Fidelis Foundation

Fidelis Foundation is a small, closed family foundation run out of Covington, Louisiana by two unpaid officers, H. Elder Brown Jr. (President) and Mildred K. Brown (Secretary). IRS filing data flags it as "preselected only," and there is no published RFP, LOI portal, or grants page anywhere online — this is a relationship-driven funder, not one built to receive cold applications. Its grantee history bears that out: Faith Bible Church, the University of Tennessee Medical Center, Children's Hospital's Heart Center, St. Tammany Hospital, and the American Heart Association each received three separate-year gifts totaling $60,000-$100,000, evidence of renewing, multi-year commitments to a fixed circle rather than one-off responsive awards. Of the 38 tracked grants in the data reviewed, 19 went to Louisiana organizations and 16 to Tennessee organizations — a near-even split reflecting the Brown family's apparent ties to both Covington/St. Tammany Parish and the Knoxville area — with only 3 grants reaching Texas and none documented outside those three states. First-time applicants without an existing personal, congregational, hospital-board, or civic connection to the Brown family face long odds of a cold proposal landing. The realistic path in is a warm introduction: through a shared church community (Faith Bible Church, First Baptist Church, St. Joseph Abbey, Sacred Heart schools), a hospital foundation board (University of Tennessee Medical Center, Children's Hospital, St. Tammany Hospital), or a Knoxville-area civic network (Boy Scouts of the Great Smoky Mountain Council, Camp Nakanawa, Feeding the Needy). The 2021 Hurricane Ida relief gifts ($25,000 each to two Louisiana-based responders) show the foundation is also willing to move fast on acute, geographically-close disaster needs even outside its habitual grantee list — a useful opening for LA-based organizations responding to a live crisis. Applicants should size their ask modestly: individual grants in the data cluster between $2,500 and $35,000, and total annual capacity is only $212,000-$275,000 spread across 15-18 grants, so this is a supplementary funder, not a lead one, for any budget above roughly $50,000.

Fidelis Foundation's typical single grant runs $2,500 to $35,000, with a median around $22,500 and an average of $18,040 based on the tracked grant-size sample; cumulative multi-year totals to top grantees (built from repeat annual gifts) reach as high as $100,000. Across the 38 grants and $671,503 in tracked giving reviewed, spending concentrates heavily in health and medical causes: University of Tennessee Medical Center ($100,000), Children's Hospital's Heart Center ($95,000), St. Tammany Hospital ($65,000), and the American Heart Association ($60,000) together account for roughly $320,000, or about 48% of tracked dollars — a clear signal that cardiac and hospital-system giving sits at the core of the foundation's interests. Religious giving is the second-largest bucket at roughly 22% (Faith Bible Church $100,000; First Baptist Church $50,000), followed by Catholic/parochial education at about 9% (Academy of the Sacred Heart $32,200; Sacred Heart Catholic School $30,000) and disaster relief at about 7% (two $25,000 Hurricane Ida grants in 2021). The remaining roughly 14% spreads thinly across youth programs (Boy Scouts, $15,000; Camp Nakanawa, $5,000), historic preservation (Beauregard-Keyes House, $7,500), and hunger/poverty relief (Feeding the Needy, Knoxville Area Rescue Ministries, Beck-N-Call Cafe, combined under $12,000). On the balance sheet, total assets have declined steadily from $4,463,153 (2021) to $4,243,071 (2022) to $4,036,168 (2023) to roughly $3,749,166 currently, while net investment income is negligible ($523 in 2021, $5,449 in 2022, $15,132 in 2023 — under 0.5% yield). That means grants paid ($238,553 in 2021; $216,475 in 2022; $212,000 in 2023, per official filings, rising further to $262,000 in 2024 and $275,000 in 2025 per aggregated tracking) are funded almost entirely out of principal rather than investment returns, consistent with a spend-down or legacy-directed vehicle rather than a growing endowment. A 2020 filing shows a one-time $4,710,000 contribution received with $0 grants paid that year, evidently the foundation's capitalization event, after which payout resumed and has climbed roughly 30% over the following three to five years.

