Ephesians Foundation

Ephesians Foundation is a small, family-run private foundation (est. 2022, EIN 87-3194330) headquartered in Pecos, Texas, governed by three unpaid officers — Randell Taylor (President), Clayton Taylor (Secretary), and Todd Davis (Director) — with no paid staff, no published RFP, and no formal grant portal. Despite its generic-sounding NTEE classification (T22, Philanthropy & Grantmaking), the foundation's actual giving is tightly denominational: virtually every disclosed grantee across FY2021-FY2025 is a Church of Christ congregation, a Church-of-Christ-affiliated children's home, or a Church of Christ preacher-training school. Cherokee Home for Children ($430,000 across two early grants, then $429,500 in a single FY2025 grant), New Mexico Christian Children's Home ($100,000), Manuelito Navajo Children's Home ($10,000), and Texas Girls and Boys Ranch ($94,340 for emergency generators) represent the residential/child-welfare arm; Brown Trail School of Preaching (growing from $13,000 historically to $801,000 in FY2025) and Sunset International Bible Institute ($171,000 in FY2025) represent ministerial education; and individual congregations (Alma School Rd Church of Christ, Clyde Church of Christ, Cape Coast Church of Christ in Ghana, Pecos Church of Christ) receive smaller grants for specific projects — Ukraine relief, campus ministry, retreats, and mission trips.

For first-time applicants, the practical takeaway is blunt: this is not a foundation seeking a diverse pipeline of unsolicited proposals. Every identifiable grantee has a pre-existing relational or denominational tie to the Taylor family and the Church of Christ network centered in West Texas. Organizations without a Church of Christ affiliation, or without some existing relationship to the founders, have essentially no documented path to funding. There is no evidence of a competitive LOI-to-proposal-to-site-visit cycle; grant sizes instead appear to scale with the closeness of the relationship and the specific capital need presented directly to the trustees (e.g., "for generators," "restoration tour and Thanksgiving dinner"), suggesting an informal, needs-based conversation rather than a formal proposal review. Applicants should treat this as relationship philanthropy, not competitive grantmaking.

Across FY2021-FY2023 filings, Ephesians Foundation's total assets grew from $1.98M to $2.91M (dipping in 2023 due to expenses exceeding revenue by $638,685), then rose to $4.05M (FY2024) and $4.74M (FY2025) per aggregator-reported filings — growth funded almost entirely by direct contributions from the founders rather than investment returns (net investment income never exceeded $97,415 in any DB-recorded year; contributions received ran $150,000-$2,000,000 annually). Grantmaking scaled with the asset base: total giving was $22,375 in FY2021 (a partial first year), $433,835 in FY2022, $888,449 in FY2023, and an estimated $1.0M-$1.4M in FY2024-FY2025. The DB's own 18-grant sample (FY2021-2023, $866,894 total) puts the average grant at $48,161, but that figure is skewed by a few large awards — the median across disclosed grants is closer to $12,000-$13,000, with the smallest reported gift at $600 (per Hinchilla aggregation) and the largest at $801,000 (Brown Trail School of Preaching, FY2025).

FY2025 shows a marked concentration shift: three disclosed grants — Brown Trail School of Preaching ($801,000), Cherokee Home for Children ($429,500), and Sunset International Bible Institute ($171,000) — totaled $1,401,500 against roughly $1.43M in total FY2025 expenses, meaning nearly all of that year's giving went to just three institutions rather than being spread across the ~9 grants aggregators report for the year. By program area, the full grantee history splits roughly into three buckets: residential child welfare/Christian children's homes (~$644,340 across the DB sample, about 74% of the 18-grant total — Cherokee Home, NM Christian Children's Home, Texas Girls and Boys Ranch, Manuelito Navajo Children's Home), ministry/preacher education (~$814,000 once FY2025 is included, dominated by Brown Trail and Sunset International), and individual congregation support for missions, retreats, and campus ministry (Alma School Rd Church of Christ $140,000 for Ukraine relief, Clyde Church of Christ $66,000, Cape Coast Church of Christ $12,354, Pecos Church of Christ $1,200). Geographically, the DB's state breakdown (TX 10, NM 4, AZ 2 of 18 grants) confirms a Texas/Southwest core, with occasional international mission grants to Ghana and Ukraine-directed relief.

