Callison Foundation

Callison Foundation is a small, closed-family, invitation-only funder — the opposite of a public RFP program. Its own website states plainly: "The Callison Foundation only accepts INVITED grant proposals" and "We do not accept any correspondence through the mail." Everything routes through Executive Director Sheila Devore (sheila@callisonfoundation.org), who is the foundation's sole compensated staffer at a modest $3,950/year — a strong signal that this is a lean, part-time operation run largely by a volunteer board (President Morton A. Pactor, Secretary Audrey Scott, CFO Peter O'Hara, and directors John Loder, Peter Hooker, Tyler Foster, and Golnar Yazdi), with limited bandwidth to process high application volume. The IRS filing boilerplate ("applications should be submitted in writing... limited to organizations described in IRC Section 170(c)(2)(b)") is standard 990-PF language and should not be read as an open-door policy; the foundation's own current-year guidance supersedes it. First-time applicants should treat the Letter of Interest as the real front door: a concise email describing organizational history, 501(c)(3)/exempt status, and the specific program for which funds are requested, tied explicitly to one of the foundation's three named areas — education for marginalized children, youth-at-risk human services, or adult/senior human services. The grantee data shows a clear relationship arc: LOI leads to an invited full proposal, which for successful applicants often becomes a renewable annual grant of the same amount for up to four consecutive years (the $100,000-over-four-years pattern recurs across a dozen-plus grantees in the FY data) before the foundation appears to rotate funding to new organizations. The foundation strongly favors small, single-county or narrowly-scoped grassroots direct-service nonprofits — Molly's Angels (senior services, Napa), Hope's Corner (meals/showers), the Center for Early Intervention for Deafness — over large multi-program institutions. Larger regional or statewide organizations are a weaker fit; this is a funder built for scrappy, locally embedded nonprofits with a specific population and county focus.

Callison's giving is small and steady, funded entirely off a roughly $9M endowment with zero fresh contributions in every year reviewed (2012-2023) — this is a legacy, non-fundraising foundation. Total assets grew from $7.03M (FY2012) to $9.45M (FY2024), a 34% increase over 12 years, while total giving roughly doubled over the same period: from $406,771 (FY2012) to a peak of $887,645 (FY2023). Grants paid in FY2023 were $790,000, which appears to correspond to a single "Various Entities / GENERAL" line in that year's public grant listing — almost certainly an aggregated reporting line covering the year's roughly 30 individual community grants rather than one recipient. The foundation's own typical-grant-size data confirms a tight, disciplined band: median $25,000, average $18,867, range $500-$25,000, across 30 tracked awards — meaning $25,000 functions as a hard per-grant ceiling, with smaller amounts reserved for newer or lower-budget relationships. Looking at the fuller top-50 grantee history (121 grants, $3,121,000 total, average $25,793/grant), the dominant pattern is multi-year renewal at a flat amount: roughly a dozen grantees received exactly $100,000 across 4 grants ($25,000/year), with others recurring at $75,000/3, $60,000/4, or $50,000/2. Single, non-renewed grants cluster lower, from $2,500 up to $27,500 — likely first-year relationships or smaller-budget organizations. By purpose, human services (adult, youth, and general combined) is the largest category, followed closely by education services, with youth-specific human services (mentoring, CASA, early intervention) as a consistent third bucket. Geographically the concentration is extreme: 119 of 121 tracked grants (98%) went to California organizations, with just one each to Illinois and Missouri recipients. Revenue is investment-driven almost entirely — net investment income of $553,982-$1,175,236 annually accounts for the bulk of total revenue in every year on file, with contributions received flat at $0.

Callison sits at the small end of Bay Area family philanthropy — comparable in asset size to the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation but far more conservative in payout, and multiple orders of magnitude smaller than the region's marquee family funds.

Despite near-identical asset bases, Nora Eccles Treadwell distributes roughly 4-5x more of its corpus each year than Callison does, suggesting a materially different payout philosophy even at similar scale. Haas and Sobrato operate in a different tier entirely — both make individual grants ($25K-$3.5M for Haas; averaging over $130K for Sobrato in 2024) that dwarf Callison's $25,000 per-grant ceiling. For grant seekers, this makes Callison the more accessible target for small, single-county, single-program nonprofits with modest budgets, while Haas and Sobrato better fit organizations seeking larger, systemic-change-scale support.

There is little independent press or news coverage of Callison Foundation — consistent with its profile as a low-visibility, closed family foundation with no active fundraising or public communications program. The most recent verifiable activity is administrative: its FY2023 Form 990-PF was filed November 5, 2025, and third-party filing aggregators (Cause IQ, ProPublica) show the public record refreshed as recently as March 17, 2026. That filing reported total assets of $9.29M and total giving of $887,645 for FY2023, its highest recorded giving level across the years on file (2012-2023). The foundation's FY2024 return shows total assets ticking up to $9,445,981 and total revenue of $772,227, but grants-paid data for FY2024 was not yet available in public filings as of this research. No leadership changes were identified — Sheila Devore continues as Executive Director and primary point of contact, and the board composition (Pactor, Scott, O'Hara, Loder, Hooker, Foster, Yazdi) appears stable across the filings reviewed. Third-party grant trackers (Instrumentl) list a next deadline of May 1, 2026 for invited full proposals, though this could not be independently confirmed on the foundation's own site, which states no fixed application deadline and that submissions/invitations are handled on a rolling, year-round basis.

Do not cold-mail a proposal — the foundation explicitly states it does not accept correspondence through the mail, and unsolicited full proposals are not its process. Instead, send a concise Letter of Interest by email directly to Executive Director Sheila Devore (sheila@callisonfoundation.org), referencing the 2026 LOI Guidelines document posted on the foundation's site. In the LOI, state plainly which of the three funding buckets your request fits — education for marginalized children/youth, youth-at-risk human services, or adult/senior human services — and include your organization's history, 501(c)(3)/exempt documentation, and the specific purpose for the request, per the foundation's own stated application instructions. Anchor your ask to what the data shows actually gets funded: $25,000 is effectively the per-grant ceiling (30 tracked awards show a median and cap of exactly $25,000), so a modest, clearly-scoped request reads as a better fit than an ambitious multi-hundred-thousand-dollar ask — Callison is not built for large capital campaigns or multi-year systemic initiatives. If funded, expect the relationship to be renewable: the most common pattern among top grantees is four consecutive years at the same flat amount (e.g., $25,000/year for four years), so frame the request as an ongoing program need rather than a one-time project if you want to be positioned for renewal. Geographic and mission fit matter enormously — 98% of tracked grants went to California organizations serving one of nine named Bay Area counties (San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Napa, Sonoma, Marin), and grantees skew toward small, single-population, direct-service nonprofits (deaf infant early intervention, homeless youth, senior meal delivery, prisoner rehabilitation) rather than large multi-program institutions — do not apply if your organization sits outside this footprint or operates at a scale far beyond a $25,000 grant. Because the foundation runs lean (a single, modestly-compensated Executive Director and an all-volunteer board), keep follow-up communications infrequent and respectful of limited administrative capacity, and do not expect a public RFP calendar or open portal — the entire process runs through direct, personal email correspondence with Sheila Devore.