Filipowski Foundation

The Filipowski Foundation is a closed, family-directed grantmaker with no public application process — its own records list application instructions as "none," show no grants page or LOI portal, and flag the foundation as preselected-only in its funding-cycle status. It functions as a personal philanthropic vehicle for entrepreneur Andrew Filipowski (President), his wife Jennifer Filipowski (Vice President), and Director Melissa Oliver — all three serve unpaid, with officer compensation at $0 every year on record aside from a one-time $36,000 combined payment in 2011-2012. With no program staff and zero dedicated media coverage found in this research, every dollar routes through personal relationships rather than competitive review.

The grantee history — 31 tracked grants totaling $550,300 across roughly a decade of filings — shows the pattern clearly: the foundation repeatedly funds the same five to six anchor institutions. St John's Northwestern Academies in Wisconsin has received $235,000 combined across 5 grants; Jupiter Medical Center Foundation in Florida has received $190,000 across 3 grants; and municipal police departments in Palm Beach Gardens, FL and Winston-Salem, NC have each received single $25,000 gifts. Alongside these anchors sit more than 20 smaller gifts of $200-$6,800 to animal rescues (with a notable recurrence of Cavalier King Charles Spaniel-focused shelters, suggesting a personal pet interest), Pittsburgh-area arts institutions, and disease-research charities like the Michael J. Fox Foundation and St. Jude.

For grantseekers, the realistic path is not a cold proposal. First-time applicants should assume a near-zero response rate to unsolicited outreach; no grant-discovery platform (Instrumentl, Candid, Grantmakers.io) has ever surfaced a live opportunity, deadline, or LOI window for this foundation. The far more productive strategy is identifying an existing personal, institutional, or alumni tie to Andrew or Jennifer Filipowski, or to Melissa Oliver — through St John's Northwestern Academies (WI), Jupiter Medical Center (FL), or the Winston-Salem/Pittsburgh corridor where several gifts cluster. Organizations without such a connection should treat this as a long-shot, relationship-first target rather than a competitive grant opportunity.

Filipowski Foundation's giving has grown unevenly but upward over the long run. Annual grants distributed by fiscal year: $184,880 (2011), $168,870 (2012), $52,090 (2013), $16,754 (2014), $46,145 (2015), $51,556 (2020), $69,016 (2021), $141,850 (2022), $165,761 (2023), and roughly $161,000 across 14 awards in 2024 per third-party 990 aggregation. That is about a 3.2x increase in annual giving between 2020 and 2023. Total assets swung even more sharply, from $948,758 (2020) to $8,294,663 (2024), including a near-doubling in a single year — $4,375,043 (2023) to $8,294,663 (2024). Notably, contributions received were $0 in every year on record (2020-2023), meaning asset growth comes entirely from investment performance or asset transfers, not new outside donors: net investment income alone was $154,748 in 2023 against total revenue of $156,448.

Grant sizing is bimodal. Across the tracked 31-grant, $550,300 grantee history, the average gift is $17,752, but that figure masks two distinct tiers: a handful of five-figure "anchor" gifts — St John's Northwestern Academies ($235,000 total across 5 grants), Jupiter Medical Center Foundation ($190,000 across 3 grants), and $25,000 single gifts each to St Clair Hospital Foundation (PA), Winston-Salem Police Department (NC), and Palm Beach Gardens Police Department (FL) — versus roughly two dozen gifts under $7,000 (many $1,000-$5,000) to animal rescues, arts organizations, and disease-research charities. The foundation's own typical-grant-size metadata (median $10,000, range $400-$50,000) reflects a more recent, smaller sample and is consistent with this two-tier pattern continuing.

Geographically, grantee count by state breaks out as FL 9, PA 6, WI 5, TX 4, NC 3, and one each in AZ, CA, NY, and TN. Dollar concentration skews further toward WI and FL, which together account for roughly 77% of total tracked giving ($425,000 of $550,300). By purpose, education and healthcare dominate dollar volume, while community/animal-welfare causes dominate grant count but a small share of total dollars.

No peer foundations were pre-matched in the data bundle, so this comparison draws on other Palm Beach Gardens-area philanthropic vehicles surfaced during research. Two of the three comparison rows below are public-charity fundraising foundations rather than private grantmaking foundations like Filipowski, included for local giving-landscape context rather than as direct structural peers.

