Downing Foundation

Downing Foundation is a small, unstaffed family trust chaired by W. Charles Blum, with Christine L. Blum and Tracy A. Blum as trustees; officer compensation has been $0 in every filed year, confirming this is run personally by the family rather than through professional program staff. Established in 1994 and filed under IRS subsection 03 (religious), its giving pattern leaves no ambiguity about fit: of 28 tracked grants, 21 (75%) went to Ohio recipients — almost entirely Roman Catholic parishes, schools, and diocesan institutions in and around Cincinnati (the foundation's own address, 7 Grandin Lane, sits in the Hyde Park/Cincinnati Hills Catholic corridor). Four more grants went to Kentucky, likely reflecting cross-river Diocese of Covington ties, with single outlier grants to Texas and California recipients (including John Paul the Great Catholic University), showing the trustees will occasionally fund a nationally recognized Catholic institution outside their home footprint if the mission match is strong enough.

The grantee list shows no secular nonprofits and no non-Catholic recipients at all — this is not a foundation to approach without a clear, explicit Catholic-mission alignment (parish operations, Catholic K-12 education, Catholic media, or Catholic higher education). Repeat funding is the dominant pattern: nearly every top recipient (Our Lady of Holy Spirit Center, St. Patrick School, St. Cecilia School, St. Edmund Campion Academy, St. Lawrence Church, Sacred Heart Radio, Archbishop Moeller High School) shows exactly 2 grants in the record, suggesting the trustees renew commitments to known institutions rather than actively soliciting new ones.

First-time applicants should treat this as a warm, relationship-first funder: there is no professional grants office to build rapport with, so the practical path in is through parish, diocesan, or school-network connections that can put a request in front of the Blum family directly. Because the foundation issues no decline notifications, a first unanswered request should not be read as a rejection of the mission — it may simply reflect the trustees' preference for institutions already in their circle that year. Given the modest total pool (roughly $217,000-$242,000 per year across 17-28 awards), this is a source for a specific project or operating gift in the four-to-low-five-figure range, not a lead funder for a large capital campaign.

Downing Foundation's giving is modest and highly concentrated. Across the 28 grants captured in its grantee record, total disbursed giving was $391,500 at an average of $13,982 per grant; the foundation's own typical-grant-size data (drawn from a 12-grant sample) shows a median of $12,500, a mean of $16,458, and a range from $2,000 to $48,000. The single largest relationship on record is Our Lady of Holy Spirit Center at $78,000 across 2 grants, followed by St. Patrick School and St. Cecilia School at $49,000 each (2 grants apiece), Sacred Heart Radio at $40,000, and St. Edmund Campion Academy and St. Lawrence Church at $30,000 each. At the smaller end, gifts to Athenaeum of Ohio ($3,500), Catholic Ministry Appeal ($3,000), and Sycamore Trust ($1,000) show the foundation is comfortable making genuinely small grants alongside its larger commitments — there is no minimum-ask floor evident in the data.

Geographically, funding is almost entirely domestic-Catholic and Ohio-centric: 21 of 28 grants (75%) went to Ohio recipients, 4 to Kentucky, 2 to Texas, and 1 to California. By purpose, every single grantee in the top-50 list is coded "Operating Expenses" — this foundation funds general operations, not restricted capital or program grants, which is a meaningful signal for how to frame a request.

On the balance sheet, total assets have declined steadily from $6.47 million in 2011 to $3.45-3.66 million in the most recent filings, a roughly 43% contraction over twelve years, driven by a payout rate that has consistently exceeded net investment income (investment income ranged from $0 to $86,635 annually against total giving of $250,000-$314,000 in most years). Despite the shrinking corpus, annual giving has trended upward recently — $194,000, then $217,000, then $242,000 across the three most current fiscal years per third-party 990 tracking, spread across 17 awards in the latest year — indicating the trustees are willing to spend down principal to sustain or grow their charitable commitments rather than preserve the endowment.

