Foundation For The Greatest Good

Foundation For The Greatest Good is not a public-facing grants program -- it is a small private trust (EIN 52-1907725, ruled tax-exempt January 1995) settled by Stewart Bainum Jr., with Christine A. Shreve as co-trustee and Mary C. Acker as uncompensated Secretary/Treasurer. Administration runs through Shreve Bowersox PC in Fulton, Maryland, and none of the three named individuals draws compensation, which is a strong signal this is a personal directed-giving vehicle rather than a staffed grantmaking institution. The database's own grantee history bears this out: across all filed years the foundation shows just 5 recorded grants, totaling $29.6M at an average of $5.9M each, with 100% of tracked dollars flowing to organizations in California -- despite the trust itself being based in Maryland. That is the opposite of a broad, open-application funder; it reads as long-running, concentrated support for one or a small number of aligned California partners, likely renewed relationships rather than new applicants. The foundation's own website (forthegreatestgood.org) is currently a parked domain with no live content, it carries no application_form_url or application_deadline in its record, and its application_instructions field is explicitly blank ("__none__"). Yet the record also flags accepting_applications as true and preselected_only as true -- read together, this most plausibly means the trust remains legally able to receive requests but functionally pre-selects who it funds. First-time applicants should not expect an LOI portal, RFP cycle, or published guidelines. The realistic path in is relational: organizations already serving populations aligned with the broader Bainum family philanthropic footprint (early childhood education, family wrap-around services, local journalism, senior housing and health care) stand the best chance, ideally introduced through an existing connection to the family's other vehicles rather than through cold outreach to this trust directly.

This is a small-corpus trust with a highly volatile giving pattern rather than a steady annual grantmaker. Total assets stood at $7.77M at the end of FY2024, up from $5.17M (2023) and $3.96M (2022), but down from $11.55M (2021) and $22.97M (2020) -- a corpus that has swung by a factor of nearly 6x over five years. Grants paid by year: $661,700 (2012), $1,646,274 (2013), $878,775 (2014), $2,832,678 (2015), $2,245,021 (2019), $864,075 (2020), $13,110,938 (2021), $7,424,618 (2022), and $786,520 (2023) -- FY2024's total_giving figure is not yet reported in this filing. Excluding the two outsized 2021-2022 years, typical annual grants paid range from roughly $660K to $2.8M, with a rough median around $1.6M-$2.2M in "normal" years. The 2021-2022 window is the exception: those two years alone moved $20.5M out the door, funded by a $17.28M net investment income spike in 2021 (against total revenue of $19.46M that year) -- almost certainly a one-time asset sale or liquidity event used to fund a concentrated initiative rather than routine grantmaking. The foundation's own recorded grantee history lists exactly 5 grants across its filing history, worth $29,610,769 combined at an average of $5,922,154 per grant, with recipient detail redacted to "See Attached Sch 3" in the underlying 990-PF -- but 100% of the geographic tag on those 5 grants points to California, a striking mismatch for a Maryland-domiciled trust and a strong signal of one or two large, sustained partner relationships rather than a diversified grants portfolio. Contributions replenishing the trust have themselves been lumpy: $7,551,060 in 2014, $2,749,375 in 2020, $2,150,000 in 2021, $2,000,000 in 2023, and $0 in several other years -- consistent with the trust being funded in tranches by its settlor as needed rather than carrying a stable annual endowment payout policy. No program-area, geography, or typical_grant_size fields are populated in the foundation's own database record (all null), reinforcing that this vehicle does not publish a defined funding strategy for outside applicants to target.

Foundation For The Greatest Good sits in a cluster of similarly small, similarly asset-sized private foundations all classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking -- but with almost no public grants infrastructure, meaningful peer comparison has to rely on structural traits rather than published guidelines, since none of these peers appear to run an open application process either.

