Crofton Cares Inc.

Crofton Cares Inc. is a small, family-run private foundation established in 2018 by Michael and Amy Southard, run out of Mayfield Heights, Ohio, with no paid staff — the entire board (Michael Southard as President/Secretary/Treasurer/Director, plus directors Amy Southard and Ashley Southard London) draws zero compensation, and administration runs through Cornerstone Family Office LLC. This is a founder-directed vehicle, not an institutional grantmaker with program officers, and it explicitly does not accept unsolicited proposals — funding is by invitation only to preselected organizations. That single fact should reshape any outreach strategy: cold LOIs or applications sent to the general foundation address will not be reviewed. The only genuinely open door is the Southard Family Scholarship, a renewable $25,000/year award for graduating high school seniors in the Tampa, FL or Cleveland, OH metro areas, which does accept direct student applications through MyScholarship.App. For nonprofits, the realistic path in is relational: the foundation's grantee list shows repeat, escalating support to organizations it already trusts — five separate gifts totaling $879,939 to the University of Tampa, four gifts totaling $245,000 to United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Cleveland (culminating in the naming of the 'Amy and Mike Southard Adaptive & Inclusive Playground'), and four gifts totaling $120,000 to Starting Right Now. This pattern signals a foundation that starts with a smaller trust-building gift and scales up once a relationship is proven. Organizations should look for warm introductions through the Southards' existing philanthropic network — Re:source Cleveland, Mandel JCC, Cornerstone of Hope, College Now Greater Cleveland, and Jewish community institutions in Cleveland (Florida Holocaust Museum, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hillels of the Florida Suncoast) are recurring touchpoints. First-time contacts are best made via the website's contact form, ideally referencing a specific program aligned with education equity or healthcare access in Northeast Ohio or Tampa Bay, and framed as a modest, specific ask rather than a general operating request.

Crofton Cares reported total giving of $686,150 in FY2023 (the latest year with complete grants data), down from a FY2020 peak of $648,598 and well above the FY2019 low of $187,891 — giving has trended upward overall as foundation assets grew from $5.97M (2019) to $7.7M (2023) to $7.6M (2024). The DB's matched grantee sample (52 grants, $1,945,347 total, averaging $37,411 per grant) shows a wide range: the smallest gift was $100 (Greater Cleveland Foodbank) and the largest single-recipient total was $879,939 across 5 grants to the University of Tampa — driven by the recurring 'Southard Family Annual Scholarship' and UT Give Day matches. Excluding that outlier relationship, most individual grants cluster between $1,000 and $50,000, with the foundation's own reported typical-grant-size data showing a median of $25,000, an average of $56,590, and a range of $100 to $200,000 across 11 tracked grants. Geographically, Ohio dominates by grant count (22 of 52 grants, largely Cleveland-area education, health, and Jewish community organizations) while Florida dominates by count in the Tampa Bay area (19 of 52 grants) and by dollar volume once the University of Tampa relationship is included — together OH and FL account for 41 of 52 tracked grants, consistent with the foundation's stated dual geographic focus. By program area, education (scholarships, school libraries, literacy programs, university gifts) represents the largest share of dollars, followed by healthcare/disability services (United Cerebral Palsy, University Hospitals' $200,000 COVID caregiver support grant, Case Western Reserve University), with a smaller but consistent stream to Jewish community and cultural institutions (Holocaust museums, Hillels, Fairmount Temple, National Council of Jewish Women) and animal/environmental causes (Geauga Humane Society, Cuyahoga Valley Countryside Conservancy). Officer compensation has been $0 in every reported year, meaning essentially all revenue net of overhead flows to grants and net investment income reinvestment.

Crofton Cares sits within a cluster of small, single-family private foundations classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking with assets in the $7.35M-$7.35M band. Unlike most of its immediate peers, which show no public website, Crofton Cares has invested in an active web presence, a news page, and a named scholarship program — an unusual degree of public-facing infrastructure for a foundation this size.

