Enterprise Holdings Foundation

The Enterprise Holdings Foundation — now operating as the Enterprise Mobility Foundation — is the philanthropic arm of one of the world's largest privately held companies, and it runs on a fundamentally different model than most foundations of its size. Virtually every grant flows through an employee-advocacy gateway: Enterprise Mobility team members worldwide submit applications on behalf of nonprofits where they actively volunteer. In FY22, 98% of grants fulfilled employee-submitted requests. This single fact should shape everything about how your organization approaches the Foundation.

First-time applicants must stop thinking like conventional grant seekers and start thinking like relationship builders with the company's workforce. The path to a grant begins on the ground — in the parking lot of a local Enterprise branch, at a company volunteer event, or through a direct conversation with a branch manager or regional director who already knows your work. Only after a genuine volunteer relationship is established does a grant application become viable.

The Foundation is led by Carolyn Kindle Betz, who serves as President, and Jo Ann Kindle as Chairperson — both members of the Taylor family that founded Enterprise. This family stewardship shapes a culture of personal connection and community rootedness that filters all the way down to employee-level grant decisions. The tone is human-scale even when the dollars are large.

Organizations with the strongest track records here are those with national reach and local branches, which makes them easy for employees across multiple geographies to champion simultaneously (Feeding America, United Way, American Red Cross, Fisher House). But smaller, single-city nonprofits have consistently won grants too — particularly in St. Louis, where the Foundation is headquartered and where local organizations receive concentrated attention.

There is no formal LOI process, no invited-only RFP cycle, and no preselection list. The application is a straightforward written outline of your organization's purpose, activities, and intended use of funds, submitted by an employee before the February 1 deadline. The key variable is not your proposal quality — it is the depth of your relationship with at least one Enterprise Mobility employee who can credibly advocate for your mission.

The Enterprise Mobility Foundation's $75.9 million in annual giving (FY22) divides into two structurally distinct tiers that grant seekers must understand separately.

Tier 1 — Strategic National Partnerships ($1M–$18M): A small number of large, repeating relationships dominate total grant dollars. Feeding America leads at $18.0M across 18 grants (average: $1.0M/grant). The Nature Conservancy totals $36M across 12 grants when combined entries are merged. National Arbor Day Foundation received $9.5M across 8 grants. American Red Cross received $9.0M across 67 grants. United Way received $14.9M across 82 grants. These relationships are quasi-institutional and function as the Foundation's programmatic backbone — they align with its named initiatives (Fill Your Tank, ROAD Forward, the 50-million-tree pledge, Routes & Roots). Entry into this tier requires national-scale capacity and a multi-year cultivation strategy.

Tier 2 — Employee-Nominated Community Grants ($65–$50K): The vast majority of grants fall here. The database median is $2,250; the average is $8,295. The Foundation's own guidance confirms most employee-nominated grants range from $2,500 to $5,000. This is the accessible tier for smaller nonprofits. The 50,195 total grants recorded in the database at an average of $8,295 confirm the volume is enormous — this Foundation runs one of the highest-throughput employee-giving programs among corporate foundations nationally.

Geographic distribution: Florida (4,778 grants), California (4,725), and Texas (4,604) together account for more than a quarter of all grants by count, reflecting Enterprise's high employee concentration in those markets. Missouri (2,183) punches above its population weight given the St. Louis headquarters effect — organizations like United Way of Greater St. Louis ($5.2M, 34 grants), Gateway Region YMCA ($1M), Ranken Technical College ($1.9M), and St. Louis Public Schools Foundation ($1.6M) show this clearly.

Giving trajectory: Annual giving grew from $18.2M (2013) to $75.9M (2022) — more than fourfold in nine years. Assets grew from $226M (2013) to $477M (2022), with $90M in contributions received from the parent company in FY22 alone. The giving-to-assets ratio holds near 16%, indicating a structurally committed, well-capitalized foundation.

