De Miranda Foundation Inc.

De Miranda Foundation Inc. is a lean, founder-directed family foundation established in 2002 by Jay R. de Miranda, a Netherlands-born Palos Verdes real estate investor who built his personal wealth over five decades before turning to philanthropy. The foundation runs with zero paid staff — officer compensation is $0 in every year of IRS filings from 2011 through 2023 — and decisions rest with a 7-member family/insider board: Jay de Miranda (President/Founder), Laura Ellis (VP), Jacqueline Ellis (Treasurer), Jessica Flores (Secretary), sons Craig and David de Miranda, and Liz Herrera (MSW, UCLA). The database record flags this foundation as "preselected_only," and the grant history bears that out: of the roughly 15 distinct grantees captured across 51 recorded grants ($1,210,826 total), the large majority received the same or a near-identical grant amount 3 or 4 separate times, meaning the foundation's real operating pattern is to adopt a small, stable roster of trusted grantees and renew them annually rather than run a wide, competitive open call. Only two grantees — Speak Up for the Poor ($11,412) and Pediatric Therapy Network ($9,500) — appear as single, non-repeating grants, suggesting these were pilot or one-time gifts that did not convert into an ongoing relationship. For a first-time applicant, three things follow. First, the published "eligibility survey → Letter of Inquiry → Board presentation" pipeline on demirandafoundation.org is genuine and is the only formal entry point, but given the preselected pattern, the odds favor organizations that can also establish some personal introduction or reference, echoing how the founder himself was introduced to his largest domestic grantee, El Nido Family Centers, through a family connection. Second, proposals should be narrowly framed around direct, tangible basic-needs services to children — the mission statement is explicitly "a long-term financial umbrella for disadvantaged children, one child at a time." Third, expect a modest initial ask (see funding_patterns) with the real opportunity being a multi-year renewal relationship rather than a single large check.

Total giving has grown unevenly but persistently over the foundation's history: total assets rose from $3.22M (FY2011) to $6.36M (FY2023), and grants paid climbed from $162,343 (FY2011) to a peak of $427,422 (FY2019), dipped to $244,000 during the pandemic (FY2020), and had recovered to $378,254 by FY2023, the most recent year on file. Net investment income ($700,239 in FY2023) now regularly exceeds contributions received ($191,558 in FY2023), indicating the foundation is increasingly self-sustaining off its endowment rather than dependent on new donor inflows. Across the 51 grants captured in the database ($1,210,826 total, $23,742 average), the typical single grant is smaller: the foundation's own typical-grant-size data shows a median of $18,000, an average of $18,769, and a range of $6,000 to $58,000 (n=13) — the higher $23,742 average reflects multi-year cumulative totals per recipient rather than per-grant size. Geographically, giving is heavily concentrated in California (43 of 51 tracked grants, ~84%), consistent with the foundation's South Bay/Los Angeles roots, with smaller counts recorded to grantees administered from Idaho and Illinois (4 each) — likely fiscal-sponsor or headquarters addresses for the foundation's international partners. By recipient, giving is top-heavy: Uganda AIDS Orphan Children's Foundation alone accounts for $304,180 across 4 grants (roughly 25% of tracked lifetime giving), the foundation's single largest relationship and its clearest international commitment. El Nido Family Centers and the affiliated El Nido Scholarship Fund together account for $258,048 across 7 grants — the second major relationship, tied directly to founder Jay de Miranda's personal history with that organization. The remaining dozen-plus domestic grantees (South Bay Children's Health Center $98,639, Unatti Foundation and Promise Child $89,604 each, Harmony Project $88,456, Toberman Neighborhood Center $77,310, and smaller others down to $9,500) cluster in the $9,500-$98,639 cumulative range, each generally funded 3-4 times at a consistent per-grant amount.