All five peers cluster within roughly $1,635 of each other in total assets ($7,769,945-$7,773,580), which is almost certainly a database-matching artifact (foundations grouped by near-identical asset bands) rather than evidence of a genuine funding cohort -- treat the table as a size/structure comparison, not a competitive-set analysis. Four of the five peers have no listed website at all, and only Oconnor Fam Foundation does; that mirrors this foundation's own defunct web presence and reinforces that small single-family trusts in this asset range typically do not run public grant programs. Grant seekers should not expect to apply to any of these as a normal open funder -- all warrant the same relationship-first approach recommended for Foundation For The Greatest Good itself.

No news source found in this research names Foundation For The Greatest Good directly in 2025 or 2026 -- there is no dedicated press coverage, grant announcement, or leadership-change story tied to this specific EIN. What is publicly documented is the broader activity of trustee Stewart Bainum Jr., who along with his wife Sandy remains active in Maryland philanthropy and journalism: a September 18, 2025 Daily Record profile covered his continued regional business and civic legacy, and a 2026 TIME100 Philanthropy feature named Sandy Bainum and Stewart W. Bainum Jr. among notable philanthropists, citing their Giving Pledge commitment and their widely reported $50M backing of the Baltimore Banner, the nonprofit Baltimore newsroom launched in 2022 that has since won a Pulitzer Prize. None of this coverage confirms a direct link to this specific trust's grant disbursements, since the 990-PF grantee detail for Foundation For The Greatest Good is redacted to "See Attached Sch 3" rather than naming recipients. The last known major financial activity on file for the trust itself is the FY2024 filing showing total assets of $7.77M (up from $5.17M in FY2023) on $2.9M of revenue, 91% of which came from contributions -- indicating the trust received a fresh infusion of donor capital in 2024 after distributing $786,520 in grants in 2023. Grant seekers should treat the trust as currently in a quiet, corpus-rebuilding phase following its large 2021-2022 distribution years rather than an active, publicly promoting funder.

There is no published application process for this trust -- application_instructions on file reads "__none__," there is no application_form_url or application_deadline, and the foundation's own website is a parked domain, so treat any of the standard grant-portal advice as inapplicable here. Instead: (1) Do not lead with a cold LOI or general inquiry email -- general grants-database commentary on this specific entity states unsolicited applications are unlikely to succeed without an existing relationship with the funder, and the trust's own grant history (5 grants on record, all going to California, averaging $5.9M each) shows a pattern of sustained relationships with a small number of partners, not intake of new applicants. (2) Correspondence is administered through Shreve Bowersox PC at 8171 Maple Lawn Boulevard, Fulton, MD 20759, phone (240) 295-1612 -- if you have no warm introduction, a brief, specific letter to this address addressed to the trustees is the only formal channel that exists, but set expectations accordingly. (3) Anchor any outreach in the Bainum family's well-documented giving themes -- early childhood education and wrap-around family support (the flagship focus of the separately-run Bainum Family Foundation), local/independent journalism (the Baltimore Banner), and health care/senior housing (rooted in the family's Manor Care and Choice Hotels business history) -- rather than presenting a generic community-development pitch, since the trust's NTEE code (T22Z, Philanthropy & Voluntarism) tells you nothing about program interests. (4) Given that 100% of the trust's five recorded grants went to California-based organizations despite its Maryland domicile, an existing California nonprofit with a multi-year relationship to Bainum family giving is a far stronger fit profile than a new Mid-Atlantic applicant. (5) Because all three listed individuals (Bainum, Shreve, Acker) serve without compensation and the trust shows no dedicated program staff, do not expect a formal review committee or site-visit process typical of larger foundations -- decisions here likely run through the trustees personally. (6) Given the highly volatile giving pattern (a $786K year can be followed by a $13M year), timing outreach around known liquidity events -- e.g., shortly after a large contribution is received into the trust, as happened in 2014, 2020, 2021, and 2023 -- may improve odds, though this cannot be predicted from public filings alone.