Foundation For International Research And Education

Foundation for International Research and Education (operating as "FIRE," EIN 33-0313305, Colorado Springs, CO) is a small, closely-held operating foundation run entirely by an unpaid three-person family/volunteer team — Audrey Beckett (President/Treasurer), Roy Wingerd (Vice-President), and Sheryl Wingerd (Secretary), with Christina Payton as a director. With $6.4M in total assets (FY2024) and no professional program staff, FIRE behaves less like an institutional grantmaker accepting cold applications and more like a mission-driven pass-through for a tightly curated network of Indian faith-based partner organizations, almost all located in Odisha (Orissa), India. Of 226 recorded grants totaling $8.23M, the overwhelming majority went to a stable roster of repeat grantees — Gateway Prayer Garden Ministry ($1.94M across 5 grants), Fire - India ($826,637), Discipleship Care Network ($715,398), and Orissa Mercy Fellowship Trust ($661,374) alone account for over half of all recorded giving. This is a foundation that funds relationships built over years, not proposals submitted cold. First-time applicants — especially organizations outside Odisha or without a Christian faith-based service model — should expect a very narrow opening. The IRS filing lists the application process simply as "Written Request" with no formal LOI portal, deadline, or online form, reinforcing that the practical path in is a personal introduction or referral from an existing partner, followed by a direct written proposal to the Colorado Springs office (411 Lakewood Circle, Ste B-715). Grant sizes skew small and program-specific (median $20,370, per the platform's typical-grant-size data, though the top grantees show sums into six and seven figures for anchor partners), suggesting FIRE calibrates award size to the maturity and track record of the relationship rather than proposal budget size alone. Realistic near-term prospects are grassroots Indian NGOs delivering education, community health, vocational training, or disaster relief in Odisha with demonstrated on-the-ground indigenous leadership — not U.S. domestic nonprofits, research institutions, or large international NGOs.

FIRE's giving is small in absolute dollars but concentrated by design. Across 226 tracked grants totaling $8,230,262, the average grant is $36,417 and the platform-derived typical range runs $300 to $237,409 with a median of $20,370 — a wide spread reflecting both token disbursements to small partner groups and sizable multi-year commitments to anchor organizations. The top four recipients (Gateway Prayer Garden Ministry, Fire - India, Discipleship Care Network, Orissa Mercy Fellowship Trust) collectively received $4.15M — over half of total recorded giving — almost entirely under "Training" or "Prayer Training" purpose codes, confirming leadership-development and discipleship programming as the financial core of the portfolio, ahead of the school-fees/literacy/community-health work described in FIRE's mission statement. Geographically, grants cluster in Colorado (62 grants, presumably domestic operating/administrative disbursements tied to the Gateway Prayer Garden headquarters) and Texas (10 grants), with the balance scattered across DC, Missouri, Florida, Georgia and smaller states — but the dollar concentration (not grant count) sits with India-based partners, since most Indian grantees are recorded by U.S.-based pass-through or partnership entities. Total giving has been volatile year to year: $126,701 (2013) and $98,245 (2014) in the early low-payout years, ramping to a $1.37M (2019) and $1.26M (2020) plateau, spiking to $2.08M in 2021 (grants paid $2.02M against $2.15M in contributions received — a pass-through year), then settling back to $1.03M (2022) and $808,045 (2023). Total assets have stayed remarkably flat near $6M for over a decade ($6.5M in 2012 vs. $6.4M in 2024), consistent with an operating foundation that raises and redeploys most of what it takes in rather than building an endowment. Applicants should size requests modestly — the $20,000-$40,000 range is the realistic entry point for a new partner, with six-figure support reserved for long-tenured relationships.

FIRE sits at the small end of the Human Services peer set the platform surfaces, comparable in asset size to several other under-$7M family and church-adjacent foundations but distinguished by its unusually specific geographic focus (Odisha, India) layered onto a domestic Colorado base.

All five peers cluster within roughly $500K of FIRE's asset base, but FIRE stands apart in mission specificity (single-country focus, faith-based leadership training) versus the more domestically-scoped peers like the Boy Scouts of America endowment or Virginia Outdoor Adventure. None of these peers publish open RFP cycles either, reinforcing that this entire tier of small Human Services foundations runs on relationship-based, invitation-leaning giving rather than competitive open applications — grant seekers should treat cold outreach across this whole peer group as a long-odds channel best paired with a warm introduction.

No 2025 or 2026 news coverage, press releases, or award announcements specific to Foundation for International Research and Education / FIRE could be located — this is expected for an all-volunteer, unpaid-officer foundation of this size with no communications staff. Web searches for the exact organization name consistently surfaced unrelated, larger organizations sharing similar names (an Ashoka University-linked 'International Foundation for Research and Education' funded by the MacArthur Foundation, and the credential-evaluation firm 'International Education Research Foundation'), which underscores how little independent digital footprint FIRE itself has beyond its own single-page website (fire-site.org) and IRS filings. The most recent verified filing data available is FY2024 (total assets $6.45M, total revenue $1.03M) and FY2023 (grants paid $692,906, total giving $808,045). The last major financial event on record is the FY2021 giving spike ($2.02M in grants paid against $2.15M in contributions received), which most plausibly reflects a concentrated capital or relief campaign — construction/expansion of the Gateway Prayer Garden headquarters in Colorado Springs, and/or a surge in India disaster-relief funding, both of which FIRE's mission statement names as active program lines. Leadership has been stable: Audrey Beckett, Roy Wingerd, and Sheryl Wingerd all appear consistently across the filing years reviewed with no evidence of turnover. Grant seekers should not expect a public news cycle from this funder — the operative signal is filing cadence (Form 990s) and direct relationship-building, not press coverage.

There is no online application, LOI portal, or published deadline for FIRE — the Form 990 records the application process in one phrase: "Written Request." Practically, this means a mailed or emailed letter of inquiry to the Colorado Springs office (411 Lakewood Circle, Ste B-715, Colorado Springs, CO 80910; phone 719-328-1500) is the only documented entry point. Because the foundation is run by three unpaid officers with no program staff, response times are likely slow and informal — build in months, not weeks, before following up. The single highest-leverage move for a new applicant is securing a warm introduction through one of FIRE's existing Odisha-based partner networks (Discipleship Care Network, Orissa Mercy Fellowship Trust, Indian Evangelical Mission, and similar recipients appear repeatedly across multiple years, suggesting FIRE renews relationships rather than sourcing new ones competitively). Proposals should explicitly mirror FIRE's own program vocabulary — "Training the Trainers," "Community Health Education," "Self Help Groups," "leadership development," and references to tribal or Dalit villages in Odisha — since the foundation's website (fire-site.org) frames its entire theory of change around indigenous, faith-based, locally-led capacity building rather than direct service delivery by outside groups. A faith-based framing is not optional context here — FIRE's own materials repeatlyframe research and education work as needing to be "undergirded with prayer," and its own headquarters houses the Gateway Prayer Garden; secular organizations without an explicit Christian ministry identity are a poor fit regardless of program quality. Common mistakes to avoid: applying for U.S. domestic programs outside Colorado/Colorado Springs (FIRE's non-India giving appears to be almost entirely tied to its own operations, not third-party domestic grantees); requesting large first-time amounts (most new relationships appear to start well under $20,000 based on the grant-size distribution); and treating this as a competitive RFP process — the total absence of a grants page, deadline, or public guidelines confirms this is relationship-first philanthropy.