Chavez Family Foundation

Chavez Family Foundation is a founder-led, Bay Area-based family foundation that runs an explicitly closed, relationship-driven grantmaking model. Its own website states directly: "All of our grantmaking is invitation-only and we do not currently accept inquiries for funding." There is no LOI portal, no RFP calendar, and no public application form — a structural fact any grant seeker needs to internalize before investing time. President Tom Chávez, a serial tech entrepreneur who co-founded and sold Rapt (to Microsoft, 2017) and Krux (to Salesforce, 2016), created the foundation after roughly a decade on Bay Area education-nonprofit boards; Elena Chávez Quezada serves as Head of Investments and Rosalyn Chen as a board member/VP. That board-service history is the foundation's real "front door": grantees overwhelmingly come from organizations already embedded in the same civic, education, and Latino-entrepreneurship networks the Chávez family moves in. The grantee data bears this out — repeat, multi-year support (many organizations show 2-3 separate grants) dominates over one-time gifts, and the foundation favors organizations it can build a sustained relationship with rather than transactional, single-cycle funding. First-time applicants should not attempt a cold outreach for funding; general questions can go to info@chavezfamilyfoundation.org or (415) 990-7278, but this channel is for informational inquiries, not proposal submission. The realistic path in is a warm introduction through an existing grantee or co-funder — Latino Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Community Initiatives (a fiscal sponsor appearing in the grantee list), or Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, where Chavez Family Foundation is a listed partner and Hispanic Foundation Ball sponsor. Organizations working precisely at the three-way intersection the foundation names explicitly — immigration, education, and entrepreneurship — and that already have Bay Area board or funder overlap with the Chávez network stand the best chance of eventually receiving an invitation. Typical relationship progression, based on the grantee data, moves from an initial general-purpose grant (median $50,000) toward renewed, sometimes larger, multi-year support once trust is established.

The foundation's disclosed FY2024 typical-grant statistics show a median of $50,000, a mean of $53,083, a range of $1,250 to $256,326, across 31 tracked grants. The broader historical grantee dataset (101 grants, likely spanning multiple recent fiscal years) totals $5,350,576 at an average of $52,976 per grant. Assets have been declining steadily: $13,304,931 (FY2019) → $12,194,601 (FY2020) → $12,102,321 (FY2021) → $9,058,595 (FY2022) → $7,637,255 (FY2023) → $7,049,105 (FY2024), a 47% drop over five years. Total giving followed a similar arc: $1,641,858 (2019), a COVID-era peak of $2,743,306 (2020) and $2,616,512 (2021), then contraction to $1,436,222 (2022) and $1,666,329 (2023); FY2024 grants-paid and total-giving figures were not yet available in filings reviewed. FY2024 total revenue was just $392,854, down sharply from $2,025,042 in 2019, signaling a shrinking pool of new capital. Geographically, giving is heavily California-concentrated: of the grants with state data, 71 went to CA organizations, versus 11 to NY, 10 to DC, 3 to WA, and single grants each to GA, MA, NM, OR, and TX — roughly 70% of grant volume stays in the Bay Area/California, with the remainder flowing to national policy or higher-ed organizations. By purpose, the large majority of grants are labeled "GENERAL PURPOSE" operating support rather than restricted project grants, though notable named commitments exist: a $256,326 gift to Harvard University endowed the Raymond & Rosario Chavez Innovation Fund in Engineering and Applied Sciences, and multiple grants funded specific initiatives (Latino Community Foundation's Latino Nonprofit Accelerator, $225,000 over 3 grants; VH1 Save the Music's SFUSD J Dilla Technology Classroom and music-tech grants, $220,000 over 4 grants). Immigration-focused giving includes American Immigration Council ($262,500/3 grants) and Upwardly Global ($150,000/3 grants); entrepreneurship giving includes La Cocina ($225,000/3 grants), Latino Business Action Network ($150,000/3 grants), and CodePath.org ($100,000/2 grants) — a direct reflection of the stated immigration-education-entrepreneurship thesis.

