For All The Children Foundation

For All The Children Foundation is a small Bakersfield, CA private foundation ($10.78M in assets per IRS filings) run by a two-person, unpaid leadership team — Terri Ward (President) and Adrianna Shuman (Secretary/Treasurer) — with no professional program staff. Three independent grant-data platforms (Impala Digital, Instrumentl, Grantable) all report the same critical fact: the foundation 'does not accept unsolicited proposals — funding is by invitation only.' The platform's own record confirms this: application_form_url, application_deadline, and grants_page_url are all blank, and application_instructions is explicitly marked 'none.' This makes it fundamentally different from a funder actively seeking applicants.

The grantee history — 54 recorded grants totaling $5.67 million since roughly 2018 — reads like a relationship map rather than a competitive portfolio. A handful of organizations receive sustained, repeat support: Community Human Services (5 grants, $3.435M), Bakersfield Christian High School (5 grants, $115,000), Morning Star Fresh Food Ministry (4 grants, $200,000), JJ's Legacy (4 grants, $70,000), and Links For Life (4 grants, $50,000). Others appear once, for small amounts ($3,000 to American Heart Association, $7,000 to Oceanside Homeless Resource) — likely one-off gifts tied to a board member's personal connection or a specific community need. One relationship, Community Human Services in Monterey, accounts for 61% of all documented giving, indicating a long-standing anchor partnership rather than an open competition.

For an organization not already in this circle, the realistic path in is indirect. Building a relationship with a current grantee who can make an introduction — Community Human Services, Community Foundation for Monterey County, or Bakersfield Christian High School are the most connected — is far more likely to work than any direct outreach. Community ties in Kern County or the Monterey Peninsula (board memberships, shared event attendance, mutual funder relationships) are the practical mechanism. Organizations should expect that, if a relationship does develop, initial funding will likely start small ($10,000-$25,000 based on the typical recent grant size) with the possibility of graduating to larger, multi-year support only after trust is established over time — as seen with the foundation's handful of anchor grantees.

For All The Children Foundation is a volatile, lumpy giver rather than a steady annual grantmaker. Total giving by fiscal year in the platform's financial data: 2018 – $249,438; 2019 – $944,391; 2020 – $1,594,239; 2021 – $491,994; 2022 – $2,202,621. Web-sourced 990 data (Instrumentl) adds later years: roughly $2.19M in the 2023 filing and a sharp drop to $368,000 in 2024 across just 10 grants — an 83% year-over-year decline. Total assets have fallen steadily from $12.84M (2018) to $10.78M (current), consistent with a foundation distributing principal through large episodic gifts rather than compounding an endowment.

Across the 54 grants in the platform's grantee history ($5,672,750 total, averaging $105,051 per recipient relationship), the distribution is sharply bimodal. One outlier dominates: Community Human Services (Monterey) received $3,435,000 across 5 grants — 61% of all documented dollars — almost certainly including one very large single-year gift that drove the 2022 spike. Strip out that outlier and the foundation's 'typical' grant is far smaller: the platform's typical_grant_size metric (based on the most recent 10-grant filing year) shows a minimum of $10,000, median of $17,500, average of $48,000, and maximum of $155,000 — closely matching Instrumentl's independently reported 2024 figures (10 grants, roughly $37K average). Most one-time community gifts fall in the $3,000-$25,000 range (American Heart Association $3,000; Oceanside Homeless Resource $7,000; North H.S. Athletic Booster Club $10,000; Pie Ranch, Community Partnership Youth, and The Guild House at $25,000 each).

Geographically, funding is almost entirely California (53 of 54 grants, 98%), split between two hubs: Kern County/Bakersfield (Bakersfield Christian High School, Bakersfield Homeless Shelter, Morning Star Fresh Food Ministry, Kern County Cancer Foundation, CSUB Foundation) and Monterey County (Community Human Services, Gathering For Women, Community Foundation for Monterey County, Casa Esperanza Transitional Home for Women). One outlier grant reached a Texas-based recipient. By cause, crisis-oriented human services dominate — homeless shelters, transitional housing for women, food ministries — with secondary support for education (UC Regents, CSUB Foundation, Bakersfield Christian HS) and health (American Heart Association, Kern County Cancer Foundation, Links For Life breast cancer awareness). Despite the foundation's name and its DB-listed focus area of 'Community Development,' relatively few grants target children/youth programs specifically, suggesting the name reflects founding intent more than a strict current programmatic filter.