Downing Foundation sits squarely among a cohort of small, single-family, unstaffed foundations with assets clustered near $3.4-3.5 million; none of its listed peers disclose a distinct public program focus, making Downing's explicit Catholic-institution concentration one of its more legible characteristics relative to the group.

All five peers are within about 1.5% of Downing's asset size, suggesting they were selected as size-matched comparables rather than mission-matched ones — none publish an NTEE category, and only two (Navesink, Fuller) even list a public website. Unlike most of this peer set, Downing's grantee history is fully visible and its program focus (Catholic institutional operating support in Greater Cincinnati) is unambiguous, which makes it easier to qualify in or out of than its less-transparent, similarly-sized peers.

No independent news coverage, leadership changes, or program announcements were identified for Downing Foundation in 2025-2026 — consistent with its profile as an unstaffed, three-person family trust that does not issue press releases or public statements. The most concrete recent signal comes from third-party 990 tracking (Instrumentl), which shows total giving climbing across the three most recent fiscal years on record: $194,000, then $217,000, then $242,000, with 17 awards in the latest year. That represents roughly 25% growth in total dollars granted even as the underlying endowment has continued to shrink from its 2011 peak of $6.47 million to approximately $3.45-3.66 million today.

Leadership has been stable: W. Charles Blum (Chair and Secretary), Christine L. Blum, and Tracy A. Blum appear as the foundation's officers/trustees consistently across the filing years captured in the underlying data, with no compensation drawn by any of them in any year — reinforcing that this remains a purely volunteer, family-directed vehicle rather than an institution undergoing transition.

One important caution for anyone researching this funder online: several grant-aggregator sites surface an application portal, a WordPad-paste submission tip, and a quarterly LOI review cycle (deadlines March 31, June 30, September 30, December 31) under the "Downing Foundation" name. That content originates from the unrelated Wichita, Kansas-based "Downing Family Foundation" (a different EIN), not from this Cincinnati trust. Applicants should disregard that process and rely on the direct-contact, no-deadline guidance the Cincinnati foundation itself has filed with the IRS.

This is a direct-contact, relationship-driven funder, not a portal-and-deadline funder — despite what some third-party aggregator sites claim (they are describing a different, similarly-named Wichita, KS foundation). The Cincinnati Downing Foundation's own IRS-filed guidance lists no submission deadline and asks only for an organization and grant description, proof of tax-exempt status, and a mission statement. Treat that simplicity as a signal: there is no elaborate proposal template to reverse-engineer, but there is also no formal scoring rubric to appeal to, so the substance and framing of a short, direct letter matters more than formatting.

Lead explicitly with Catholic mission alignment. Every identifiable grantee in the record — parishes, Catholic elementary and high schools, a Catholic radio station, a Catholic university, a pregnancy center with a faith-based mission — sits inside the Catholic institutional ecosystem, overwhelmingly within the Cincinnati Archdiocese. A secular nonprofit, even one doing excellent community work, has no precedent for funding here. If your organization is Catholic-affiliated but outside Ohio, know that the foundation has funded out-of-state Catholic institutions (Kentucky, Texas, California) but only rarely — one or two grants per state across the full record — so out-of-region asks should be exceptional and well-justified, not routine.

Frame the request as operating support. Every top-50 grantee is coded "Operating Expenses," not capital or program-restricted funding, so a general operating gift request is more consistent with the foundation's pattern than a restricted capital campaign ask, even though its individual grants can run as high as $40,000-$48,000.

Expect no response if declined. The foundation's own guidance states unfunded requests receive no notification and are not reconsidered until the following calendar year — build that into your timeline and follow-up plan; a lack of reply after 60-90 days should be treated as a pass, not a lost letter. Given repeat funding to the same institutions year over year, a warm introduction through parish or diocesan networks — rather than a cold submission — is the most credible way to become one of the relationships the trustees renew.