All five peers cluster within roughly $800 of each other in total assets ($4,050,981-$4,051,792) — a strong signal they were grouped by an IRS asset-band filter rather than genuine similarity in funding focus, since only two (Adelphia, Steffens) even maintain a public website and none show disclosed grantee-level data in this dataset. Ephesians stands out from this peer set for having the most transparent, traceable grant history (thanks to its own 990 filings and third-party aggregation) and for a clearly identifiable, narrow denominational mission; a grant seeker should not assume the other four NTEE-T22-coded "peers" share Ephesians' Church of Christ focus or its informal, relationship-driven process — each should be researched independently before outreach.

Web searches for "Ephesians Foundation" news turned up no press coverage, leadership announcements, or public statements for 2025-2026, consistent with an all-volunteer, three-person foundation with no communications function. The most concrete recent signal is financial: aggregator-reported data for the fiscal year ending in 2025 shows total revenue of $2,120,735 and total assets climbing to $4,742,730, up from $4,051,386 in FY2024 and $2,907,991 in FY2023 — a near-doubling of the asset base in two years, driven by continued large contributions from the founding family rather than investment returns. Grantmaking activity in FY2025 concentrated on three ministry institutions: Brown Trail School of Preaching received $801,000 — the largest single grant identified anywhere in the foundation's history, versus just $13,000 total to the same recipient across FY2021-2023 — Cherokee Home for Children received $429,500 (matching its full FY2021-2023 cumulative total of $430,000 in a single year), and Sunset International Bible Institute received $171,000. This represents a meaningful strategic pivot toward a small number of larger, capital-scale grants to established ministry-education and child-welfare institutions, away from the wider, smaller-dollar distribution seen in the foundation's first three years (grants as small as $1,200-$13,000 to individual congregations). One important caution for grant seekers: the website address on file for this foundation (ephesians.org) resolves to an unrelated Maryland mental-health counseling practice, not this grantmaker — outreach should go instead to the IRS-filed mailing address (525 S Oak St, Pecos, TX 79772) addressed to Randell R Taylor.

Ephesians Foundation publishes no LOI process, no grant guidelines, no deadlines, and no online application — its own IRS filing lists application instructions as "none" while marking itself as accepting applications, with nothing describing a formal review cycle. Given three unpaid officers running the foundation from a Pecos, TX mailing address, the realistic application path is direct, personal outreach rather than a written cold proposal.

• Do not attempt to apply through ephesians.org — that domain belongs to an unrelated Maryland counseling practice, confirmed via direct site check, not this foundation. The correct channel is the IRS-of-record mailing address, 525 S Oak St, Pecos, TX 79772, addressed to Randell R Taylor, President.
• Lead with denominational and relational alignment. Every disclosed grantee is a Church of Christ congregation or a Church-of-Christ-affiliated institution (a children's home, a preacher-training school, or a campus ministry). Organizations without a direct or adjacent Church of Christ affiliation have no documented history of receiving support here and should not expect a first-time cold ask to succeed.
• Frame requests around concrete, capital-style needs rather than general operating support. Successful grant purposes on file are specific and tangible: "for generators," "restoration tour and Thanksgiving dinner," "spiritual leadership church retreat," "assist with Ukraine efforts," "Spanish student fund, apartment project." A specific dollar ask tied to a named project appears to fare better than an open-ended request.
• Expect grant size to track relationship tenure, not a fixed formula. Brown Trail School of Preaching moved from roughly $6,500/grant in its early years to a single $801,000 grant in FY2025, suggesting the foundation rewards demonstrated, multi-year relationships over large first-time asks.
• Time outreach to the foundation's own cash cycle. Large founder contributions (often $2M in a single year) tend to precede high-disbursement years; the asset growth reported for FY2024-FY2025 suggests FY2026 could again be a high-giving year, making a warm introduction later in 2026 a reasonable window.
• Common mistake to avoid: treating this as a conventional competitive-RFP foundation. There is no public portal, no published funding-priorities document, and no evidence that unsolicited, generic applications have ever been funded.
• If you lack an existing Church of Christ network connection, the more realistic strategy is a warm introduction through a known grantee — Brown Trail School of Preaching, Sunset International Bible Institute, or Cherokee Home for Children — rather than a cold approach to the trustees.