Friedel Family Foundation

Friedel Family Foundation is a small, closely held family foundation run out of Austin, Texas by the Gellman family — Randi F. Jablin (President), Steve Gellman (Vice President, $10,200/year compensation since FY2023), Lynne F. Gellman (Secretary/Treasurer), and Jay D. Gellman (Director). With roughly $4.06-4.17M in assets and no paid staff, it operates as a pass-through vehicle for the family's own giving rather than a competitive grantmaking program. Form 990-PF filings state plainly that the foundation "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations and does not accept unsolicited requests for funds" — there is no application form, no published deadline, and no grants portal. Its designation as `preselected_only` in our data and the total absence of an active grants website (the domain sometimes attributed to it, friedelfamilyfoundation.org, actually belongs to an unrelated Montana nonprofit) both confirm this is a relationship-driven, not proposal-driven, funder. The grantee list is the clearest guide to who gets funded: it is dominated by Jewish community institutions in Austin and Phoenix — Friedel Jewish Academy ($130,000 across 5 years), Shalom Austin ($117,536), Arizona Jewish Historical Society ($91,180), DJCC Development Corp, Jewish National Fund, and the Leonard L & Phyllis J Friedel Family Endowment Fund ($55,500) — the latter a strong signal of personal family ties to the Friedel name itself. A secondary bucket of secular Austin human-services organizations (Central Texas Food Bank, Mobile Loaves & Fishes, Caritas of Austin, Family Eldercare, Hospice Austin, Meals on Wheels) rounds out the portfolio. For a first-time applicant, cold outreach is very unlikely to work. The realistic path in is a warm introduction through the Austin or Phoenix Jewish federation network (Shalom Austin, Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona/Greater Phoenix), a shared congregation (Congregation Beth Israel, where the Gellman name also funds an internal fund), or board overlap with existing grantees. Requests should be framed as general operating support, not a restricted program grant, since nearly the entire top-50 grantee list carries the purpose code "to fund daily operations."

Two data windows tell the story. Across the multi-year top-50 grantee snapshot (535 total grants, $1,549,644 disbursed), the average grant is $2,897, with the largest single relationship — Friedel Jewish Academy — receiving $130,000 over 5 years (~$26,000/year). In the most recent single fiscal year captured in our data (119 grants), the median grant was just $750, the average $2,185, and the range ran from $28 to $22,744 — evidence that this is a high-volume, low-dollar-per-gift funder spreading modest annual support across a large, stable roster rather than making a few transformative grants. By grantee state, Arizona (188 grants) and Texas (175 grants) together account for roughly two-thirds of all giving by count, consistent with the foundation's declared AZ/TX geographic focus; New York (45), Nebraska (26), California (25), DC (18), Illinois (14), New Jersey (11), Pennsylvania (10) and Maryland (6) pick up the remainder, largely national Jewish organizations (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, American Technion Society, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Birthright Israel Foundation) rather than new geographic priorities. On the giving-dollars trendline, total charitable giving rose steadily from $272,103 in 2012 to a peak of $440,607 in 2023, then eased to an estimated $362,550 in FY2025 — a move that tracks the foundation's investment performance (FY2022 total revenue was actually negative, -$201,183, reflecting market losses) more than any change in mission. Total assets have stayed in a tight $3.6M-$4.6M band for over a decade, confirming this is a mature, steady-state family foundation rather than one that is growing its corpus or its ambitions. Grant purpose data is nearly monolithic: the overwhelming majority of listed grants use the purpose code "TO FUND DAILY OPERATIONS," meaning this funder essentially never makes restricted project or capital grants — it renews unrestricted operating gifts to the same organizations year after year.

Friedel Family Foundation sits in a near-identical asset tier to all five of its closest NTEE peers (each holding almost exactly $4.06M in assets — a striking clustering that suggests these are all similarly structured small family foundations, likely captured in the same data cohort). None of the five peers maintains a public website either, reinforcing that this is the norm, not the exception, for foundations at this asset scale: they are personal giving vehicles for a single family, run without staff, and rarely if ever solicit or accept outside applications. Grant seekers should treat all six as "relationship funders" — worth tracking via Form 990-PF for grantee patterns, but not worth budgeting active proposal-writing time against.

There is no meaningful public news trail for this foundation — no press releases, no social media presence, and no coverage in philanthropy trade press turned up in searches. The most current verifiable activity is the FY2025 Form 990-PF, received by the IRS and indexed by Cause IQ on June 11, 2026, showing total assets of $4,172,459 (up from $4,059,048 at the end of FY2024), total revenue of $533,621, total expenses of $420,210, and charitable disbursements of roughly $362,550 (about 86% of expenses). Leadership has been stable across the available record: Randi F. Jablin as President, Steve Gellman as Vice President, Lynne F. Gellman as Secretary/Treasurer, and Jay D. Gellman as Director — the same four names appear across all filings in our data with no turnover. The one notable change is that Steve Gellman began drawing $10,200 in annual officer compensation starting in FY2023, continuing through FY2025, after a decade (2012-2021) of zero compensation to any officer. Absent a dedicated communications channel, the most reliable way to track this foundation's activity going forward is its annual Form 990-PF filing via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, which typically appears 6-12 months after each fiscal year closes.

Because Friedel Family Foundation does not accept unsolicited requests, the single most important "tip" is to stop looking for an application form — none exists, and none is coming. Instead, treat this as a network-access problem: the fastest legitimate path in is through Shalom Austin (the Austin Jewish Federation, itself a top grantee at $117,536 across 5 years) or the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona / Greater Phoenix, both of which already channel Friedel Family Foundation dollars to their member agencies. A second path is congregational — Congregation Beth Israel in Austin is both a grantee and the site of an internal "Gellman Fund," a strong signal that board relationships there matter. If your organization already has a board member, staff leader, or donor with ties to the Gellman or Friedel families, or to Shalom Austin, that relationship — not a written proposal — is the actual application. When an opening does occur (e.g., a warm introduction leads to a conversation), frame the ask as general operating support rather than a specific program or capital request: virtually every historical grant in the data is coded "to fund daily operations," and there's no evidence this funder has ever made a large one-time or capital grant. Keep expectations calibrated to actual grant sizes — the median single-year gift is just $750 and the average is $2,185, with a ceiling around $22,744 in the most recent filing year; even the top relationship (Friedel Jewish Academy) averages about $26,000/year. A common mistake would be treating this like a mid-size open funder and investing in a full grant proposal — that effort is better spent identifying and cultivating the personal or institutional relationship that gets an organization onto the preselected list in the first place. Once on the list, funding has historically repeated annually for 5+ consecutive years, so the goal is inclusion and consistency, not negotiating up a single award.