Gumbo Foundation

Gumbo Foundation (EIN 04-3727883, Santa Fe, NM) is a small, all-volunteer family foundation, not a program-staffed grantmaker. Its five listed officers — President Elise W. Schmidt, Secretary/Treasurer Paul B. Schmidt, and Vice Presidents Tracey Elise Hogan, Mary Emily Hogan, and William Hobson Hogan — all draw $0 compensation, a strong signal this is a Schmidt/Hogan family vehicle run out of a Palace Avenue address rather than an independently staffed institution. Every field that would normally describe a public process — application_process, application_form_url, application_deadline, typical_grant_size — is empty or explicitly marked 'none' across IRS enrichment data, and no third-party directory (Candid, GuideStar, Cause IQ, Instrumentl) has ever surfaced a grants page, portal, or guidelines document for this EIN. Combined with the fact that the foundation shows $0 in contributions_received across every year on file (2010-2022), this reads as a closed, self-funded, invitation-driven giving vehicle rather than one soliciting or reviewing unsolicited proposals.

The grantee data available to us captures only four grant lines, totaling $1,465,000, all to New Mexico recipients, and all purposed as 'General Support' — not restricted project funding. Two of those lines are grouped together at $710,000, one stands alone at $405,000, and one at $350,000, an average of $366,250 per grant against a foundation with roughly $3.3 million in total assets. That is an unusually concentrated giving pattern: a handful of large, unrestricted checks rather than a broad portfolio of small grants. Recipient names themselves are not public in any source we could access — 990 previews list them only as 'See Attached Statement,' meaning the actual organizations funded require pulling the full Form 990-PF Schedule from ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer or Candid.

For a first-time applicant, the realistic strategy is not to apply cold through a form (none exists) but to identify whether your organization is New Mexico-based, ideally Santa Fe-adjacent, and to seek a warm introduction through the Santa Fe philanthropic community — the Santa Fe Community Foundation's nonprofit network is a plausible entry point given geographic overlap. Any direct outreach should be a short letter of inquiry mailed to the IRS address of record, framed as a general operating support request, since that is the only grant purpose this foundation has demonstrated. Do not expect a published review cycle, site visit process, or LOI-to-full-proposal ladder — none is documented anywhere in the record.

Gumbo Foundation's grants_paid line has grown from $206,400 (2010) and a low of $174,500 (2013) up to $405,000 (2022 fiscal year in our data), with third-party 990 aggregation showing continuation to $451,500 (2024) and $440,000 (2025). Total giving (which includes minor excise-tax and administrative drag on top of grants_paid) followed the same arc: $245,573 (2010) to $462,182 (2022) — roughly a 5-6% compound annual increase over twelve years. Notably, officer_compensation is $0 in every year on file, so essentially all of that spending is grantmaking, not overhead.

On the four grant lines we can see directly, the median-to-large end is $355,000-$405,000 per grant, with a combined $710,000 booked as two grants in one statement line — implying individual awards likely in the $300K-$400K band rather than smaller increments. That places typical award size in the low-to-mid six figures, well above what most small/mid-size private foundations of this asset class ($3.3M) distribute per grant; a $3.3M corpus paying out $400K+/year implies a payout rate above 12%, far exceeding the 5% federal minimum, and consistent with a foundation intentionally spending down rather than preserving principal (total assets have declined from $4.77M in 2012 to $3.33M currently).

Geographically, 100% of the grantee-state data we have (4 of 4 grants) went to New Mexico recipients — a fully local giving pattern with zero national or multi-state spread visible in the sample, though the sample size is small. There is no program-area breakdown available (no NTEE-coded grant purposes beyond 'General Support'), so we cannot say what percentage goes to education, health, arts, or human services — only that every recorded grant purpose is unrestricted operating support, not project-specific funding.

Revenue is investment-driven, not donor-driven: net_investment_income accounted for roughly 85-98% of total_revenue in most years (e.g., $161,360 of $189,154 in 2022; $180,993 of $209,871 in 2021), and contributions_received was $0 in every year from 2010 through 2022. This is a fixed-corpus foundation living off its own portfolio, not one running annual fundraising campaigns — an important signal that its giving capacity is tied to market performance and could tighten in a down year for investments.

