Giant Steps Foundation

Giant Steps Foundation (GSF) is a small, San Francisco-based family-style private foundation (EIN 52-2069841, ~$13.3-15.3M in assets) built around a single donor-driven vision: pairing animal welfare with human social-justice outcomes. Its own tagline — "When an animal's paw or a person's hand reaches out for help, Giant Steps Foundation wants help to be there" — is not marketing gloss; it shows up concretely in the grantee list, where Vegan Outreach ($3.57M across 4 grants, easily the largest single relationship) sits alongside a Stanford University/Stanford Healthcare "Compassionate Scholar Fund" ($480K each, almost certainly a named memorial fund tied to the Leeds family) and disaster-relief grants that braid together human and animal need (Fleet of Angels wildfire aid, Ukrainian refugee food and animal-rescue grants). Organizations that can credibly show impact on both fronts — not just animals, not just people — are GSF's clearest fit. GSF explicitly does not accept unsolicited full proposals. The relationship starts with a short inquiry email or web form describing the organization and project and its relevance to one of three fields: Animal Welfare, Environment, or Health & Fitness. Most inquiries are reviewed on the annual November 1 deadline, with decisions and disbursements in February; a smaller emergency-grant track runs year-round for disaster/crisis response (the Dixie Fire, the Marshall Fire, and Ukraine-related grants all moved through this channel). Only a subset of inquiries are invited to submit a full proposal, and invitation does not guarantee funding — so the inquiry itself is the highest-leverage document in the process, not a formality before the 'real' application. First-time applicants should treat GSF as a relationship-first funder: 127 grants across the dataset went to a concentrated set of ~50 recurring organizations (many receiving 2-4 grants over time), suggesting GSF prefers deepening existing relationships over one-off giving. New organizations should expect a modest first grant (many first-time grants cluster at $5,000-$20,000) with the possibility of scaling if the relationship proves out over subsequent cycles.

Across the grantee dataset (127 grants totaling $7,079,075), the average grant is $55,741, but this figure is skewed heavily by one outlier: Vegan Outreach alone accounts for $3,566,154 (50%) of all tracked giving. Excluding that single relationship, the remaining ~$3.5M spread across ~120 grants tells a more typical small-foundation story. GSF's own published typical-grant-size data (pulled from its most recent Form 990s) shows a median grant of $10,000, a mean of $37,077, and a range of $500 to $240,000 — figures far more representative of what a new applicant should expect than the $55K blended average. Total foundation giving by fiscal year has been volatile, tracking investment returns: $937,846 (FY2019) → $2,480,959 (FY2020) → $2,864,127 (FY2021, the peak) → $1,662,534 (FY2022) → $1,640,040 (FY2023, the most recent year on file). Grants paid in FY2023 were $1,297,722 against total assets of $15.3M — a payout rate near 8.5%, well above the 5% IRS minimum, indicating GSF spends down rather than hoards. Geographically, California dominates (60 of the geo-tagged grants), consistent with GSF's San Francisco base, followed by Colorado (12, largely wild-horse and wildlife causes), New York (10), and Washington DC and Massachusetts (8 each) — but GSF states it has no geographic restriction and has funded as far afield as Kenya and Canada per its focus page. By program, the largest single-cause concentration is farmed-animal advocacy (Vegan Outreach), followed by wildlife/wild-horse protection (American Wild Horse Campaign, $307,920; Salt River Wild Horse Management Group), companion-animal rescue and disaster response (Center for Animal Protection and Education, National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, Fleet of Angels), and a smaller but meaningful education/scholarship line (Stanford, University of Colorado Foundation) tied to named funds. Officer compensation ($148,692 to VP Daphne Muehle in FY2023, up from $119,846 in FY2019) has grown steadily, while President/Director Jennifer Leeds draws no salary — typical of a founder-led family foundation with a paid operational deputy.