All six foundations fall within roughly $1,700 of each other in total assets ($7,350,658-$7,354,214), reflecting a common asset tier for family foundations of this scale rather than any strategic similarity. Crofton Cares differs from its peer set mainly in transparency and structure: it publishes a named scholarship program with defined eligibility, maintains a news page documenting grants, and names its geographic and program priorities publicly, whereas the listed peers have no discoverable websites and are effectively invisible to prospective applicants — meaning Crofton Cares, despite being invitation-only for general grants, is likely the most approachable of this peer group simply because it has a documented open scholarship channel and a contact form.

Crofton Cares' most recent publicized activity centers on its 2025-2026 scholarship and community-partnership cycle. The foundation renewed its partnership with College Now Greater Cleveland for the 2026-2027 academic year, committing to scholarships of up to $2,500 annually for eligible students starting fall 2026. In 2025, Crofton Cares sponsored Re:source Cleveland's 15th Anniversary Annual Benefit, which nearly doubled its fundraising goal for services supporting newcomer and immigrant families in East Cleveland, and sponsored the Mandel JCC's 'Shining Star CLE 2025' high-school vocal competition, with proceeds supporting youth programming and senior services. The foundation also funded Camp Cornerstone and Camp Lighthouse through Cornerstone of Hope, providing grief counseling for children who have experienced loss, and supported a fully staffed library initiative across Breakthrough Public Schools campuses, extending its earlier literacy-tutoring pilot with Amplify. On the outcomes side, the foundation has been highlighting the success of past Southard Family Scholarship recipients: Toluwanimi Ajani graduated from NYU Stern with a Finance and Data Science degree after internships at Google and Visa, and Blake Delgadillo graduated valedictorian (4.0 GPA) from LECOM-Bradenton medical school and began an orthopedic surgery residency at Jefferson Health in New Jersey. Leadership has remained stable and unchanged: Michael Southard (President/Secretary/Treasurer/Director), Amy Southard (Director), and Ashley Southard London (Director) continue to serve without compensation, with no reported additions or departures. No major new program announcements, leadership changes, or large new institutional grants (comparable in size to the earlier University Hospitals $200,000 COVID-response gift or the UCP of Greater Cleveland playground naming) were found in the available 2025-2026 coverage — recent activity is best characterized as steady continuation and deepening of existing relationships rather than new program launches.

Do not send a general grant application or LOI to Crofton Cares — the foundation is explicit and consistent across every third-party funder profile (Grantable, Impala, Grantmakers.io) that it does not accept unsolicited requests and gives only to preselected organizations. Sending a cold proposal will not be reviewed and wastes the one email/contact-form touchpoint available. If your organization is a graduating high school senior (not a nonprofit), the Southard Family Scholarship is the one genuinely open, criteria-based program: apply through MyScholarship.App or Unigo, confirm you reside in the Tampa, FL or Cleveland, OH metro area, and meet the 3.5 unweighted GPA / 1280 SAT (28 ACT) minimums before applying — the essay prompt has centered on the theme 'Higher education can enable you to be anything,' so responses should connect personal circumstance to opportunity rather than generic achievement narratives. For nonprofits hoping to eventually be 'preselected,' the most realistic strategy is visibility within the Southards' existing philanthropic circles: event sponsorship tables, benefit attendance, and board-level introductions at organizations they already fund (Re:source Cleveland, Mandel JCC, Cornerstone of Hope, College Now Greater Cleveland, Breakthrough Public Schools) are far more likely to lead to a future invitation than any direct proposal. When reaching out via the website contact form, keep the message brief, specific, and aligned to one of the two core pillars — education equity (schools with lower graduation rates, literacy, scholarships) or healthcare (medical research, clinical trials, disability services) — and reference the Northeast Ohio or Tampa Bay geography explicitly, since organizations outside those two regions appear essentially absent from the grantee list (only isolated exceptions like NYU and a few national museums). A common mistake would be treating this as a program-officer-driven institutional funder; there is no staff, no published RFP, no deadline calendar, and no formal reporting template, so proposals modeled on large-foundation formats (multi-page narratives, logic models, extensive budgets) are mismatched to how this family foundation actually operates — a personal, relationship-first, concise approach fits better. Because officer compensation is $0 and the board is three family members, decisions are almost certainly made informally and quickly once a relationship exists, so patience during the 'getting known' phase matters more than proposal polish.