Doing Good Foundation

Doing Good Foundation is a family-run private trust founded in 2002 by Clint B. Argyle (Executive Director) and Sherry Argyle (Assistant Executive Director) in Spanish Fork, Utah. Its documented grantmaking flows through two channels: direct support to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a small cluster of self-reliance and anti-poverty nonprofits — Academy for Creating Enterprise, Mentors International, Choice Humanitarian, and Transcend International — each of which appears as a repeat, multi-grant recipient (2-3 grants apiece) rather than a one-time award. That repetition is the clearest signal in the data: this is a foundation that deepens a small number of long-term relationships rather than running an open, responsive grants program. Consistent with that, the foundation's own IRS filing lists its application_instructions field as "__none__," and its website offers no grant guidelines, RFP, or downloadable form — only a generic "Contact Us" inquiry box.

First-time applicants should treat this as a relationship-first funder. A realistic path in requires either (a) a mission fit with self-reliance, microenterprise, or vocational/business training for underserved communities in the developing world, mirroring the language used by Academy for Creating Enterprise ("help people of faith in the developing world create abundant lives"), Mentors International ("transforming generational poverty into sustainable self-reliance"), and Choice Humanitarian ("expand their range of options, foster self-reliance"); or (b) direct alignment with LDS Church programming — missionary work, temple activities, or ward/stake community service — which is also where the foundation channels its own in-house digital projects.

Grant sizes scale with tenure: the smallest tracked awards ($5,000 per grant to Choice Humanitarian and Transcend International) went to newer partners, while the longest-standing relationship (Academy for Creating Enterprise) averages $40,000 per grant, and the Church itself averages roughly $133,000 per grant. Cold outreach without a warm introduction through one of these existing partners, or through LDS self-reliance/humanitarian services networks, is unlikely to succeed — expect a slow, conversational cultivation process rather than a deadline-driven cycle.

Doing Good Foundation's financial history shows a foundation transformed by a single capitalization event. From 2012-2019 it was nearly dormant, holding roughly $250,000-$353,000 in assets and giving away as little as $300-$2,550 a year. In FY2020, net investment income of $6,184,088 plus $1,848,955 in contributions drove total revenue to $8,033,073, pushing assets from $353,075 to $7,550,236 in a single year and enabling a one-time giving surge of $842,221. Giving has since normalized downward: $292,997 (FY2021), $429,482 (FY2022), and $613,456 (FY2023). FY2024's total_giving figure was not disclosed in the latest filing, but revenue fell back to $302,704 and assets held roughly steady at $8,550,737, suggesting a moderate payout year in the same $400,000-$600,000 range rather than a return to 2020 levels.

At the individual-grant level, tracked data covers 12 grants totaling $563,499 (average $46,958 per grant). The Church of Jesus Christ of LDS is by far the largest recipient — 3 grants totaling $399,499 (71% of tracked dollars), averaging about $133,000 per grant. Academy for Creating Enterprise received 3 grants totaling $120,000 (avg. $40,000), while Mentors International, Choice Humanitarian, and Transcend International each received 2 grants in the $10,000-$24,000 range (avg. $5,000-$12,000 per grant). Individual grant size therefore spans roughly $5,000 to $133,000, with a heavy concentration in Church-designated giving and the remainder split among four repeat self-reliance/international-development partners.

Geographically, the tracked grantee data attributes 100% of grants to Utah (by_state: UT, 12 grants) — reflecting the Utah headquarters of the recipient organizations even though their program work (Mentors International, Choice Humanitarian) is international. Officer compensation appears only in FY2023 ($150,000, most likely to Executive Director Clint Argyle), a notable jump from $0 in surrounding years. With assets stable near $8.1-8.55M since 2022 and payout running roughly 5-8% of assets, expect continued grants in the $300,000-$600,000/year range, concentrated among a small, stable set of repeat partners.