Filipowski's $8.3M asset base sits well above the roughly $1.25M average among the 44 Palm Beach Gardens-based private foundations Instrumentl tracks, giving it more grantmaking capacity on paper than most local peers. Yet its actual annual output — about $161,000 — is modest next to open-application community funders in the same zip code: BallenIsles Charities Foundation alone distributed nearly 9x more (~$1.47M) in 2025 through a competitive, multi-area grant cycle. The practical takeaway is that Filipowski has real capacity but deploys it through a narrow, closed-door model, while BallenIsles and similar community-facing PBG funders represent a far more accessible near-term target for organizations without an existing Filipowski relationship.

No dedicated news coverage, press releases, or announcements about the Filipowski Foundation were found for 2025 or 2026. Searches for foundation news, grants, and philanthropic priorities returned only third-party nonprofit-data aggregators (ProPublica, Instrumentl, Cause IQ, Candid, Grantmakers.io) rather than original reporting, consistent with a foundation that maintains no public communications presence. The foundation's own website, filipowski.org, failed to resolve (DNS lookup error) during this research, so no first-party programs, news, or application pages could be reviewed directly.

The single verifiable, dated data point from this review window is the foundation's FY2024 Form 990-PF, filed November 14, 2025. That filing shows total assets rose from $4,375,043 (FY2023) to $8,294,663 (FY2024) — a near-doubling in one year — while charitable disbursements held roughly steady at about $161,000 across 14 grants, compared to $160,300 across 17 grants in FY2023. Total revenue for FY2024 was $166,597, and charitable disbursements represented 93.6% of expenses, matching the foundation's historically disciplined payout ratio. No contributions were received from outside donors in the years reviewed (2020-2023), so the asset growth appears driven by investment gains or an asset transfer rather than new fundraising.

There is no evidence of leadership change: Andrew Filipowski (President), Jennifer Filipowski (Vice President), and Melissa Oliver (Director) remain the same three unpaid officers on file as in prior years' filings.

Because Filipowski Foundation operates with no public application process — no grants page, no LOI form, no listed deadline, and application instructions on file that literally read "none" — the standard grant-writing playbook does not apply. Treat this less like a competitive RFP and more like cultivating a personal introduction.

Confirm alignment before reaching out. The foundation's actual giving pattern, not a published mission (none exists), is the best guide: independent/college-prep education in the St John's Northwestern Academies mold, hospital and medical-center foundations, municipal police departments, and animal rescue with an apparent affinity for Cavalier King Charles Spaniel-focused shelters specifically. Organizations far outside these categories, or outside its core geographies — Palm Beach Gardens/Jupiter FL, the Delafield area of WI, Winston-Salem NC, and Pittsburgh PA — have essentially no realistic path in.

Skip the cold application. No grant-discovery platform (Instrumentl, Candid, Grantmakers.io) lists a live opportunity, LOI window, or portal for this foundation, and that absence is itself the signal. A mailed or emailed unsolicited proposal is very unlikely to reach the three-person, all-unpaid board — Andrew Filipowski, Jennifer Filipowski, Melissa Oliver — who have no program staff to triage inbound requests.

Build the relationship first. The most realistic entry points are: an existing tie to St John's Northwestern Academies (alumni network, current families, or school leadership), since it is the largest single grantee at $235,000 lifetime; involvement with Jupiter Medical Center Foundation's donor or gala circles, given that relationship has produced three separate gifts totaling $190,000; or a warm introduction through a current board member or major donor at one of the smaller repeat grantees, such as St Clair Hospital Foundation in Pittsburgh or the Palm Beach Gardens/Winston-Salem police foundations.

If you do write in, address correspondence to "% J Mccarthy" at 4587 Mediterranean Circle, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418-1000, or call (336) 749-8619 — the only listed contact touchpoints in IRS filings. Keep any written outreach to a one-page letter of introduction rather than a full proposal packet, since there is no evidence the foundation reviews full applications at all. Common mistake to avoid: submitting a standard LOI or proposal packet expecting a review cycle — there isn't one on record, and doing so risks wasted staff time better spent on foundations with genuinely open, competitive cycles.