Dechambeau Creek Foundation

DeChambeau Creek Foundation is a small, place-based family foundation (EIN 47-1931592, $3.74M in assets as of FY2024) rooted in 135 acres of protected private land in California's Mono Basin, near Lee Vining. Its giving is hyper-local and hyper-specific: 29 of 32 tracked grants (91%) went to California organizations, almost entirely within Mono County's Lee Vining, June Lake, and Mono City communities, with a small outlier cluster of 3 grants in Hawaii. This is not a foundation for broad regional or national appeals — it favors small, place-rooted nonprofits, schools, fire districts, and civic groups embedded in the immediate Eastern Sierra community it calls home. The board is unpaid (all listed officers report $0 compensation across every filing year, including President Margaret Eissler, Treasurer David Marquart, Secretary Patricia Holland, and Directors Nathan Taylor, Susan Desbaillets, Lisa Cutting, Molly Desbaillets, and Kristie Nelson), signaling a hands-on, volunteer-governed operation rather than a staffed program office. Historically, awards were labeled internally as 'Directors' Fund Award Recipient,' reflecting a board-nominated, relationship-driven selection process rather than an open competitive review. The foundation's current website describes a more formal Community Investment Program (CIP) with a defined grant committee and scoring rubric, suggesting a shift toward accepting direct applications — but the applicant pool it draws from remains narrow and hyperlocal by design. First-time applicants should not treat this as a scalable funding source for programs outside the Mono Basin: eligibility is explicitly restricted to projects located within the hydrologic Mono Basin or on formally partnered lands. Organizations should lead with land stewardship, environmental education, or community-connection framing that mirrors the foundation's own program language, and expect a grant size in the low thousands — this is a foundation built for seeding small, concrete community needs, not funding large multi-year programs.

Total assets have declined steadily from $4.48M (FY2019) to $3.74M (FY2024), a drop driven by grantmaking and expenses outpacing modest investment returns rather than a single large disbursement. Total giving (which includes program-related spending, not just grants) ran $235K-$266K annually from FY2020-FY2021, dipped to $221K in FY2022, and $247.5K in FY2023, while grants paid alone were far smaller: $41.8K (FY2020), $76.5K (FY2021), $65.0K (FY2022), and $64.5K (FY2023) — implying roughly 70-80% of 'total giving' in recent years funds direct program operations (Land Stewardship cost $57,282 and the Inspiring Meaningful Connection program cost $76,849 in the two disclosed program lines) rather than third-party grants. Across the 32 grants tracked in the database, the average award is $5,366 and total disbursed is $171,701; the foundation's own stated typical grant size is a median of $5,000 (range $1,500-$13,500 across 12 sampled awards, average $6,375) — external trackers cite a slightly wider historical range of $500-$15,000 across 64 total grants and $340,476 lifetime giving. The largest tracked recipient is Mono Lake Kutzadika'a Cpa ($38,340 across 3 grants tied to 2020 and 2022 Directors' Fund awards), followed by the Presbyterian Fund of the Comm Pres ($21,461/3 grants) and Oikonos, a seabird conservation nonprofit ($18,000/3 grants, including Mono Lake phalarope surveys). By geography, California dominates entirely (29 of 32 grants), with a small Hawaii cluster (3 grants) that appears to reflect a specific relationship rather than a program priority. By theme, environmental/conservation groups (Oikonos, Death Valley Natural History Association, Friends of the Inyo), local civic infrastructure (Lee Vining Fire Protection District, Mono City Fire Protection District, Mammoth Lakes Housing), and youth/education (Lee Vining Elementary PTO, Lee Vining High School PTSO, June Lake Little Loopers, Mono Arts Council's school music program) split the remaining giving fairly evenly — none of these grants exceed the low five figures, and most recur as small annual or biennial gifts to the same handful of organizations.

DeChambeau Creek sits in a tight asset band ($3.6M-$3.8M) alongside five other small environment-focused family foundations, none of which disclose public websites in this dataset except Persistence Foundation. This peer set illustrates a common pattern for foundations this size: modest, geographically anchored land-stewardship missions with no professional program staff. DeChambeau Creek stands out within this cohort for actually publishing a structured, dated application process (three named cycles with a scoring rubric) — most peers of comparable size have no discoverable public application path at all, giving DeChambeau Creek relatively higher accessibility despite its narrow geographic eligibility.

No foundation-issued press releases, leadership announcements, or major new program launches surfaced in web search for 2025-2026; DeChambeau Creek is a low-visibility, non-PR-driven family foundation, so the absence of news coverage is expected rather than a gap in research. The most concrete recent-activity signal is aggregator-reported FY2024 giving of 17 grants totaling approximately $93K, with named recent grantees including Mono Arts Council, Sierra STEM, and Friends of the Inyo — consistent with the foundation's established pattern of recurring small grants to the same core group of Eastern Sierra organizations. The foundation's board composition has been stable across the three most recent filing years reflected in the data (President Margaret Eissler, Treasurer David Marquart, Secretary Patricia Holland, Directors Nathan Taylor, Susan Desbaillets, Lisa Cutting, Molly Desbaillets, and Kristie Nelson), with no turnover evident. The most notable operational change is procedural rather than newsworthy: the foundation's website now documents a formal three-cycle Community Investment Program (organization grants January-March, Spring Incubator April-June, Fall Incubator September-November) with a named grants contact (jakesuppa@dechambeaucreek.org), a structure that does not appear to have existed, or at least was not publicly documented, during the 2019-2023 'Directors' Fund' era reflected in the Form 990 grant descriptions. Applicants should treat this published cycle calendar as the current, authoritative process going into the next application window.

Apply within one of the three published cycles rather than sending an unsolicited proposal outside those windows: organization grants open January 1 and close when funds are depleted (so apply early in the window — this is not a fixed deadline, and later applicants risk the pool already being exhausted), with awards by March 1. Individuals or groups with a specific, discrete need (equipment, a one-time event, a small pilot project) should use the Spring Incubator (April 1-May 1, awards by June 1) or Fall Incubator (September 1-October 1, awards by November 1) tracks instead of the organization-grant track. Do not apply if your project sits outside the hydrologic Mono Basin (Lee Vining, June Lake, Mono City) or outside a formally partnered land agreement — this is an explicit, stated eligibility bar, not a soft preference, and the grantee data confirms it (29 of 32 tracked grants are California-based, virtually all in this footprint). Mirror the foundation's own program language in your proposal: frame your work in terms of 'land stewardship' and 'sustaining natural beauty' or 'inspiring meaningful connection' and 'respectful coexistence with nature, place and one another' — these are the foundation's two literal program names, and proposals that map cleanly onto one of the two will be easiest for the volunteer board to evaluate. Keep the ask modest and concrete: the median award is $5,000 (range $1,500-$15,000 across all data sources), so multi-year or six-figure requests are mismatched to this funder's scale and will likely be rejected as out of range. Because the board is entirely unpaid and historically favored organizations it already knew (the 'Directors' Fund' naming convention on years of past awards), a short relationship-building email to jakesuppa@dechambeaucreek.org before the cycle opens — introducing your organization and confirming mission fit — is a reasonable and low-risk step, even though the foundation does now publish an open application path. Common mistakes to avoid: applying from outside Mono County, requesting general operating support without a specific stewardship or connection framing, and missing that the organization-grant cycle can close early once funds run out.