Crete Family Foundation

Crete Family Foundation is a small, closely held private foundation ($8.15M in assets, $538,116 in FY2024 revenue) run entirely by family and a single non-family officer: Michael Crete (President) and Matthew Mccutchen (Secretary), both uncompensated across every filing year in the record. Every source reviewed — the foundation's own Form 990-PF designation (`preselected_only: true`), Grantmakers.io, and Instrumentl — confirms the foundation has consistently checked the IRS box stating it "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations and doesn't accept unsolicited applications for funds." There is no LOI process, no online portal, no published funding cycle, and no grants page; `application_process`, `application_form_url`, and `application_deadline` are all blank in the tax record.

The most useful strategic signal in the data is geographic: although the foundation's registered address is a Seattle office suite (925 4th Ave Ste 2288, c/o Richard A Stevens — almost certainly the foundation's accountant or registered agent, not a program office), 77 of the 98 tracked grants (79%) went to California organizations, heavily clustered in Stockton and Lodi in San Joaquin County. That, combined with gifts tied to UC Davis viticulture and enology programs, strongly suggests the Crete family's personal and business roots are in the Central Valley agricultural community, not Seattle. Grant seekers should treat the Seattle address as an administrative mailbox, not a giving-priority signal.

The grantee list also shows a relationship-driven, repeat-giving pattern rather than one-off gifts: Wounded Warrior Project (4 grants), Doctors Without Borders (3), Stockton Shelter for the Homeless (4), Lodi Boys and Girls Club (3), and several local churches and food banks (2-3 each) all appear multiple times across years. Once an organization is inside the circle, it tends to receive sustained, quiet, multi-year support rather than compete in an annual open cycle.

First-time applicants should understand that a cold proposal has essentially no realistic chance here. The productive strategy is relationship-building: identify any board, donor, or community tie to Michael Crete or Matthew Mccutchen, or seek an introduction through an already-funded peer organization in the Stockton/Lodi human-services, veterans-services, or health-research ecosystem, then make a low-key, personal approach rather than a formal grant submission.

The foundation's own typical-grant-size data (n=29, recent sample) shows a median grant of $20,000 and an average of $19,897, with a range of $2,000 to $50,000 — a tight, predictable band for a foundation this size. Zooming out to the full multi-year grantee history (98 tracked grants totaling $2,405,150, averaging $24,542 each), the single largest distribution was $400,000 to Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised-fund pass-through rather than a program grant, and an outlier that should not be read as a typical ask size. Excluding that DAF transfer, the largest recurring program grantees top out in the $75,000–$200,000 cumulative range across multiple years (Wounded Warrior Project $200,000/4 grants; Doctors Without Borders $150,000/3 grants; Stockton Shelter for the Homeless $135,000/4 grants; Lodi Boys and Girls Club $125,000/3 grants).

Annual total giving has been volatile but historically substantial: $315,887 (2013) rising to a run of $600,000–$739,000 years from 2019-2023 ($611,803 in 2019, $653,143 in 2020, $648,096 in 2021, $739,136 in 2022, $600,257 in 2023), funded by net investment income that itself swung from $98,452 (2022) to $681,450 (2023) on an asset base that has stayed in the $7.1M–$8.5M range for over a decade. FY2024 broke that pattern sharply: third-party 990 trackers report only about $51,850–$52,000 distributed across just 6 grants, a roughly 90% drop from 2023 despite assets holding steady near $8.15M and revenue of $538,116 — a pause or reset rather than a funding collapse.

By cause area, the largest cluster is human services and basic needs — food banks, shelters, and indigent-family assistance (Stockton Shelter, Emergency Food Bank, St Mary's Dining Room, Salvation Army Lodi Corps, Second Harvest Food Bank together exceed $345,000). Veterans' services is the second-largest identifiable cluster (~$290,000: Wounded Warrior Project $200,000, Navy SEAL Foundation $90,000). Health and medical causes total roughly $205,000 (Doctors Without Borders $150,000, Shriners Hospitals $75,000, plus smaller Alzheimer's, cancer, and hospice gifts), and youth/education gifts total roughly $235,000 (Lodi Boys and Girls Club $125,000, KVIE Public Television $75,000, UC Davis-affiliated gifts, Lodi Christian School). Geographically, 79% of grants (77 of 98) went to California, with small numbers reaching Virginia (5), Georgia (4), Kansas (4), New York (3), Washington (4), and Nevada (1) — likely national-organization chapters or personal connections outside the Central Valley core.

