Clean Water Here Foundation

Clean Water Here Foundation is a small, closely-held private foundation, not a conventional open-application grantmaker. It is administered by Foundation Source (listed contact: '% Foundation Source'), a firm that provides back-office and compliance services to family foundations, and its sole officer is Lani Dolifka, who holds the Director, President, Secretary, and Treasurer roles simultaneously while drawing no compensation — a classic single-family foundation structure. Critically, the foundation's own enrichment data flags 'preselected_only: true' and lists application_instructions as literally 'none,' meaning grants go to organizations the trustee already knows rather than to cold applicants who submit proposals. Of the 6 grants captured in available filings (totaling $2.51M), 3 grants worth $2.06M (82% of tracked dollars) went to World Vision, largely tied to its Ukraine Crisis Fund. The remaining grants supported academic institutions: University of Colorado Boulder's Chancellor's Support Fund for Climate Change Initiatives ($200K across 2 grants) and UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health ($250K). This pattern signals a founder-directed vehicle used to support (1) an existing, trusted relationship with a major international relief organization, and (2) targeted academic climate/health initiatives likely tied to a personal or advisory connection. First-time applicants with no prior relationship to the family, World Vision, or these two universities should treat unsolicited outreach as a long shot — there is no public LOI process, no grants portal, and no published deadline. The foundation's public-facing site, cleanwaterhere.org, functions less as a grants portal and more as an advocacy/awareness platform (social campaigns, a Global Photography Exhibit on water access), suggesting Dolifka's giving strategy blends direct grantmaking through the private foundation with public engagement through a separately branded initiative. Given asset volatility — a $20.06M single-year contribution in 2021 followed by a steady drawdown to $12.2M by 2024 — expect grantmaking to remain modest, relationship-driven, and opportunistic rather than programmatic, with no indication of a shift toward a formal RFP cycle in the near term.

Across the 6 grants captured in available data (total $2,510,000, average $418,333 per recipient relationship), giving is heavily concentrated: World Vision received 3 grants totaling $2,060,000 (averaging $686,667 each), tied to 'Charitable Contribution' and 'Ukraine Crisis Fund' purposes. University of Colorado's Climate Tech Program / Chancellor's Support Fund for Climate Change Initiatives received 2 grants totaling $200,000 (averaging $100,000 each), covering events, conferences, faculty fees, student support, and seed funding at trustee discretion. Gillings School of Global Public Health (UNC) received a single $250,000 grant. By state, this breaks down as Washington (3 grants, matching World Vision's Federal Way, WA base), Colorado (2, CU Boulder), and North Carolina (1, UNC Chapel Hill) — note these are recipient-level totals across multiple years, not single-grant amounts, since the data aggregates by grantee rather than by individual disbursement. Year-over-year giving has been volatile: $410,448 in FY2018, $814,452 in FY2019, a pandemic-year low of $27,978 in FY2020, a jump to $2,272,643 in FY2021 (coinciding with a one-time $20,062,044 contribution received and $20.97M in total revenue that year), a pullback to $226,785 in FY2022 despite $17.9M in assets on hand, and a peak of $4,134,659 in FY2023 — its largest giving year, matching the World Vision Ukraine Crisis Fund grants. FY2024 shows $1,514,383 in total revenue, but grants_paid and total_giving fields were not yet populated in this dataset as of the report's data pull, suggesting that year's Form 990-PF may still be processing. Total assets have declined from a $17,874,028 peak in FY2022 to $12,207,201 in FY2024, reflecting both distributions and investment performance (net investment income ranged from $0 in FY2020 to $909,348 in FY2021). By program area, roughly 82% of tracked grant dollars support international humanitarian relief (World Vision) and 18% support U.S. academic climate/public-health programming — notably, no purely domestic clean-water infrastructure project appears among tracked grantees despite the foundation's name and its Environment/Water Resource (NTEE C12) classification.