For All The Children Foundation is materially smaller and far less formal than the established community foundations operating in its two core geographies (Kern County and Monterey County). Those larger peers run open, competitive application cycles with published typical award sizes, while For All The Children Foundation operates entirely through private, invitation-only relationships with no public grants page or portal.

For All The Children Foundation is roughly 4-40x smaller in assets than these regional peers and gives at a fraction of their volume and grant count. Organizations in Kern or Monterey County unable to secure an invitation from For All The Children Foundation should treat Kern Community Foundation, Monterey Peninsula Foundation, and Community Foundation for Monterey County as the practical, applications-open alternatives serving the same causes and geography.

No foundation-issued press releases, leadership announcements, or independent news coverage of For All The Children Foundation were found across four targeted web searches. Web search results for the foundation's name are heavily polluted by an unrelated organization also called 'For All the Children Foundation' — a faith-based youth nonprofit serving Pittsburgh and Wilkinsburg, PA, operating the domain forallthechildren.org — which is not affiliated with this Bakersfield, CA private foundation (EIN 77-0263543). Applicants should disregard that organization's website content entirely when researching this funder.

The most notable verifiable recent activity is financial: annual giving dropped from a 2022 filing-year peak of $2,202,621 (or a comparably large 2023 figure per aggregator data, sourcing conventions differ) to just $368,000 in the most recent reported fiscal year — an 83% decline with only 10 grants awarded, down from a historical range of 19-40+ grants in stronger years. This is a significant enough shift that prospective applicants should not assume the foundation's giving capacity matches its multi-million-dollar historical totals; recent activity suggests a smaller, more selective, and possibly contracting grantmaking program. No public explanation for the decline (leadership transition, strategy change, asset drawdown, or one-time prior-year gift skewing the comparison) could be confirmed. One aggregator (Instrumentl/Grantable) listed a 'Julia Alsup' as President, which conflicts with this platform's IRS-990-sourced leadership data naming Terri Ward as President — this discrepancy is unverified and may reflect either a recent leadership change or an aggregator data error; applicants pursuing an introduction should confirm current leadership directly through their referral contact rather than relying on either source alone.

The single most important fact for any prospective applicant: this foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals. There is no LOI form, no online application, no published deadline, and no grants-page URL — the platform's own data confirms all of these fields are blank. Submitting a cold application via mail or email to the foundation's PO Box (PO Box 22590, Bakersfield, CA 93390) is very unlikely to result in funding; none of the 54 recorded grants show evidence of a competitive, open-application process.

The highest-leverage strategy is relationship-building through the foundation's existing grantee network. Organizations that have received repeat, multi-year support — Community Human Services (Monterey), Bakersfield Christian High School, Morning Star Fresh Food Ministry, JJ's Legacy, and Links For Life — are the foundation's closest circle and the most plausible source of a warm introduction. If your organization's leadership, board, or program staff have any connection to these groups, or to community/philanthropic networks in Bakersfield or the Monterey Peninsula, that connection is worth cultivating deliberately (event attendance, board service, co-referrals) rather than bypassed in favor of a direct pitch.

Geographic and mission fit matter: 98% of funding stays within California, concentrated in Kern County and Monterey County, and the causes funded skew toward crisis-response human services (homeless shelters, transitional housing for women, food ministries) alongside education and health. An organization based outside these two counties, or working outside human services/education/health, is a poor fit regardless of relationship quality. A common mistake to avoid: treating this like a typical foundation prospect and investing significant proposal-writing time before securing any relationship signal — with no public process to respond to, that effort has no clear landing point. Instead, budget time for relationship development (attending events tied to existing grantees, seeking board-level introductions) over proposal polish. If your organization is not yet positioned for a warm introduction, prioritize open, competitive funders serving the same geography and causes — Kern Community Foundation, Community Foundation for Monterey County, and Monterey Peninsula Foundation — which publish real applications and typical award sizes.