The peer set below was matched primarily by asset size (~$7M) within the "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE classification, not by funding-focus alignment — none of these peer foundations have public websites or giving detail in the dataset beyond assets, so this comparison should be read as a scale benchmark rather than a strategic-fit benchmark. A closer mission peer not captured in this dataset's peer list would be Latino Community Foundation or Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, both of which co-fund several of the same grantees.

All six foundations sit within roughly a $10,000 asset band of one another (~$7.04M-$7.05M), which is a strong signal this peer group was algorithmically matched on balance-sheet size rather than programmatic similarity. Chavez Family Foundation stands out as the only one of the six with a public website, a named leadership team, and a documented (if closed) grant process — the others show no discoverable web presence in this research, which itself is useful intelligence: Chavez is comparatively transparent for a foundation of its size, even though it remains functionally closed to outside applicants.

No dated 2025 or 2026 press coverage specific to Chavez Family Foundation surfaced in this research; the most current verifiable financial detail is the FY2024 Form 990 snapshot (total assets $7,049,105; total revenue $392,854), with FY2024 grants-paid and total-giving figures not yet reflected in the data reviewed, suggesting that filing may be recent or still processing. The last fiscal year with full giving detail is FY2023, showing $1,666,329 in total giving against $1,491,459 in grants paid and $291,503 in net investment income. Leadership has remained stable: Tom Chávez continues as President/Director/Secretary, with Rosalyn Chen as Vice President/board member and Elena Chávez Quezada as Head of Investments — no leadership transitions were found. The foundation's ongoing partnership with Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley (listed on HFSV's partners page, and reflected in the grantee data as sponsorship of the 2021 and 2022 Hispanic Foundation Ball) appears to be a continuing relationship rather than a one-time gift. Absent fresh news, the most reliable read on "recent activity" is the financial trend line itself: a foundation with declining assets (down 47% since 2019) and declining new revenue ($392,854 in FY2024 versus $2.0M in FY2019), which points toward a foundation in gradual spend-down rather than one actively raising new capital or expanding its grantee roster.

This is one of the more clear-cut cases in grant research: the foundation's own "Our Grant Process" page states it does not accept unsolicited proposals and all grantmaking is invitation-only, and every third-party database reviewed (Instrumentl, GrantExec, Candid, GuideStar) confirms the same. Do not submit a cold LOI, proposal, or budget package — there is no channel that reviews them, and doing so wastes staff time on both sides. The general contact (info@chavezfamilyfoundation.org, 415-990-7278) is appropriate only for informational questions, not funding pitches. The highest-leverage move for a grant seeker is relationship-building, not proposal-writing: identify board members, staff, or funders you share with existing grantees — Latino Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Community Initiatives (fiscal sponsor), Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, and higher-ed partners like Harvard's engineering school are all documented connection points. Because the foundation's stated thesis is explicitly the intersection of immigration, education, and entrepreneurship (not any one of those alone), organizations that can credibly speak to all three — not just one — will resonate more than single-issue framing; grantees like La Cocina (food entrepreneurship + immigrant economic mobility) and Digital Nest (youth tech education + economic opportunity) exemplify this cross-cutting fit. Budget expectations should be calibrated to the documented range: median $50,000, with most grants falling between roughly $21,500 and $150,000, and outlier gifts (Harvard's $256,326 named fund, Every Woman Treaty's $300,000 across 3 grants) reserved for deep, established relationships. General operating support is clearly favored over restricted project grants — the large majority of grant purposes are simply labeled "GENERAL PURPOSE" — so if a relationship does develop, lead with organizational capacity and mission fit rather than a narrow project pitch. Given the foundation's declining asset base (down 47% since 2019) and FY2024 revenue nearly five times lower than FY2019, be realistic that its overall giving capacity may continue to contract, and that it is likely prioritizing renewal of its existing trusted grantee relationships over adding new ones.