The database groups Crete Family Foundation with five other private foundations in the same $8.15M asset band, all self-classified under the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE category (a label every private foundation receives regardless of actual giving focus, so it does not indicate programmatic overlap). None of the peer foundations had itemized giving, focus-area, or application-process data available in this dataset, so those columns reflect either Crete's confirmed data or an honest "not available" rather than an estimate.

All six foundations sit within roughly $6,000 of each other in total assets ($8.149M–$8.155M), making this an asset-matched peer set rather than a mission-matched one — three of the five peers (Rugged Elegance, Barlow, Corwith, George H Dunklin) list no public website in the dataset, suggesting a broader pattern among this asset tier of small, closely held family foundations that operate with minimal public disclosure. Crete stands out within this group only in that its actual grant-level activity is unusually well documented via IRS Form 990-PF schedules, giving grant seekers far more visibility into its real priorities than is typical for foundations its size.

No dedicated news coverage, press releases, or announcements from or about Crete Family Foundation were located in web search — this is consistent with a low-profile family foundation with no communications program. The foundation's website, crete.org, could not be loaded during this review (SSL/certificate error), which is itself a signal worth flagging to grant seekers: there is no indication of an actively maintained public-facing grants program.

The most significant recent data point is financial rather than editorial: Form 990-PF-derived figures aggregated by Grantmakers.io and Instrumentl show FY2024 total distributions of roughly $52,000 across just 6 grants, down from $600,257 across a larger grantee pool in FY2023 and $739,136 in FY2022 — a decline of close to 90% in a single year. The foundation's most recent Form 990-PF was filed November 17, 2025, confirming it remains active and in good standing; assets were essentially unchanged ($8.15M in 2024 vs. $7.63M in 2023) and 2024 revenue was $538,116, so the drop does not appear to reflect an asset or income shock. It more likely reflects a deliberate pause, a shift toward larger/less frequent gifts, or delayed/partial reporting for the year.

Leadership has been stable across the filing history reviewed: Michael Crete as President and Matthew Mccutchen as Secretary, both uncompensated. One third-party aggregator (Instrumentl) lists a "Lisa Crete" as co-president, which may reflect a governance update not yet reflected in the primary filing data used here and is worth independently verifying before citing. Given the sharp 2024 giving contraction and total absence of public communications, any organization with a live connection to this foundation should confirm current giving appetite directly before assuming historical funding levels still apply.

There is no open application channel — this is the single most important thing for a grant seeker to internalize. The foundation's Form 990-PF has consistently checked the box stating it "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations and doesn't accept unsolicited applications for funds," and no LOI process, portal, deadline, or funding-priorities statement exists anywhere in the public record. Submitting an unsolicited proposal is very unlikely to be read, let alone funded.

The productive strategy is relationship-first, not proposal-first. Because 79% of tracked grant dollars go to California organizations concentrated in Stockton and Lodi (San Joaquin County), and because the Seattle address (925 4th Ave Ste 2288, c/o Richard A Stevens) reads as an administrative mailbox rather than a program office, organizations serving that Central Valley region — or serving veterans, food-insecure families, or basic human-needs populations anywhere — have the clearest alignment with demonstrated giving patterns. Look for any existing tie, however indirect, to President Michael Crete or Secretary Matthew Mccutchen, or seek a warm introduction through a current or former grantee such as Stockton Shelter for the Homeless, Lodi Boys and Girls Club, Emergency Food Bank, Wounded Warrior Project, Navy SEAL Foundation, or Doctors Without Borders.

Worth noting: the foundation's single largest tracked distribution ($400,000) went to Schwab Charitable Fund, a donor-advised-fund intermediary — meaning some Crete family giving may flow through DAF vehicles rather than direct foundation grants. Organizations with existing donor-advised-fund relationships in the funder's likely network (Central Valley philanthropy, veterans' causes, UC Davis agricultural programs) may have a secondary path to visibility.

If a genuine connection does open a conversation, keep the ask modest and specific: typical program grants run $2,000–$50,000 with a median around $20,000, so a discrete, well-defined request (a program gap, an emergency need, a matching gift) is a better fit than a general-operating or capital-campaign ask. The steep drop in FY2024 total giving (to roughly $52,000 from $600,000+ the prior year) makes it especially important to confirm current appetite in a low-pressure way — a short phone call to (206) 816-6850 or a brief personal letter — before investing time in a full proposal package the foundation has no mechanism to formally receive. A common mistake to avoid is a generic national appeal with no California Central Valley or veterans/human-services framing; that profile sits outside everything the grant history shows this funder actually supports.