Foundation For A Better Life

Foundation For A Better Life (FBL), the Denver-based entity behind the "Pass It On" campaign and PassItOn.com/Values.com, is not a prospect for grant seekers in the conventional sense — and any strategy report has to lead with that fact rather than bury it. FBL is a private operating foundation: it directly produces and distributes its own programming (billboards, TV/radio PSAs, theater spots, a website, and free school materials) rather than funding third parties to do work on its behalf. Its own FAQ states plainly that it "does not give grants or provide any other financial aid" and does not solicit or accept monetary contributions. Its IRS filings corroborate this: across the years captured in this dataset (2011-2023), grants_paid never exceeds $1,000 in any single year, while total_giving (which for an operating foundation captures direct program spending, not third-party grants) runs $1.2M-$3.4M annually. The lone grantee on record, NMPA Songs Foundation, received just $2,000 across two token general-support grants — an outlier, not a program. Its sole funder is the Anschutz Foundation, tied to billionaire Philip Anschutz (whose family — Philip, Nancy, Christian, Sarah, and Elizabeth Anschutz — occupies the unpaid, nominal director seats per its own board listing), meaning FBL has no independent fundraising apparatus and no incentive to build one. For an organization whose mission aligns with FBL's values themes (honesty, caring, courage, optimism, kindness, gratitude), the only realistic "ask" is non-monetary: request free posters, bookmarks, or eBooks for a school or program, propose displaying a billboard/PSA message, or explore whether a media outlet you work with could carry FBL's donated-space PSA rotation. Organizations actually seeking a grant from the Anschutz philanthropic network should redirect their approach to the Anschutz Foundation itself, which is a separate, actively grantmaking entity. Treat FBL as a values-alignment or awareness partner, never as a funding source, and calibrate outreach expectations accordingly — a proposal framed as a funding request will be a mismatch from the first sentence.

The financial data confirms FBL is structurally incapable of being a grants source at any scale. Across 10 years of IRS filings in this dataset (2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023), grants_paid is $0 or $1,000 in every year that reports a nonzero figure — never once exceeding $1,000. Meanwhile total_giving (which IRS Form 990-PF captures as all qualifying-distribution program spend for an operating foundation, including direct production of billboards/PSAs) ranges from $1.23M (2020) to $3.42M (2011), with a clear downward trend in later years: $2.78M (2013) and $2.69M (2014) versus $1.58M (2022) and an unreported 2023 figure. Total assets have also declined from a 2021 peak of $1.78M to $1.06M in 2023, alongside revenue and contributions from the Anschutz Foundation dropping from a 2013 high of $3.18M to $1.33M in 2023 — roughly a 58% contraction in annual inflows over a decade. Program expense breakdown from the most recent detailed filing shows billboards/print ads as the dominant line at $735,864, followed by TV production/distribution at $243,563, website development/maintenance at $127,364, and radio/theater production at $92,993 — confirming media production, not grantmaking, consumes essentially all program spend. The only third-party grant activity on record — $1,000 twice to NMPA Songs Foundation (Washington, DC) for general support, totaling $2,000 against an average grant size of $1,000 — is immaterial relative to the Foundation's multi-million-dollar annual budget and should be read as a rounding-error exception, not a program grant seekers can apply to. There is no program-area or geographic breakdown to analyze because there is no grants program; FBL's "distribution" instead is geographic reach of its PSA content (200+ countries/territories) via donated media space, which is a marketing metric, not a funding one.

FBL sits in a Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE peer set almost entirely by classification technicality — its $1.06M asset base is comparable in size to several peer entries, but its behavior diverges completely from typical small family foundations, which do make modest grants even at this asset scale.

The near-identical asset figures across all five peers (all clustering at ~$1.055M) suggest this peer set was matched purely on asset-size proximity within the same NTEE code rather than functional similarity — none of the listed peers have public websites in this dataset, making direct application-process comparison impossible from the data alone. What differentiates FBL sharply is its operating-foundation structure and single-donor dependency: unlike small family foundations that typically make a handful of grants per year to causes the family cares about, FBL converts essentially 100% of its budget into self-produced media rather than third-party distributions, a structural choice confirmed by a decade of consistent $0-$1,000 grants_paid figures.

Concrete, dated 2025-2026 news specific to FBL was not found in web search — the organization does not appear to issue press releases or maintain a news/media room in the conventional nonprofit sense, and search results skew toward unrelated organizations with similar names (Better Health Foundation, Make Life Better Foundation, The Better Life Foundation of Mobile, AL). What is verifiable from the Foundation's own site is that PassItOn.com continues active content production: a 25th-anniversary-themed billboard collection focused on recovery and kindness messaging, ongoing PSA rotation featuring artists including Andrea Bocelli and Tim McGraw, and a second volume of its free "PassItOn Stories" eBook (25 inspirational narratives). The organization maintains multilingual reach (Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese) across 200+ countries and territories and continues to offer free classroom posters, bookmarks, and printable resources to schools at no cost. Leadership has been stable across the filing years in this dataset: Gary Dixon as President, Ted Harms as Executive Director/VP, and David/Dave Ryan as Vice President, with the Anschutz family (Philip, Nancy, Christian, Sarah, Elizabeth) holding nominal, unpaid director seats — no officer compensation is reported in any filing year, and no leadership transitions were surfaced in this research. Financially, the trend since the mid-2010s has been contraction: total assets, revenue, and contributions from the Anschutz Foundation have all declined by roughly half from their 2011-2014 highs, though the organization remains fully funded and operational with no indication of wind-down.

There is no application process to optimize, and any grant seeker should treat that as the headline finding rather than a gap to work around. FBL's own FAQ page is unambiguous: it gives no grants, provides no financial aid, and does not accept monetary donations either — meaning there is no LOI, no proposal template, no board cycle, and no program officer to build a relationship with in the way a typical foundation profile would recommend. The single documented instance of FBL funds reaching an outside organization ($1,000 twice to NMPA Songs Foundation, a music-industry nonprofit, for general support) is not evidence of a repeatable channel; it reads as an isolated exception rather than a program with any published criteria, and there is no indication further requests of this type would be considered. The one channel that is genuinely open is non-financial partnership: schools and educators can request free posters, bookmarks, and eBook resources directly through the Schools section of PassItOn.com at no cost and with no application beyond a request. Media companies — broadcast, radio, print, and outdoor/billboard operators — are the other legitimate inbound audience, since FBL's distribution model depends entirely on donated ad space and airtime; an outlet proposing to carry FBL's existing PSA content has a real, structural reason to be heard. For any organization whose actual goal is securing a grant from the broader Anschutz philanthropic network, the correct target is the Anschutz Foundation itself, a distinct and separately operating grantmaking entity — conflating the two wastes an application cycle. The single most common and avoidable mistake would be treating FBL like a standard small foundation (submitting a proposal, requesting a meeting, following up on a "pending" LOI) when no such mechanism exists on either the funder or grantee side; contact (admin@passiton.com) exists for content/partnership questions, not funding inquiries, and should be framed that way from the first message.