Generational Hope Foundation

Generational Hope Foundation is a small, unpaid, family-directed private foundation based in Kelso, WA — President Joseph D Willis, with Lacey Gray, Bethany Petersen and Josiah Willis as Vice Presidents and Terri Willis as Secretary, none of whom draw compensation. There is no staff, no published RFP, no grants portal, and IRS filings list its application deadline as simply "no formalized deadlines." That structure signals a founder-directed giving vehicle that reviews requests informally rather than on a fixed cycle, so applicants should approach it more like a family office than an institutional funder.

The grant history confirms a relationship-first pattern rather than an open competitive process. Of $809,730 tracked across 40 grants, Renewal City Church in nearby Longview received 9 separate grants totaling $242,300 (about 30% of all dollars), and a single recipient labeled "Roaring Adventures Llc" received 4 grants totaling $200,000 (about 25%) for "Charitable mission"/"Contribution" purposes. Young Life and its Iowa City chapter together drew $168,000 across 4 grants. Together, these three relationships account for roughly three-quarters of all documented giving — everyone else on the grantee list (Acres of Diamonds, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Kenya Keys, Citiserve Cowlitz County, Family Promise of Cowlitz County, two local elementary/high schools, Transitional Youth, Fosterful, and others) received single or occasional smaller gifts, mostly $1,000-$50,000.

For a first-time applicant, the practical implication is: this foundation repeatedly re-funds a small, trusted circle (largely Christian ministries and youth-development organizations in Cowlitz County, WA, and secondarily in Oregon and Iowa) and adds new, smaller grantees at the margins. Cold, generic applications are unlikely to break into the core funding circle quickly. The realistic path in is a warm introduction — through the Longview/Kelso church and ministry network, Young Life, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, or a related faith-based service organization — followed by a modest, specific first ask ($1,000-$25,000) rather than a large program-scale request. Because the foundation's own stated tagline is "Connecting Generations to the Hope of Jesus," applicants whose work is explicitly faith-affiliated or youth/family-focused will resonate more naturally with the board's evident priorities than secular general-operating requests.

Total giving in the tracked sample is $809,730 across 40 grants (average $20,243), while the foundation's own IRS-reported "typical grant" figure (drawn from a smaller Schedule of Grants slice) shows a median of $5,000, a mean of $15,731, and a range of $1,000 to $63,000 across 13 grants — the gap between the two views reflects the fact that a handful of large, repeat grants (Renewal City Church, Roaring Adventures Llc) pull the overall average well above the typical single check.

Year-over-year giving has been remarkably stable and modest: the foundation was seeded with a single $5,521,100 contribution in FY2020 (paying out only $6,128 that inaugural year), then began real grantmaking in FY2021 ($237,233 total giving, $204,500 in grants paid), FY2022 ($225,513 total giving, $192,800 grants paid), and FY2023 ($257,718 total giving, $219,630 grants paid, funded by $132,128 in net investment income against $156,793 in total revenue). FY2024 shows $175,765 in revenue and roughly $177,743 in charitable disbursements per third-party aggregation, continuing the same $175K-$260K annual band. Total assets have declined slowly and steadily from $5,521,085 (2020) to $4,762,681 (2024), meaning the foundation is spending modestly ahead of its investment returns — a sustainable but not growing payout posture for an endowment this size.

Geographically, giving is heavily concentrated in the Pacific Northwest: Washington accounts for 25 of 40 grants (62.5%) and Oregon for 13 of 40 (32.5%), meaning 95% of grant count is WA/OR. The remaining 5% (one grant each) reaches Iowa and Missouri, both tied to the Young Life network. By program area, faith-based ministry and youth development dominate: Renewal City Church (30% of dollars), Young Life/Iowa City Young Life combined (21%), and Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Kenya Keys, and various church/community-service grantees make up most of the remainder, alongside two education-facilities gifts (Rose Valley Elementary playground equipment, $20,000; Mark Morris High School Foundation, $4,000) and homelessness/transitional-youth services (Family Promise of Cowlitz County, Transitional Youth, Community House on Broadway) in the $6,000-$10,000 range.

