Haughey Family Foundation Inc.

The Haughey Family Foundation Inc. (EIN 82-1123287, Fort Wayne, IN) is a closed, board-directed family foundation with no program staff, no public application portal, and an IRS Form 990-PF that states outright: application instructions are 'N/A,' because 'the Foundation's Board of Directors will determine the recipients of grants based on the areas of interest included in award restrictions.' Those stated interests are narrow and specific: education, animal care and rights, golf organizations that instill positive character traits in disadvantaged and minority youth, and care of the homeless and disadvantaged. All three officers — Mike Horton (President), Mark Westerhausen (Vice President), and Jessica Ogle (Secretary/Treasurer) — serve without compensation and share the mailing address of the law firm Burt Blee Dixon Sutton & Bloom (200 E Main St, Ste 1000, Fort Wayne, IN 46802; (260) 426-1300), a strong signal this is a professionally administered legacy vehicle rather than an actively staffed grantmaker. There is no grants_page_url, application_form_url, or funding_cycle on file, and the foundation has received zero new contributions in every year from 2019-2023 — it is spending down an inherited corpus, not fundraising for one. The grantee roster reinforces this: virtually every top recipient (Huntington City Mission, Humane Fort Wayne, Western Virginia Animal Rescue, Professional Animal Retirement Center, Vincent Village Inc, Indiana Golf Foundation, West Virginia Golf Association, The FW Rescue Mission Ministries, Evans Scholars Foundation) received exactly 3 grants at consistent dollar amounts, indicating renewed, multi-year commitments to a fixed set of relationships rather than a rotating, competitive pool. For a first-time applicant, the realistic pathway is not a cold LOI but a warm introduction — through Fort Wayne civic/nonprofit circles, the Huntington, WV charitable community, or contacts of the administering law firm. Organizations should expect, if selected, a multi-year renewal relationship (typically 3 sequential grants) rather than a single award, and should not expect acknowledgment of unsolicited outreach given the total absence of public application infrastructure.

Total giving has been volatile across the five most recent filed years: $301,200 (2019), $338,665 (2020), $680,407 (2021 — the outlier peak year), $232,106 (2022 — the low), and $333,798 (2023). Grants paid tracked closely: $300K, $336K, $675K, $225K, and $315K respectively. Net investment income never covered total giving in any year ($164,769 vs. $333,798 in 2023, for example), and contributions received were $0 in every year 2019-2023 — the foundation is drawing down its corpus, which fell from $6,648,701 (2019) to $5,776,199 (2023), a 13% decline in four years with no new capital coming in. The foundation's own typical-grant-size figures show 9 grants averaging $75,000 (range $50,000-$95,000), while third-party 2024 filing data (Grantable.co) shows 9 grants averaging closer to $40,000 (range $25,000-$55,000) — a meaningful step-down in check size in the most recent cycle, consistent with the shrinking asset base. Looking at the cumulative top-grantee data (27 tracked grants totaling $1,215,000, average $45,000/grant): geography splits IN 15 grants, WV 9 grants, IL 3 grants — matching the foundation's stated geographic_focus of Indiana, West Virginia, and Illinois exactly. By cause cluster, animal welfare/rescue is the largest bucket (Humane Fort Wayne $170K, Western Virginia Animal Rescue $147.5K, Professional Animal Retirement Ctr $147.5K, Vincent Village Inc $147.5K — four organizations, $612.5K combined, over half of tracked top-grantee dollars), followed by homelessness/rescue missions (Huntington City Mission $170K, The FW Rescue Mission Ministries $102.5K), then golf-based youth character programs (Indiana Golf Foundation $115K, West Virginia Golf Association $115K, Evans Scholars Foundation $100K — a caddie-scholarship program). Notably, 'Education' is a named interest area in the 990 but is not represented by a large standalone grantee beyond Evans Scholars, suggesting education-focused giving is smaller-dollar or folded into the golf/scholarship bucket rather than funded as its own large-check category.

All five peer foundations sit within roughly $10,000 of Haughey's $5.47M asset base and share the same 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE classification — a category that typically denotes small, professionally- or family-administered grantmaking vehicles with limited public infrastructure rather than a shared program focus. Of the group, only The Wallace Family Foundation maintains a discoverable public website, making it the most approachable peer for a cold-outreach strategy; the rest, like Haughey, most likely operate on closed, relationship-driven, or single-family-directed giving models typical of foundations at this asset tier.

No news articles, press releases, or grant announcements from 2025 or 2026 could be located for this foundation under any search variation. The only recent, verifiable data point is a Form 990-PF filing indexed as filed on August 14, 2025 (covering the prior fiscal year), picked up by Instrumentl and Candid's filing trackers — but no grantee list or narrative accompanying that filing is publicly summarized yet. The foundation's nominal website domain, haughey.org, does not belong to this organization at all: it currently resolves to an unrelated architecture-firm placeholder site with a single default 'Hello world!' WordPress post from February 2024, meaning the domain has either lapsed from any prior foundation use or was never the foundation's actual site — either way, it should not be used as a source for programs, deadlines, or contact information. Leadership has been stable across the filings reviewed (Mike Horton as President, Mark Westerhausen as Vice President, Jessica Ogle as Secretary/Treasurer, all uncompensated), with no reported leadership changes. Given the complete absence of a communications channel, the most recent 'activity' signal available to grant seekers is simply the filing cadence itself — a new 990-PF appears yearly in mid-August, which is the best available proxy for when an updated grantee list becomes visible via ProPublica or Candid.

There is no formal application process to game — the 990 states directly that the board unilaterally selects recipients based on the family's named interest areas, and there is no LOI form, portal, deadline, or published funding cycle. The single most important tip is to not treat this as an open, competitive grantmaker: cold proposals sent to a generic 'grants' inbox have essentially no channel to land, since no such inbox, form, or grants_page_url exists in any record reviewed. The most viable approach is identifying a warm connection — check for board, donor, or civic overlap with Fort Wayne, IN nonprofit and business circles, the Huntington, WV charitable community, or the administering law firm Burt Blee Dixon Sutton & Bloom (200 E Main St, Ste 1000, Fort Wayne, IN 46802; (260) 426-1300) — before any written outreach. If no connection exists, a short, targeted letter of interest addressed to '% W Michael Horton' at that address, explicitly naming one of the four stated interest areas (education; animal care and rights; golf organizations building character in disadvantaged/minority youth; care of the homeless and disadvantaged) and citing a specific, comparable current grantee (e.g., Humane Fort Wayne for animal welfare, Huntington City Mission for homeless services, Evans Scholars Foundation for golf/education) will read as far more credible than a generic proposal. Organizations should also frame any ask around a renewable, multi-year relationship rather than a one-time gift — nearly every top grantee in the data received exactly 3 grants at similar dollar amounts, strongly suggesting the foundation prefers to commit to a partner for a multi-year stretch rather than fund one-off requests. A common mistake would be assuming this 501(c)(3) grantmaker behaves like a typical open community or corporate foundation simply because it is registered and files publicly — it does not; it behaves like a closed family/donor-advised vehicle. Given the ~13% asset decline since 2019 and the apparent step-down in average check size (from ~$75,000 historically to ~$40,000 in the most recent cycle per third-party aggregation), applicants should calibrate requests toward the lower end of the historical $25,000-$95,000 range rather than anchoring to the foundation's largest past gifts (e.g., the $675,000 total distributed in the 2021 outlier year).