Fidelis Foundation sits in a cluster of similarly-sized private family foundations, all filed under the "Philanthropy, Voluntarism & Grantmaking" NTEE category with near-identical asset bases around $3.7-3.75 million — a coincidence of scale common among small family foundations that cap out around this size before either dissolving or growing. None of the five closest peers identified in the data maintain a public website, matching Fidelis's own closed, invitation-only posture.

None of the five peers have a public website or disclosed grants data in the records reviewed, so a direct giving-level or focus-area comparison isn't possible from this dataset alone — but the shared absence of any public application infrastructure across all six foundations suggests this scale of family foundation ($3.7-3.8M in assets) rarely operates a formal, open grants program. Fidelis stands out within the group only in that its grant history is public enough (via Form 990-PF grantee schedules) to reconstruct a clear giving pattern, which peers of identical size do not appear to expose to the same degree.

No dedicated press coverage, leadership announcements, or program launches for the Covington, LA, Fidelis Foundation turned up in web research — unsurprising for a two-person, unpaid-officer family foundation with no communications function. The most current verifiable signal is filing data showing giving rising from $212,000 across 15 grants in 2023 to $262,000 across 17 grants in 2024 and $275,000 across 18 grants in 2025, a steady upward trend even as total assets have edged down. Leadership has been stable and unchanged across the filings reviewed: H. Elder Brown Jr. as President and Mildred K. Brown as Secretary, both uncompensated, appearing identically across the periods in the data. The one notable and unresolved data point is the foundation's own domain, fidelisfoundation.org: as of this research, it hosts content exclusively about "The Bridgehouse Project," a home-restoration and skilled-trades training initiative for Job Corps graduates in Orange County, Florida — a program that itself appears to be seeking funding rather than describing any grants the foundation makes — and lists the same phone number (321-655-3869) that appears in the foundation's own IRS contact record. Searches for the foundation's About, Grants, and Contact pages returned 404 errors, indicating either a single-page site or a recent, incomplete rebuild. Grant seekers should not assume this website reflects an active or accurate grants program and should verify by phone before treating it as authoritative.

There is no formal application process to describe: the foundation's own filings list its application instructions as none, with no application form URL, no published deadline, and no funding cycle on record, and web research found no LOI template, portal, or guidelines anywhere. Given that, the most effective approach is a direct, personal letter of inquiry rather than a search for a nonexistent online form. Because the two officers are unpaid family members rather than program staff, any written or phone contact is likely reaching a decision-maker directly rather than being screened by grants administration — write accordingly, in plain, specific language rather than generic grant-proposal boilerplate. Anchor the request in one of the foundation's four demonstrated interest areas: hospital and cardiac care (the Children's Hospital gift is specifically earmarked "directed to the Heart Center," and the American Heart Association is a repeat grantee, so pediatric cardiology or heart-disease programs are a particularly strong match), Christian/religious institutional support, Catholic parochial education, or acute disaster relief within Louisiana or Tennessee. Keep the dollar ask realistic and specific — $2,500 to $35,000 per year matches the observed grant-size range, and framing the request as the start of a multi-year relationship (rather than a one-time gift) mirrors how the foundation's largest, most consistent grantees have been supported across three separate award years. Geographic fit matters more than program novelty: applicants outside Louisiana, Tennessee, or with only a loose Texas connection should expect to work harder to make the case, since the tracked grant history shows almost no giving beyond those three states. The single biggest practical caution: do not rely on fidelisfoundation.org for contact details or application guidance in its current form, since it presently displays an unrelated Florida workforce-training project rather than any grants information — call the phone number on file (321-655-3869) to confirm you have reached the foundation before proceeding, and consider mailing a printed letter to the Covington address as a more reliable channel given the apparent website issue. Because there's no disclosed review committee or notification timeline, expect a slow, informal response and plan to follow up by phone rather than await a status update through any online system.