GSF sits within a cluster of similarly sized private foundations classified under "Human Services" in IRS filings, though GSF's actual programmatic focus (animal welfare, environment, women's health) is narrower and more specialized than that catch-all label suggests, and than most of its asset-matched peers.

Unlike its peers, GSF is the only one of the six with a public website, a documented grantmaking process, and an open (if invitation-gated) inquiry channel — most of the peer set has no discoverable public application path at all, which is common among small single-family foundations that give exclusively to organizations already known to the board. This makes GSF meaningfully more accessible than a typical foundation in its asset tier, but its stated preference for renewing existing relationships (evidenced by the concentration in Vegan Outreach and other multi-year grantees) means cold outreach still faces real headwinds despite the open door.

Public news coverage of GSF specific to 2025-2026 is thin, consistent with its profile as a low-visibility family foundation that does not issue press releases. The most concrete recent signal is GSF's inclusion as a featured funder in the August 14, 2025 GrantStation Insider newsletter, which positioned the foundation as a model for combining animal-welfare and social-justice grantmaking — evidence that GSF remains active and is gaining some visibility in the grants-intelligence community, but the piece did not disclose new grant recipients or dollar amounts. On the operational side, GSF's own site (grant-making-process and grant-inquiry-form pages) is live and unchanged in structure, with the November 1 / February cycle still posted as current, indicating no interruption to the standard grant cycle heading into the 2026 round. No leadership changes were found: Jennifer Leeds continues as President/Director (uncompensated, consistent with founder status) and Daphne Muehle as Vice President, whose reported compensation has risen from $119,846 (FY2019) to $148,692 (FY2023), suggesting an expanding operational role as the foundation's giving has grown from sub-$1M to consistently $1.6M+ over that period. The most notable recent large-scale activity visible in the Form 990 data is the FY2021 giving spike ($2.86M, GSF's highest year on record), likely reflecting a strong investment year (net investment income of $2.74M that year) rather than a one-time capital campaign or new program launch. No new focus areas, program name changes, or geographic expansions were identified beyond what is already documented on the foundation's site.

Lead with the inquiry form, not a proposal. GSF's process explicitly starts with a brief inquiry via giantsteps.org/grant-inquiry-form/ — a short organization/project description plus "what do you want to do" and "why do you want to do it" fields. There is no deadline for the inquiry itself, but full-proposal review runs on the November 1 annual deadline with February decisions, so submit inquiries well ahead of fall if you want a shot at the same-cycle round. Pick the right category on the form: Operating, Program, or Greening Grant — a Greening Grant is specifically for subsidizing vegan/plant-based catering costs at your organization's events, not general programming, so misclassifying a broader ask here likely triggers an automatic mismatch. State your primary field as Animal Welfare, Environment, or Health & Fitness (specifically women's health/fitness/empowerment) — these are GSF's only three funding lanes; a project that doesn't map cleanly to one of them is a weak fit regardless of merit. The single highest-value thing you can do in the inquiry text is show dual impact — GSF's grantee list rewards organizations that help animals and people simultaneously (rescued produce delivered to underserved communities, plant-based food pantries, wildfire relief for both animals and families). A pure single-issue pitch, even a strong one, is competing against a funder whose favorite grantees braid causes together. Commit to plant-based/cruelty-free practices if you run events or programs with a food or product component — GSF asks even non-animal-welfare grantees to serve only plant-based food at funded events, and demonstrating this proactively signals values alignment before it's asked. Common mistakes to avoid: sending a full unsolicited proposal (it won't be reviewed — GSF is explicit that an invitation to propose does not guarantee funding, and skipping straight to a proposal skips the actual entry point); requesting well above $240,000 (the highest single grant on record) or expecting the $55,741 headline average grant, which is skewed by one outlier relationship — budget realistically around the $10,000 median, $37,077 mean. Route process questions to Daphne Muehle (VP) rather than the general inbox. Because GSF favors renewing relationships (many grantees recur 2-4 times), a modest first ask that opens a multi-year relationship is more strategically valuable than a large one-time request.