All five peers sit within roughly $3,000 of Generational Hope Foundation's $4,762,681 in assets, indicating this foundation was benchmarked against a cluster of similarly-sized, unstaffed family/corporate philanthropic vehicles in the same NTEE "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" category rather than against large institutional funders. None of the peers list a public website in this data set, which is itself consistent with Generational Hope Foundation's own posture: none of these organizations appear to run open, competitive grant programs, and all likely operate on the same relationship-driven, no-RFP model. Applicants should not expect any of this peer group to publish guidelines, deadlines, or online applications — success with any of them, including Generational Hope, depends on a personal or organizational connection to the founding family.

No 2025-2026 news, leadership changes, or program announcements specific to Generational Hope Foundation surfaced in web search — consistent with its profile as a small, all-volunteer, non-public-facing family foundation with no communications function. The most recent verifiable activity is financial: FY2024 filings (per ProPublica/Cause IQ aggregation) show $175,765 in revenue, $212,049 in expenses, and $4,762,530 in year-end net assets, continuing the gradual asset decline from the $5,521,085 the foundation held at its 2020 founding. Leadership has been stable across the filings reviewed (2021-2023), with Joseph D Willis as President and the same slate of Vice Presidents (Lacey Gray, Bethany Petersen, Josiah Willis) and Secretary (Terri Willis) appearing consistently, none compensated.

One important clarification for anyone researching this funder further: search results are dominated by a similarly-named but entirely separate organization, "Generation Hope" of Washington, DC (founded by Nicole Lynn Lewis, serving teen and student parents pursuing college degrees). That organization has an active 2025-2026 news cycle — a new book ("Student Parent," released March 3, 2026), the HOPE 2026 conference (March 25-27, Dallas), a new FamilyU cohort of partner colleges, and a new California Presidents Circle initiative — none of which has any bearing on Kelso, WA's Generational Hope Foundation. Grant seekers should verify they are engaging with the correct organization (EIN 85-3485799, Kelso, WA) before any outreach.

The foundation's own web domain, generationalhope.org, resolves to a church/ministry site ("Connecting Generations to the Hope of Jesus") sharing the foundation's phone number (425.432.0311) and email domain, suggesting the foundation functions as a giving vehicle closely tied to a Christian ministry network rather than as an independently branded grantmaking institution.

There is no online application, no published grant guidelines, and no listed deadline (IRS filings state "no formalized deadlines" outright) — treat this as an invitation-and-relationship funder, not an RFP funder. The single practical entry point is direct contact: email mainoffice@generationalhope.org or call 425.432.0311, or write to Joseph D Willis, President, at 1097 Bodine Rd, Kelso, WA 98626-9484. A brief introductory email or call to gauge fit before submitting a full written request is strongly advisable given the foundation has no staff to triage cold submissions.

When you do submit a written request, the foundation's own stated instructions (drawn from its IRS filing) ask for a specific structure: (1) your organization's name, address, and EIN — and if funds benefit a second organization, that organization's identifying information and its relationship to you; (2) the name, title, phone, fax, and email of the person responsible for the grant and the use of funds; (3) a statement of your organization's mission; (4) a project description covering purpose and goals, statement of need, the number of individuals served and their location, and how you will measure success. Keep this concise and concrete — this is an unpaid, all-volunteer board reviewing requests personally, not a staffed program office, so a tight narrative with clear numbers (people served, dollar ask, specific use of funds) will land better than a lengthy general-operating pitch.

Alignment language matters here: the foundation's tagline, "Connecting Generations to the Hope of Jesus," and its grant history (Renewal City Church, Young Life, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Kenya Keys) show a clear preference for explicitly Christian ministry and youth-development work, alongside general Pacific Northwest community-service causes (homelessness/transitional-youth support, school facilities). Secular organizations with no faith or youth-development framing are underrepresented in the grant history and should not assume fit without evidence otherwise. Geography is also a filter: 95% of tracked grants went to Washington or Oregon organizations, so out-of-region applicants without an existing Young Life-style national network connection face long odds. The single most common mistake would be treating this like a large, staffed foundation — sending a generic LOI without a warm introduction, and without WA/OR or ministry/youth-development framing, is unlikely to get traction given how concentrated the actual grant history is among a handful of known relationships.