Gottstein Family Foundation

Gottstein Family Foundation is a lean, entirely family-run vehicle: every board seat (Samuel Gottstein as President/Treasurer, Mindie/Mindy Katz as Vice President, Elisheva Gottstein and Jacob Mintz rotating as Secretary, plus directors Rebecca Gottstein, Arie Katz, Ruth Anne Faust, and Jeffrey Gottstein) is held by Gottstein, Katz, Faust, or Mintz family members, and officer compensation has been $0 in every filing year on record. There is no program staff, no published guidelines, and the foundation's own database record marks application_instructions as none and geographic/priority screening as preselected-only. Three independent third-party sources (Grantable, GrantExec, Cause IQ) all confirm the same thing in different words: this funder does not accept unsolicited requests. First-time applicants should treat that as the single most important fact about this foundation and not spend time drafting a cold LOI or hunting for a portal — none exists.

The grantee pattern reinforces this: in the available multi-year sample, 45 of the roughly 90 recorded grants are paired — the same recipient funded in back-to-back cycles — meaning the foundation is overwhelmingly renewing existing relationships rather than onboarding new ones. Two access paths recur across the grantee list: (1) Anchorage-based human services, arts, and youth organizations that are visible in the local philanthropic ecosystem (United Way of Anchorage, Food Bank of Alaska, Beans Cafe, Boys & Girls Club Alaska), and (2) Jewish and Israel-focused humanitarian, religious, and social-service organizations (Magen David Adom, United Hatzalah, Congregation Beth Sholom, One Family, Koby Mandell Foundation), suggesting the family's personal religious and communal ties drive much of the national giving.

For an organization with no existing relationship, the realistic path in is a warm introduction — through a current grantee's leadership, a shared board connection, or visibility within Anchorage's tight nonprofit and Jewish communal circles — rather than a formal proposal. Given the foundation's size (roughly $4.4M in assets) and modest, no-frills giving style, expectations should be calibrated to a personal, relationship-based ask rather than a competitive, staffed grant program with site visits or multi-stage review.

Gottstein Family Foundation held $4,367,085 in total assets as of its most recent filing on record (income of $408,807), and its own typical-grant-size data shows a range of $1,000 to $30,000, a median of $4,000, and an average of $6,250 — figures corroborated by third-party trackers reporting a $6,000-$6,267 average grant. In the multi-year grant sample available (90 individual grants across 45 recipients, each funded twice), total disbursements were $564,000, an average of $6,267 per grant — closely matching the foundation's self-reported figures. Separately, web research citing 2024 activity puts annual giving at $280,000 across 46 grants with a $5,000 median, consistent with the historical trend.

Year-over-year giving has been remarkably stable outside two anomalies: total_giving ran $219,459 (2011), $322,352 (2012), $298,961 (2013), $296,888 (2014), then spiked to $1,200,577 in 2015 (a clear one-time outlier, likely a large one-off distribution or corpus event), before data resumes at a low $62,775 (2019) and recovers to $210,498 (2020), $339,263 (2021), and $295,214 (2022). The 2023 filing on record shows $0/​$1 in assets and giving, almost certainly an incomplete or extension-only filing rather than an actual funding halt, since web-sourced 2025 and 2026 filings show revenue of $219,048-$267,129 and expenses of $257,314-$290,902 with net assets in the $3.8M-$4.4M range — a return to the normal $280K-$340K/year steady state.

By grant count, giving skews heavily toward Alaska: 52 of 90 sampled grants (58%) went to Alaska organizations, followed by New York (10), and Florida, New Hampshire, and New Jersey (4 each), with Alabama, California, D.C., Illinois, and Oregon at 2 each. By dollar volume, third-party analysis puts Alaska at roughly 40% ($418K), New York at 18% ($183K), and New Jersey at 11% ($115K) of a comparable giving period. By cause, funding clusters into three groups: Jewish/Israel humanitarian and religious organizations (Magen David Adom $26K, United Hatzalah $24K, American Friends of Bat Melech $25K, American Friends of Leket Israel $24K, Birthright Israel $16K, Koby Mandell Foundation $14K, One Family $20K, Paamonim USA $16K); Anchorage human services and food security (Beans Cafe $20K, Children's Lunchbox $16K, Food Bank of Alaska $14K, United Way of Anchorage $14K, AWAIC $12K, Clare House $12K); and smaller Alaska arts/culture and youth grants in the $2,000-$8,000 range (Anchorage Museum Foundation, Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Alaska Junior Theater, Boys & Girls Club Alaska).

