Dove Foundation

Dove Foundation is a small, closed private family foundation headquartered in Boise, Idaho (EIN 86-0570382, ruling date 1987), with roughly $3.7 million in assets as of FY2024 and a single named Director, Laura Hudson, appearing on every filing reviewed. The foundation has no public website, no grants page, no published mission statement, and its internal registry record explicitly flags it as "preselected only" with application instructions marked "none." This is not a competitive open grant program; it is a vehicle for a family (or small group of trustees) to direct a modest, self-perpetuating endowment toward causes with personal or institutional ties.

The grantee pattern makes the preference structure clear. Of the ten most-documented recipients, six are Catholic institutions — Province of the Holy Name ($215,720 across 3 grants, the single largest relationship on record), Holy Apostles parish in Meridian, ID, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boise, Monastery of the Ascension, St Isidore Farm, and St Catherine of Siena Catholic Church. Layered alongside that religious core are a handful of secular institutions with likely personal or alumni ties: the University of Iowa's advancement arm ($200,000 across 2 grants), University of Arizona Foundation ($10,000), plus two Idaho human-service nonprofits (Idaho Foodbank, $50,000/3 grants) and the Moran Center for Youth Advocacy in Evanston, IL ($60,000/3 grants).

For first-time, unsolicited applicants, the realistic path forward is narrow: organizations with no Catholic-institutional identity, no Boise/Meridian human-services footprint, and no personal connection to the Hudson family or its known grantee circle should treat this as a very low-probability prospect and prioritize more accessible Idaho funders instead. Every tracked grant purpose is coded "GENERAL SUPPORT" — this funder writes unrestricted checks to organizations it already trusts, not project grants won through open competition. If your organization does fit the profile, the smart move is a warm introduction through an existing parish, diocese, or personal network contact rather than a cold proposal.

Across the 22 grants tracked in the underlying dataset, Dove Foundation has distributed $571,470 total, averaging $25,976 per grant — but that average masks extreme concentration. The top two recipients, Province of the Holy Name ($215,720) and University of Iowa's Center for Advancement ($200,000), together account for $415,720, or 72.7% of all tracked giving, leaving just $155,750 (27.3%) spread across the remaining eight organizations, in amounts as small as $250 (St Catherine of Siena Catholic Church) and $2,000 (Monastery of the Ascension). A separate, more recent snapshot of typical grant size — six grants — shows a much smaller working range: minimum $500, maximum $30,000, median $10,250, average $12,750. Read together, these two views suggest the foundation makes a small number of large, multi-year institutional commitments (Province of the Holy Name, University of Iowa) alongside a steadier annual pattern of $500-$30,000 gifts to smaller regional and religious organizations.

Total annual giving has been highly volatile and shows no sustained trend: $283,875 (2012), $211,767 (2013), $186,609 (2014), $292,543 (2015, the observed peak), then a gap in the data before $36,603 (2019, the observed trough), $79,593 (2020), $133,841 (2021), $261,686 (2022), and $236,835 (2023) — a roughly 8x swing between the low and high years. Total assets have stayed in a narrower $3.4M-$4.5M band over the same period (peaking at $4,489,972 in 2022, falling to $3,685,674 by FY2024), and grants paid appear to track net investment income timing rather than a fixed payout formula. Notably, contributions received are $0 in nearly every year on record (one $10,000 exception in 2014) — the foundation is not fundraising; it is spending down investment returns on a closed corpus. By state, the 22 tracked grants split ID 9, CA 4, IL 3, NC 3, IA 2, AZ 1, confirming a personal/relational geography rather than a defined regional mandate.

Dove Foundation is by far the smallest and least transparent of this peer set — its assets are roughly a third of Laura Moore Cunningham's and less than a fiftieth of Idaho Community Foundation's, and unlike all three peers it publishes no website, application process, or grant guidelines. Where Morrison and Cunningham actively solicit and process applications from Idaho nonprofits (and ICF runs statewide competitive cycles), Dove Foundation's own registry data flags it as preselected-only, meaning it functions closer to a private family checkbook than a program peer institutions would recognize as a grantmaker to approach cold.

No 2025-2026 news, leadership changes, or program announcements were found for this funder in any web source — expected, given it has never maintained a public-facing presence. The most recent verifiable filing is the FY2023 Form 990-PF (filed March 2024, ProPublica object ID 202403169349102715), reporting $192,030 in grants paid, $236,835 in total giving, $4,339,679 in total assets, and $107,578 in net investment income. A newer internal IRS Business Master File snapshot dated August 2026 shows FY2024 total assets down to $3,685,674 with total revenue collapsing to just $36,247 (versus $760,861 in FY2022) — a sharp one-year swing most likely explained by investment-market performance rather than any change in mission or strategy, since total_giving for FY2024 is not separately reported in the data available.

One actionable, non-obvious finding from this research cycle: the domain listed as this foundation's website, dovefoundation.org, in fact belongs to the Dove Charter Public School Foundation, a school-support nonprofit in Edmond, Oklahoma with no connection to the Boise entity. Any grantseeker who finds that site while researching "Dove Foundation, Boise, ID" should disregard it entirely — it is not this funder, and no legitimate substitute website could be located. Leadership has been stable and singular: all three officer records reviewed list Laura Hudson as the sole Director, with $0 reported compensation across every year on record, consistent with an unpaid family-trustee structure typical of small closed foundations.

There is no public application process to optimize for — application_form_url, application_deadline, and funding_cycle are all blank in the foundation's own registry data, and its application_instructions field is explicitly set to "none." Do not spend time hunting for a portal, RFP, or grant guidelines page; none has ever existed publicly, and dovefoundation.org is a different organization entirely (the Dove Charter Public School Foundation in Edmond, OK — verified by direct site visit), so do not submit anything there.

Given that, the only realistic engagement path is a short, direct letter of inquiry mailed to the foundation's address of record: c/o Laura Hudson, Dove Foundation, 2070 E Springbrook Lane, Boise, ID 83706-0000 (EIN 86-0570382). Keep it to one or two pages, framed as a general-support request rather than a project proposal — every one of the 22 tracked grants carries the purpose code "GENERAL SUPPORT," so restricted or program-specific asks are working against the grain of this funder's actual giving pattern.

Calibrate the ask to the funder's real scale: the recent working median is $10,250 with a $500-$30,000 range. The two outsized gifts on record (Province of the Holy Name at $215,720 across 3 grants; University of Iowa at $200,000 across 2 grants) both read as long-standing, multi-year institutional relationships, not entry points a new applicant should expect to replicate. A first-time inquiry pitched near the $5,000-$15,000 range is far more realistic than one modeled on the largest historical gifts.

The single biggest mistake would be treating this like an open, competitive grant program — cold, generic proposals from unaffiliated organizations have essentially no evidence of success here, and the foundation's own data explicitly labels it "preselected only." The organizations that have received funding cluster tightly around Catholic parishes, dioceses, and religious orders, plus a small number of Idaho human-service nonprofits and out-of-state institutions with likely personal/alumni ties to the Hudson family. If your organization doesn't fit one of those categories, the highest-value move is finding a warm introduction — through a parish, diocese, or a shared personal contact — rather than writing a stronger cold letter.