The Enterprise Mobility Foundation sits in the upper tier of US corporate foundations by both asset size and annual giving. The table below compares it to four peers with broadly similar footprints:

Enterprise Mobility Foundation stands out on two dimensions: it gives a higher proportion of its assets annually than most corporate peers (~16% vs. Caterpillar's ~6%), and it maintains a near-total employee-advocacy gateway that peers like UPS and FedEx have partially opened to direct nonprofit outreach. This makes the Foundation simultaneously generous and structurally harder to access without an internal champion. Organizations seeking a more direct application path may find UPS Foundation or FedEx Cares more accessible starting points while cultivating Enterprise employee relationships in parallel. Walmart Foundation, while far larger, offers open competitive grant cycles that smaller nonprofits can enter without a corporate insider.

The most significant recent milestone was the Foundation's 40th anniversary, celebrated in January 2023, with a public announcement marking $500M+ distributed since 1982. The occasion was used to highlight the ROAD Forward initiative — a $55 million, five-year commitment launched in 2020 to advance social equity through early childhood development, youth health and wellness, and career and college preparation. As of the FY22 report, $14 million of the ROAD Forward commitment had been distributed locally.

FY22 operational highlights include: 26.9 million meals served to 654,000+ seniors via the Fill Your Tank program with Feeding America; $1.8 million in disaster relief including Ukraine conflict aid and Hurricane Fiona response in partnership with the American Red Cross; 17 million trees planted toward the 50-million-tree pledge with the Arbor Day Foundation; 9,879 river miles improved through the Routes & Roots Healthy Rivers initiative; and $750,000 in Heroes' Legacy Scholarships for military families.

The parent company rebranding from Enterprise Holdings to Enterprise Mobility — also reflected in the Foundation's updated name — is the most visible structural change in recent years, though no leadership transitions or major programmatic pivots have been publicly announced beyond this rebranding. Carolyn Kindle Betz continues as President and Jo Ann Kindle as Chairperson, maintaining the Taylor family's hands-on stewardship of the Foundation's direction. No evidence of a significant grant cycle suspension, RFP moratorium, or funding freeze was found for 2025–2026.

Securing the Employee Champion — Your Only Path In

Every practical tip about this Foundation returns to the same prerequisite: you need an Enterprise Mobility employee to advocate for your organization internally. This is not a formality or a preference — it is the structural mechanism through which virtually all grants flow. Identify current volunteers or board members who work for Enterprise (any brand: Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental, Alamo Rent A Car). If you don't have one, recruit one. Attend local volunteer fairs where Enterprise participates, engage branch managers in local business associations, or reach out to the regional community giving coordinator.

Timing and Deadline

The annual application deadline is February 1. Do not wait until January. Your employee champion needs time to understand your mission, gather documentation, and navigate the internal submission portal. Begin outreach to potential champions in September or October for the coming year's cycle.

What the Application Covers

The Foundation requests an outline of your organization's purpose, activities, and specific intended use of grant funds. This should be concise, outcome-focused, and aligned with one of the Foundation's named priorities. Use language that maps directly to ROAD Forward pillars (early childhood development, youth health and wellness, career and college readiness), food security, environmental restoration, veteran support, or disaster relief. Avoid abstract mission statements; ground every claim in measurable community impact.

Hard Exclusions

Never request funding for event sponsorships, fundraising activities, tuition assistance, ongoing operating costs, multi-year commitments, or any programming touching lobbying, political advocacy, or labor rights. These are automatic disqualifiers that will put your organization — and your employee champion — in a difficult position.

Building for Repetition

The most successful grantees in the database — Ronald McDonald House Charities (122 grants), American Cancer Society (173 grants), Salvation Army (94 grants) — treat this Foundation as an annual relationship, not a one-time ask. Submit a modest, achievable first request. Deliver a clean report demonstrating impact. Reapply annually. The compound effect over 5–10 years can produce substantial cumulative funding.

Contact: giving@em.com for eligibility and process questions.