Gottstein sits at the small end of Alaska's private-foundation landscape — its $4.4M in assets is a rounding error next to Rasmuson's $845M and well under a tenth of Atwood's $56.6M, and its giving is scaled accordingly, with grants in the $1,000-$30,000 range versus Rasmuson's much larger, multi-program grantmaking. Unlike Rasmuson and Atwood, which run structured, competitive application processes, Gottstein behaves like the vast majority of small Jewish family foundations nationally: Cause IQ data shows 87% of grants to Jewish organizations nationwide come from foundations under $10M in assets, most of them relationship-driven rather than open-call. Gottstein's dual identity — half Anchorage community funder, half Jewish/Israel-cause funder — is unusual even within that peer set, reflecting the family's personal ties to both Anchorage and the broader Jewish philanthropic network rather than a single programmatic focus.

No news coverage, press releases, or program announcements exist for Gottstein Family Foundation — as an unstaffed, closely-held family foundation, its only public footprint is its annual Form 990-PF filings. The most recent filings on record were submitted April 28, 2025 (reporting revenue in the $232,863-$267,129 range depending on source, expenses of $257,314-$285,772, and net assets of roughly $3.8M) and April 25, 2026 (revenue of $219,048, expenses of $290,902). Total assets across recent web-sourced pulls range from $3.8M to $4.37M, consistent with the foundation's own database record of $4,367,085.

Leadership has quietly transitioned from the founding generation — Barnard J. ("B.J.") Gottstein, still listed as the foundation's IRS contact name ("% B J Gottstein") — to Samuel Gottstein, who now serves as President/Treasurer, alongside Mindie/Mindy Katz as Vice President. The board composition (Elisheva Gottstein, Rebecca Gottstein, Arie Katz, Ruth Anne Faust, Jeffrey Gottstein, and at times Jacob Mintz) has otherwise remained stable across filings from roughly 2019 through 2026, with no indication of new outside directors or a shift toward professional staffing.

The only notable irregularity in the data is the 2023 filing on record, which shows $0-$1 in both assets and giving — almost certainly an incomplete or extension-only filing rather than an actual pause in operations, since subsequent 2025 and 2026 filings show giving back at its normal $280K-$340K annual level. There is no evidence of a new grant program, geographic expansion, or a change in funding priorities; the foundation's activity remains a continuation of its long-standing dual Anchorage-community and Jewish/Israel-cause giving pattern.

The single most important piece of advice for this funder is: do not submit a cold, unsolicited application. The foundation's own record marks its application_instructions as none, and three independent grant databases (Grantable, GrantExec, Cause IQ) all confirm it gives only to preselected organizations. There is no portal, no LOI process, no published deadline, and no program staff to review inbound requests — a cold submission will most likely go unanswered, not because the proposal is weak but because the intake channel doesn't exist.

The realistic path to funding is relationship-based. If you run an Anchorage-based human-services, arts, or youth-serving organization, build visibility within the same local ecosystem the foundation already funds — United Way of Anchorage, Food Bank of Alaska, Beans Cafe, Boys & Girls Club Alaska, and Providence Alaska Foundation are all current grantees, and cross-introductions within that Anchorage nonprofit network are a far more promising channel than a written proposal. If your organization works on Jewish communal or Israel-related causes, note the concentration of grantees tied to religious and humanitarian relief (Magen David Adom, United Hatzalah, American Friends of Leket Israel, Congregation Beth Sholom, Koby Mandell Foundation, One Family) — a connection through Jewish federation networks, synagogue relationships, or an existing grantee's leadership is the most plausible entry point.

Because every board seat is held by a Gottstein, Katz, Faust, or Mintz family member and there is zero paid staff, any outreach should be brief, personal, and low-friction — a short letter or a warm-introduced conversation, not a full grant packet. Calibrate any ask to the foundation's actual grant sizes: the median is $4,000 and the average is $6,250-$6,267, with a ceiling around $30,000 for the largest, most established relationships (World Central Kitchen and Feeding America both received $30,000 across two years in the available sample). A common mistake would be treating this like a competitive, staffed program (as Rasmuson or Atwood are) and investing significant proposal-writing effort before confirming a personal connection exists — that effort is very unlikely to be rewarded here.