These five peers were matched purely on asset size (all clustering within about $1,100 of $3,330,000) and shared NTEE category, not on demonstrated funding relationships or overlapping grantees — and notably, not one of the five has a public website in our records, mirroring Gumbo's own effective absence of a real web presence (its listed domain belongs to an unconnected organization). That pattern — small, family-named, single-EIN foundations sitting at near-identical asset levels with no public footprint — is typical of foundations administered through a shared trust/wealth-management structure rather than independent philanthropic operations. Practically, this means grant seekers should not expect any of these entities, including Gumbo, to behave like a staffed institutional funder with published cycles; all six are best approached as private family vehicles reachable only through personal or advisor-mediated introductions.

There is no verifiable recent public activity specific to the Santa Fe, NM Gumbo Foundation beyond its own tax filings. Web searches for the foundation's name are dominated by an unrelated Opelousas, Louisiana charity of the same name, which held its annual Rabbit Cook-Off fundraiser on April 11, 2026, benefiting a local liver-transplant patient — that organization is a distinct 501(c)(3) with its own EIN and mission (family illness support), and none of its news, cook-off events, or social media activity should be attributed to the Santa Fe foundation covered in this report.

For the actual Santa Fe entity, the most current verifiable signal is financial: third-party 990 aggregation (Instrumentl) shows reported giving of $451,500 in 2024 and $440,000 in 2025, continuing a multi-year upward trend from $316,000 in 2019. Leadership appears stable — our underlying data shows the same five officers (Elise W. Schmidt as President, Paul B. Schmidt as Secretary/Treasurer, and the Hogan family as Vice Presidents) recorded identically across two separate filing-derived records, indicating no board turnover across the most recent filing years captured.

No press coverage, award announcements, new program launches, or public statements from this foundation were found in any searched source (Candid, GuideStar, Cause IQ, Instrumentl, general web search). Given the foundation's all-volunteer, uncompensated board and complete absence of a functioning public website, this is consistent with an intentionally low-visibility, closed philanthropic vehicle rather than one that publicizes its grantmaking.

There is no published application process for this funder — application_process, application_form_url, and application_deadline are all blank in every source checked, and application_instructions is explicitly recorded as 'none.' The single most important tip is disambiguation: do not attempt to apply through thegumbofoundation.org, call (337) 658-1108, or email gumbofoundation@outlook.com — those belong to the unrelated Opelousas, LA charity. The real foundation's only documented contact point is its IRS address of record: 347 E Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM 87501, attention Paul Schmidt (Secretary/Treasurer) or Elise Schmidt (President).

Because every grant on record was unrestricted 'General Support,' not a restricted project or capital grant, any outreach should ask for general operating support rather than pitching a specific program — that matches the only funding pattern this foundation has ever demonstrated. Given the concentration of large awards ($350,000-$405,000+ per grant against just four grants on record), this is not a funder suited to small seed-grant requests; organizations seeking $5,000-$25,000 gifts are unlikely to be a fit for a foundation whose typical award appears to run in the low-to-mid six figures.

Geography is a hard filter: 100% of documented recipients are New Mexico organizations, so out-of-state applicants without a demonstrable NM presence or NM-serving mission should not expect to be competitive. Because the foundation has no compensated staff and no public grants program, cold mail is far less likely to succeed than a warm introduction — grant seekers should look for shared board or advisor connections, or route through the Santa Fe Community Foundation's nonprofit network, which serves the same geography and donor community.

A practical research step before any outreach: pull the full Form 990-PF for EIN 04-3727883 from ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer to see the actual 'Statement' attachments naming past grant recipients (aggregator previews redact these to 'See Attached Statement'). Knowing exactly which New Mexico organizations have received support in past years is the single best way to gauge fit and craft relevant, specific language before making any approach — generic proposals to a closed family foundation with no track record of responding to unsolicited requests are unlikely to gain traction.