With $12.2M in assets, Clean Water Here Foundation sits squarely mid-pack among these five Environment-category peers ($11.6M-$13.1M by asset size), but its structure differs fundamentally from most of them. Three peers — Wright-Locke, Yakona, and Eversource Energy — are operating land trusts and nature preserves that spend their own funds on direct conservation work rather than making third-party grants, making them not comparable as funding sources at all. The remaining two, Foundation For A Sustainable Future and Realty Gift Fund, at least maintain public websites, giving grant seekers in this asset tier a more accessible entry point than Clean Water Here Foundation currently offers.

No dated news specific to Clean Water Here Foundation was found through web search. Searches for grants awarded in 2025-2026, application guidance, and general news announcements returned no foundation-specific results — instead surfacing unrelated organizations with similar names (Clean Water Fund, Clean Water Action, Clean Water for the World, American Water Charitable Foundation), underscoring how easily this foundation gets confused with larger, unrelated water-advocacy groups. The foundation's own website (cleanwaterhere.org) shows an active advocacy program — a 'Your Voice' social media campaign and a Global Photography Exhibit documenting global water-access challenges — but no dated press content was retrievable, and both the /about/ and /partners/ subpages returned 404 errors, suggesting a small or recently-restructured site with limited maintenance. The most notable dated activity on record remains filing-based: the foundation's FY2023 Form 990-PF, its most recent complete filing in this dataset, recorded $4,134,659 in total giving — its largest giving year to date — driven by the three World Vision grants tied to the Ukraine Crisis Fund, a conflict that has continued into 2026. FY2024 data shows $1,514,383 in total revenue, but grants_paid and total_giving figures were not yet populated as of this report (last verified 2026-06-20), indicating the most recent return may still be processing with the IRS or this platform's ingestion pipeline. No leadership changes were identified in available records; Lani Dolifka remains the sole officer across all filings reviewed. Grant seekers should treat this foundation as low-news-visibility and plan on direct, relationship-based outreach rather than monitoring press channels for RFP announcements, since none appear to exist.

Treat Clean Water Here Foundation as a closed, relationship-based funder rather than an open RFP grantmaker. The foundation's own enrichment data lists application_instructions as 'none,' has no application_deadline, no application_form_url, and is flagged preselected_only — meaning grants go to organizations the sole trustee (Lani Dolifka) already knows, not to cold applicants. Letters of inquiry sent to the Foundation Source administrative address (PO Box 222, Hygiene, CO 80533) are unlikely to receive a response; Foundation Source is a third-party administrator handling compliance and back-office work for the family, not a program office that reviews proposals. Concrete approaches with a realistic chance of traction: First, if your organization already has a working relationship with World Vision — especially around its Ukraine Crisis Fund or broader humanitarian/water programming — that existing tie is the most credible path to visibility with this funder, since 82% of its tracked giving ($2.06M of $2.51M) has flowed there. Second, if you're affiliated with University of Colorado Boulder's climate initiatives or UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, note that both institutions' discretionary chancellor/dean funds have already received support here — a faculty or program contact at either institution is far better positioned to raise a proposal internally than an outside organization approaching cold. Third, skip a generic letter of inquiry. If you do reach out through the contact form at cleanwaterhere.org/contact/, lead with a specific, credible connection — a shared board member, a joint program with World Vision, or a CU Boulder/Gillings faculty sponsor — rather than a pitch based on 'clean water' name-alignment; despite the foundation's name, its actual giving has skewed toward humanitarian relief and academic climate/health funds, not water-infrastructure projects. A common mistake to avoid: assuming the 'Environment'/'Water Resource, Wetlands Conservation' NTEE classification (C12) means this is a water-infrastructure funder — the name and classification are misleading relative to actual grant history. On timing, the FY2023 giving spike suggests decisions can happen opportunistically (e.g., in response to a crisis like the war in Ukraine) rather than on a fixed annual cycle, so there is no evidence of a predictable window to submit around.