Devbridge Foundation

Devbridge Foundation is a young, founder-endowed private foundation (established 2023, IRS ruling dated October 2024, EIN 93-3742459) built from a single $10 million liquidity event — the 2021 sale of Devbridge, the Chicago-founded, Lithuania-staffed software consultancy started by its eight co-founders in 2008. That origin story shapes everything about how it gives: this is a tech-founder foundation channeling proceeds from one company's exit into causes tied directly to that company's own history, chiefly its Lithuanian workforce pipeline (the old "Sourcery Academy" trained 2,500+ university students) and the Lithuanian diaspora community around Chicago (events run through the Pasaulio Lietuviu Centras in Lemont, IL). Grant seekers should not approach this as a generalist education or nonprofit funder — it is a mission-locked, identity-driven funder that only makes sense for organizations serving Lithuania, Lithuanian communities abroad, or AI/tech-in-education initiatives with a Lithuanian tie-in. The foundation's own board is entirely composed of Devbridge co-founders (President Aurimas Adomavicius, Secretary Martin Stasaitis, Treasurer Viktoras Gurgzdys, Directors Tomas Gailius, Tomas Kirda, and Gediminas Damijonaitis), none of whom draw compensation, indicating a hands-on, founder-governed operation rather than a staffed program office. There is no public grantee list, no 990 grants-paid figure yet on file (the FY2024 return shows $9.25M in assets and $9.25M in revenue but leaves grants_paid blank, and FY2023 shows the shell-year $0/$1 figures typical of a foundation's first partial filing year), so dollar-level grantmaking history must be inferred from the website rather than tax filings. The relationship arc runs from a self-service online application to a scheduled tri-annual review (January, April, July) rather than a rolling LOI-to-site-visit cycle; because the board is small and hands-on, warm introductions through the Chicago or Lithuanian tech/diaspora network (Built In Chicago, Lithuanian World Center Lemont, IT/Devbridge alumni) are likely to carry more weight than cold applications. First-time applicants should treat the online form's tight character limits (300/150 characters per field) as a signal that the foundation wants a crisp, single-sentence pitch, not a full proposal narrative, at this stage.

Devbridge Foundation does not yet have public grants-paid or total-giving figures on IRS Form 990-PF (both fields are null in the most recent filing, FY2024, likely because it is only two full fiscal years past its 2023 founding). The one hard number available is the endowment itself: $10 million contributed at founding, with FY2024 total assets of $9,226,305 and FY2024 total revenue of $9,251,811 (largely investment return on the endowment, since contributions_received is also unreported). The foundation's own website is the only source for per-grant sizing, and it states initiatives receive "annual funding ranging from several thousand to several tens of thousands of euros" — implying individual awards likely fall in the roughly $3,000–$50,000 range (order of magnitude), well below the $75K+ medians typical of larger institutional foundations, and consistent with a foundation still in its early, exploratory grantmaking years. Programmatically, funding splits across three named pillars: Access to Innovative Knowledge (the largest visible activity stream — programming academies, textbook distribution, teacher/AI research), Youth Entrepreneurship (mentorship networks, an explicit target of lifting Lithuania's ICT sector to 20% of GDP by 2030), and Lithuanian Culture Preservation (diaspora-facing creator and identity projects). Geographically, giving is split between Lithuania proper (the bulk of programmatic activity — AI-in-schools research, teacher conferences, financial-literacy pushes, back-to-school supply drives in Mazeikiai) and the Lithuanian diaspora in the U.S., concentrated around the Chicago area (Lemont's Lithuanian World Center). No multi-year giving trend can be established yet since only two fiscal years of filings exist and both have incomplete grants data — applicants should expect this to be a foundation still building its grantmaking track record rather than one with an established, analyzable pattern.

Devbridge Foundation sits among a cluster of similarly small (~$9.2M asset) Philanthropy & Grantmaking-classified private foundations, but its founder-driven, single-cause profile sets it apart from the more generic peer set returned by asset-matching.