All five peers sit within roughly $1,500 of Doing Good Foundation's $8,550,737 in assets and share the same "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE classification, indicating they are structurally similar small, closely-held family foundations or trusts rather than large public grantmakers. None of the peers have a listed website in this dataset, whereas Doing Good Foundation is unusual in maintaining a public site, a board-members page, and named programs — giving grant seekers more visible surface area to research fit, even though the underlying application process (informal, relationship-based, no open RFP) is likely comparable across this entire peer set.

The most recent available filing (fiscal year 2024) shows Doing Good Foundation's assets edging up to $8,550,737 from $8,100,681 in FY2023, on revenue of $302,704 — a return to more modest activity after the $8M+ revenue year in 2020. No dated news coverage or grant announcements specific to 2025-2026 turned up in web searches; the foundation does not appear to issue press releases.

The most concrete evidence of ongoing activity is programmatic rather than journalistic: the foundation's "Our Projects" page describes an active, multi-site digital portfolio supporting LDS temple visitor centers — templehill.org (Oakland, over 240,000 visits and 350,000 emails sent since 2020), mesatemple.org (over 510,000 visits, tied to a 2021 open house that drew 347,000+ attendees), dctemplevisitorscenter.org (over one million combined visits with a related property), and tempiodiroma.org (Rome, launched August 2021, 72,000+ visits). More recent additions include coordination-council blog sites for Las Vegas (churchofjesuschristinlasvegas.org) and North Texas (churchofjesuschristinnorthtexas.org), plus a virtual-tour property (templetours.org) supporting missionary outreach.

Governance has also broadened beyond the founding Argyle family: the board now includes banking veteran Jason Price (former President & CEO of WEX Bank), financial planner Harold Smith (MBA, CFP, ChFC, RIA), and litigation attorney Morgan Fife — additions that suggest more formal financial and legal oversight of the $8.5M corpus than in the foundation's earlier, smaller-asset years.

There is no formal grant application, RFP, or online portal for Doing Good Foundation — the IRS filing lists application_instructions as "__none__," and the only public entry point is the website's "Contact Us" form (name, email, phone, message) at doinggoodfoundation.org/contact-us. Treat any submission there as the opening of a relationship, not a grant application with a review timeline.

Because the foundation is technically flagged as "accepting applications" in IRS data but provides no guidelines, deadlines, or published review cycle, applicants should not expect a fast or process-driven response. Build in months, not weeks, for relationship cultivation before requesting funds, and follow up by phone — (801) 798-8943 — since the foundation is run by a small family team without dedicated program staff.

Alignment language matters more than program mechanics. Four of the five identified grantees explicitly use "self-reliance," "sustainable...prosperity," or "vocational/business training" language in their own mission statements (Academy for Creating Enterprise, Mentors International, Choice Humanitarian, Transcend International) — mirror this vocabulary rather than generic poverty-alleviation framing. Organizations whose work touches LDS Church programming (missionary support, temple activities, ward/stake community service) can also point to the foundation's own in-house digital projects (templehill.org, mesatemple.org, dctemplevisitorscenter.org, tempiodiroma.org, templetours.org) as evidence of a live, parallel priority.

All five known grantees are established, multi-year partners with repeat grants (2-3 each) — there is no visible pattern of one-off responsive grants to previously unknown applicants. The strongest approach is a warm introduction through the foundation's existing partner network or LDS self-reliance/humanitarian services contacts, rather than a cold letter of inquiry. Expect a phased relationship: new partners in this dataset started around $5,000-$10,000 per grant, scaling to $12,000-$40,000+ after several years of track record, with six-figure gifts reserved for the Church itself. A common mistake to avoid is submitting a generic proposal without explicit self-reliance/international-development or LDS-affiliation framing — the foundation's entire visible giving pattern centers on those two themes exclusively, and its payout has been trending downward since the 2020 capitalization spike, so treat any first gift as a modest opening ask rather than a large one.