: $11,164,117; 2024: $11,298,748). Grantmaking scaled up correspondingly: total giving jumped from $73,551 in 2020 (the foundation's first real grant year) to $433,598 in 2021, $401,658 in 2022, and $551,649 in 2023 — roughly a 7.5x increase in three years as the endowment matured. Grants paid track closely: $362,200 (2022) and $511,700 (2023); third-party 990 aggregators estimate roughly $543,885-$550,930 in 2024 giving (the DB's own FY2024 grants_paid field is not yet populated).

Grant size is bimodal. Across the 55 tracked grants totaling $1,634,700 (average $29,722), one signature gift — Gonzaga University, $1.4M across 4 payments tied to the Bollier Family Center for Integrated Science and Engineering — sets the ceiling. Excluding that outlier, the next-largest gifts are $50,000 (CSU Sacramento, construction engineering), $29,000 (Path Home, cumulative across 3 grants), and $25,000 each to De Lasalle North Catholic High School and the Beavers/Bearers Charitable Trust. The bulk of recipients — roughly 30 of 55 — receive $500 to $5,000 in general-support gifts, frequently repeated annually (Meals on Wheels: 4 grants totaling $3,500; Oregon Foodbank: 4 grants totaling $4,800; Easterseals: 2 grants totaling $3,500). The foundation's own typical_grant_size record (median $1,000, average $40,378, range $500-$350,000) confirms this pattern: a high volume of small, loyal-recipient gifts alongside a small number of very large signature commitments.

Geographically, 38 of 55 grants (69%) went to Oregon organizations, concentrated in Bend and Portland. Washington (4 grants, home to Gonzaga's Spokane campus), California (4 grants, reflecting the Bolliers' prior Bay Area/Campbell, CA base and Stacy and Witbeck's California operations), and smaller allocations to Hawaii (2), Illinois (3), Colorado (1), Kentucky (1), and Iowa (1) round out the footprint — consistent with the foundation's stated geographic focus of OR, IL, CO, WA, and KY.

Bollier sits mid-pack by asset size among these five NTEE "Community Development"-coded peers ($10.7M-$12.2M), but is unusual in actually disclosing multi-year giving figures via its 990-PFs, where three of the five peers maintain no public web presence at all — typical of small, single-family or single-purpose foundations without program staff. None of the six funders in this table, including Bollier, appears to run a competitive, published-RFP application process; all lean toward the relationship-driven or invitation model common among foundations under $12M with no dedicated grants staff. That structural similarity means grant-seekers with no existing relationship to any of these funders face comparable odds across the peer set — the differentiator is not process sophistication but whether an applicant can surface a personal or institutional connection.

No 2025 or 2026 news specifically about the Bollier Family Foundation surfaced in this research — the foundation has no press office, no social media presence, and no dedicated grants-focused website. Notably, the domain bollier.org listed as the foundation's website in IRS and database records in fact belongs to an unrelated commons scholar, David Bollier, and has no connection to this foundation; that website field should be treated as inaccurate. Searches for foundation news are also complicated by frequent confusion with similarly named but unrelated funders (The Bolger Foundation, The Bollinger Foundation), neither of which relate to this Bend, Oregon family.

The foundation's most significant and best-documented public activity remains the 2021 naming gift to Gonzaga University: John and Joan Bollier, together with their children Brett, Emily, and Nolan, were the single-largest donors among more than 650 contributors to Gonzaga's $49.7 million Integrated Science and Engineering facility, which opened in Fall 2021 as the John and Joan Bollier Family Center for Integrated Science and Engineering. That gift, reflected in the foundation's grantee data as $1.4M to Gonzaga across 4 payments, remains its defining act of philanthropy to date.

Financial filings show steady, unspectacular activity since: total giving of $401,658 (2022) and $551,649 (2023), with third-party 990 trackers estimating roughly $543,885-$550,930 in 2024 disbursements — consistent, incremental growth rather than any newly announced initiative, leadership change, or program pivot. Grant-seekers should not expect a foundation actively courting media attention or cultivating a new applicant pool; it appears to be maintaining an existing set of relationships.

The foundation's IRS record lists no application instructions, no grants-page URL, and no application-form URL, and no functioning public grants website was located in this research. Prospective applicants should not expect — and should not waste time searching for — an online LOI portal or published RFP.

1. Lead with a warm connection, not a cold submission. Every large, verifiable Bollier gift traces to an existing relationship: John Bollier's career as CEO of Stacy and Witbeck, Inc. (heavy civil/railway construction) explains the CSU Sacramento construction-engineering grant and the Beavers/Bearers Charitable Trust gifts; the family's Gonzaga University donation reflects a personal affinity rather than a competitive award. Look for board members, staff, or donors with ties to Stacy and Witbeck, the heavy-civil construction industry, Gonzaga University, or the Bend/Portland, Oregon nonprofit community before applying cold.

2. Match the two proven interest areas. The foundation's dollars cluster around (a) civil/construction engineering higher-education programs and industry associations, and (b) Central Oregon and Portland human-services organizations — homelessness/shelter (Path Home), food security (Oregon Foodbank, Meals on Wheels), disability services (Easterseals, Advocates for Life Skills and Opportunities), and Catholic education for underprivileged youth (De Lasalle North Catholic, St Andrew Nativity). A proposal outside both lanes has little precedent to point to.

3. Expect general operating support, not restricted program grants. The overwhelming majority of listed grant purposes are "GENERAL SUPPORT" — the Bolliers appear to fund organizations' missions broadly rather than specific projects, so lead with organizational impact and stability, not a narrow grant-funded initiative.

4. Size the ask realistically. Outside the singular $1.4M Gonzaga commitment, no other tracked gift exceeds $50,000, and the typical gift is roughly $500-$2,500. First-time relationships should expect three- to four-figure gifts, not five- or six-figure awards; repeat, multi-year small grants (Meals on Wheels, Oregon Foodbank, Easterseals each received 2-4 separate gifts) suggest the foundation rewards sustained relationships more than one-time large asks.

5. Contact directly and briefly. With no program staff and both officers uncompensated, a short, personal letter addressed to "John Bollier, Director" at the foundation's registered Bend, OR address is more appropriate than a formal grant-application packet.