Brave Heart Foundation Inc.

Brave Heart Foundation (EIN 27-0720856, Fishers, IN) is a small, family-influenced private foundation — the Griffith family holds both the Chair and Treasurer/Vice Chair seats — run lean, with Executive Director Lara Chandler-Belsley compensated only $15,000-$18,000 a year and every other board member serving unpaid. That structure signals a foundation optimized for direct dollars to grassroots groups, not institutional overhead, and grant seekers should mirror that ethos: lead with concrete service delivery, not organizational infrastructure asks. Its 393 tracked historical grants (averaging $4,908 apiece) skew overwhelmingly toward small, Indiana-based direct-service nonprofits — homeless shelters (Horizon House, Holy Family Shelter, Dayspring Center), domestic-violence and abuse-recovery programs (Julian Center, Coburn Place, Sheltering Wings, Indiana Coalition to End Sexual Assault), food security (Gleaners Food Bank, Second Helpings), and youth/family services (Brooke's Place, St. Mary's Child Center, Dress for Success Indianapolis) — rather than large institutions, universities, or national brand nonprofits, though a handful of national affiliates (Salvation Army, National Organization for Victim Assistance) do appear. The Foundation is explicit that agencies with budgets above $1-2 million are 'typically not funded,' so this is squarely a grassroots-scale funder. There is no LOI stage: applicants go straight to a short (~3-page) online application in one of two annual windows, with decisions roughly 4-6 weeks later. First-time relationships start at or below $5,000; the path to a larger award runs through repeat funding plus a mandatory Impact Report, and ultimately (by invitation only, not application) the $25,000 'Big Heart' capacity-building tier. Note a data caveat for applicants: the website on file in our database (braveheart.org) is an unrelated youth-mentoring nonprofit in Brunswick, Georgia — the real site is thebraveheartfoundation.com, and seekers should use that URL exclusively.

Per Foundation-reported typical-grant data, standard awards run from a $500 floor to a $21,000 ceiling, with a $5,000 median and $6,257 average across 107 recent grants — closely matching the $4,908 average found across the fuller 393-grant historical dataset in our records ($1,928,781 cumulative). The purpose tags on the top 50 grantees are dominated by a single category, 'COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE,' which appears on roughly 40 of the top 50 recipients — meaning that despite the Foundation's three-pillar messaging (education, health & wellness, grassroots community development), the actual deployed dollars lean heavily toward direct social-service/community-assistance grants over pure education or medical-research awards (only a few top grantees, like Jackson Center for Conductive Education and Riley Children's Foundation, fall into those other buckets). Geographically, 327 of 393 tracked grants (83%) went to Indiana recipients, with small secondary clusters in Texas (16), Virginia (13), California (7), Florida (7), Tennessee (6), Ohio (4), and Utah (4) — likely national-affiliate chapters rather than a genuine multi-state program. On the balance sheet, total assets have ranged narrowly between $2.65M (2011) and a peak of $5.13M (2022), settling at $4.72M in FY2023, funded by steady annual contributions of roughly $250,000-$620,000 plus investment income that swung from $74,318 (2011) to $904,944 (2022) alongside market conditions. Grants paid have grown from $205,500 (2011) to $738,041 (2022) to $658,488 (2023), with the Foundation's own website citing $820,090 distributed in 2025 — implying continued growth beyond the most recent filed 990. Critically, the FY2023 payout ratio (grants paid ÷ assets) runs approximately 13.9%, and FY2022 hit roughly 14.4% — nearly three times the 5% IRS minimum distribution requirement, evidence of an aggressive, mission-first spend posture rather than asset accumulation.

All five peer foundations sit within roughly $10,000 of Brave Heart's $5.05M asset base, forming a genuine size cohort in the sub-$5.1M private-foundation tier classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking. What sets Brave Heart apart is transparency and accessibility: it is the only foundation in this peer set with a public website, a stated funding history, a defined two-cycle application calendar, and an online application form — none of the five peers have a website on file in our database, which typically signals closed, invitation-only, or family-directed giving with no public application path. For grant seekers, this makes Brave Heart a meaningfully higher-probability target than its balance-sheet peers simply because it solicits applications at all.

The clearest recent signal is financial: the Foundation's own about page states 2025 distributions reached $820,090, up from $658,488 in the last Form 990 on file (FY2023) and from $738,041 in FY2022 — a continuation of the roughly 4x growth trajectory since the Foundation's $179,000 founding-year total in 2009. Leadership has been stable at the top: Lara Chandler-Belsley has served as Executive Director since being designated to the role in 2018, and the Griffith family (Bill as Chair, Gerry as Vice Chair/Treasurer) continues to anchor the board. The current public board roster (Bill Griffith, Gerry Griffith, Katie Hagerty, Kevin Hampton, Carmen Hansen-Rivera, Kim Walton, plus Chandler-Belsley) differs slightly from the FY2023 Form 990 board, which also lists James Mulholland as Secretary and David McDaniel as a member — a discrepancy worth confirming directly with the Foundation before an application, since it may reflect either a recent board refresh or simply an unrefreshed website roster. No major program redesign, new initiative launch, or funding-priority announcement surfaced in web searches for 2025-2026; the most concrete recent activity found was the homepage's featured $5,000 grant to Happy Hollow Children's Camp for summer programming serving economically disadvantaged children, including dedicated weeks for children with asthma and hearing impairments — a useful, representative example of the scale and beneficiary profile the Foundation continues to fund.

Apply only inside the two open windows — March 1-30 for an April 1 decision, or September 1-30 for an October 1 decision — since the Foundation does not appear to review submissions outside those dates. Keep the narrative to about 3 pages; this is one of the few funders that states a page target outright, so padding a proposal will work against you, not for you. For a first ask, stay at or under $5,000 — the median grant Foundation-wide — since anything higher requires prior approval before you even submit, meaning first-time applicants should not lead with a large number. Because the Foundation explicitly screens out agencies with budgets over $1-2 million, lean into your organization's grassroots scale in the proposal rather than downplaying it; a large, well-resourced applicant is a mismatch here regardless of program quality. Tie your language to the Foundation's own framing — its tagline is 'Supporting those who stick their necks out for others,' and its three stated pillars are education, health & wellness, and grassroots community development — but recognize from the actual grant data that 'COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE'-tagged direct-service work (shelter, food security, abuse recovery, youth crisis services) is where the bulk of dollars land, so frame health/education asks in terms of direct, tangible service delivery to underserved Indiana children and families rather than research or systems-change framing. Make sure you're at the correct site: thebraveheartfoundation.com, not braveheart.org (an unrelated Georgia youth-mentoring nonprofit) — using the wrong site is a real risk given how similar the names are. If you've received a grant before, don't reuse the new-applicant form; use the dedicated previous-grantee form, and file your Impact Report first — funding for a second, larger request is explicitly gated on that report being on file. Do not pursue the $25,000 Big Heart capacity-building grant directly; it is invitation-only, and the realistic path to it is a solid multi-year track record as a standard grantee with clean impact reporting, not an application.