All six foundations in this asset tier cluster within roughly $9.22M-$9.23M, suggesting they are matched purely on balance-sheet size rather than mission — none of the five peers have public website or focus-area data in this bundle, making Devbridge the only one of the group with a transparent, publicly documented program (its own website), named leadership, and a live, self-service application. That transparency itself is a differentiator: applicants researching this peer set will find Devbridge far easier to approach directly than foundations with no public web presence, which likely operate by invitation only or through pre-existing donor relationships.

Devbridge Foundation's most visible recent activity is a sustained 2026 push into AI-in-education research and programming. Its flagship "Learn on.AI" initiative, recapped in a July 9, 2026 post, reports reach to "thousands of students and hundreds of teachers" — the foundation's largest-scale program disclosed to date. This was paired with what the foundation describes as Lithuania's first study of teachers' real-world AI tool usage (published June 8, 2026), finding that AI use saves teacher time without displacing student relationships, and a July 10, 2026 piece connecting improving-but-still-uneven national math exam results to AI-assisted instruction. Earlier in 2026, the foundation co-organized an education conference, "School and AI: Threat or Power?," with Science Island (held May 2026, recorded for distribution via Lithuanian broadcaster LRT), and ran a companion teacher-facing conference and workshop series in early May. On the governance side, Treasurer Viktoras Gurgždys published a March 30, 2026 essay on "The Transformation of Philanthropy in Lithuania," suggesting the foundation is positioning itself publicly as a voice in Lithuanian philanthropic practice, not just a funder. A parallel March 2026 story on financial literacy for elementary students points to programmatic expansion beyond coding/CS into broader K-12 skill-building. No leadership changes, executive hires, or major new funding-round announcements were found in the available search results; CEO Gintarė Dzindzelėtaitė-Kelmelė and the founder-board (Adomavicius, Stasaitis, Gurgzdys, Gailius, Kirda, Damijonaitis) appear to remain in place since the 2023 founding.

Apply through the online form at devbridgefoundation.org/application/ — there is no separate LOI stage, PDF proposal, or portal login; it is a single-pass structured web form. Because nearly every field is capped at 300 characters (impact goals, initiative description, priority alignment) or 150 characters (problem statement, target audience, funding need, timeline), draft your pitch as a set of tight, single-sentence statements before filling out the form — long-form grant-writing prose will get truncated. Pick exactly one of the three fund priorities (Access to Innovative Knowledge, Youth Entrepreneurship, or Lithuanian Culture Preservation) and write your alignment justification around that single pillar rather than claiming fit across all three — the form asks for alignment with "the selected fund priority," implying reviewers score against one lane at a time. Submit ahead of the January, April, or July review windows; since applications sit and wait for the next scheduled review rather than being processed on receipt, a proposal submitted in late July effectively waits until the following January review. Given the foundation only notifies applicants who pass the selection stage ("only applicants who successfully pass...will be contacted"), do not expect a rejection notice — plan to follow up independently if a proposal goes silent for more than one review cycle. The single biggest fit filter is the Lithuania/diaspora connection: nearly every funded program identified — programming academies in Lithuania, textbook distribution to Lithuanian expatriate communities, AI-in-schools research in Lithuanian schools, events at the Lithuanian World Center in Lemont, IL — ties back to Lithuania or the Lithuanian diaspora, so organizations without that nexus are unlikely to be competitive regardless of how well they otherwise match the stated pillars. Because the foundation is run by a small, unpaid, founder board rather than program officers, a warm introduction through the Chicago tech community, the Devbridge/Tietoevry alumni network, or Lithuanian-American organizations (e.g., the Lithuanian World Center) is likely to carry meaningfully more weight than a cold web-form submission alone. Emphasize measurable, scalable outcomes in your pitch — the foundation's own focus page cites hard external benchmarks (top-3 global PISA ranking, top-10 Global Innovation Index, ICT sector reaching 20% of Lithuania's GDP by 2030), signaling it wants applicants to frame impact in similarly quantifiable terms rather than qualitative mission language.