The database matches De Miranda Foundation Inc. to five peer foundations selected purely by nearly identical asset size (~$6.40-6.41M) and shared NTEE "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" classification — not by programmatic similarity, geography, or public visibility. None of the five peers have a captured website in the database, so their annual giving, real focus area, and application process are unknown from public data; by contrast, De Miranda Foundation Inc. is unusually transparent for its asset tier, maintaining a live website with a published mission, About page, and formal apply page, plus 13 years of IRS Form 990 financial data on file.

Despite near-identical balance sheets, De Miranda Foundation Inc. stands out among this asset-matched peer set for actually publishing an application process and mission statement — most $6.4M-asset family foundations in the IRS data have no discoverable web presence at all, making De Miranda comparatively easier to research and approach even though its real practice still favors a small, renewing group of insiders and prior grantees.

No De Miranda Foundation Inc.-specific news was found for 2025 or 2026; broad web searches for "De Miranda Foundation" news returned only unrelated organizations sharing part of the name (Miranda Lux Foundation in the Bay Area, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Miranda Family Fund and its December 2025 Miranda Family Rising Stars Fund and April 2025 Tribeca Colectivo fellowship). This foundation appears to maintain a low public profile, consistent with its all-volunteer, no-staff structure. The last documented major milestone is from October 16, 2014, when founder Jay R. de Miranda — a 50-year Palos Verdes resident — received El Nido Family Centers' Lifetime Achievement Award at its Champions for Families Awards Dinner at the Skirball Cultural Center; at that time the foundation held about $5M in assets and distributed roughly $250,000/year to about ten domestic and international charities. Financial filings since then show real growth: assets reached $6.36M and grants paid reached $378,254 by FY2023 (the most recent 990 on file), up from a pandemic-era low of $244,000 in FY2020. The foundation's About page currently lists the founder, now in his 90s, still active as President, with a board that has expanded to include his sons Craig and David de Miranda alongside Laura Ellis (VP), Jacqueline Ellis (Treasurer), Jessica Flores (Secretary), and Liz Herrera (MSW, UCLA) — signaling an active, gradual succession process at a foundation that still operates without any paid staff.

There is no fixed public deadline: application_deadline is blank in IRS filings and unstated on the foundation's website, and the intake process reads as rolling/as-needed rather than tied to a specific cycle — contact sandra@demirandafoundation.org before applying to confirm current timing and the board's meeting schedule. The process is strictly gated: applicants must first complete an online eligibility survey (a Google Form) at demirandafoundation.org/apply; only organizations that clear this mission-fit screen are emailed a link to submit a Letter of Inquiry. Unsolicited LOIs sent outside this pipeline are unlikely to be reviewed. Frame every proposal around direct, measurable basic-needs services for children — food, clothing, medical or health care, and scholarships/education — since every grantee above $25,000 in cumulative giving (El Nido Family Centers, South Bay Children's Health Center, Uganda AIDS Orphan Children's Foundation, Toberman Neighborhood Center) fits that description exactly; broader "community development" framing (the generic NTEE tag attached to this foundation in aggregator databases) is a mismatch with actual giving behavior. Size the request realistically: typical grants run $6,000-$18,000 (the published median), with the $58,000 ceiling reserved for the deepest, longest-standing relationships like El Nido — a large first-time ask is a common and avoidable mistake. Because the funding pattern is dominated by 3-4 year repeat grants to the same roughly 10-15 organizations, position a first grant explicitly as the start of an ongoing relationship, not a one-off gift, and follow up with a brief impact update even if none is formally required — this appears to be what separates a single $9,500-$11,412 pilot gift from a grantee that grows into a $77,000-$130,000+ multi-year partner. A warm introduction meaningfully improves odds: the founder's own philanthropy began through a personal relationship (he was introduced to El Nido by his daughter-in-law's sister), and the final gate is a live presentation to a lay, family-heavy board — so come prepared with a simple, plain-language pitch centered on concrete child-level outcomes rather than organizational capacity-building or general operating narratives, which this all-volunteer funder has limited infrastructure to evaluate.