Helping Hands

Helping Hands is a very small, newly formed private family foundation — not a program-driven grantmaker with published priorities. Its IRS exemption dates to November 2022, its 2022 Form 990-PF shows a single $4,004,708 founding contribution and zero grants paid, and its board consists of just three uncompensated individuals: Levi Kauffman (President), Kristina Kauffman (Treasurer), and Shira Zimmerman (Secretary). The record marks it "preselected_only" with application_instructions listed as none — meaning it does not solicit or review unsolicited proposals. It gives only to organizations the family already knows.

For grant seekers, this changes the calculus entirely: there is no LOI to write, no portal to monitor, and no program officer to cultivate through a cold approach. The only realistic path in is a personal or community relationship with the Kauffman or Zimmerman family, most plausibly through faith-based, human-services, or community organizations in or near Quarryville, PA (Lancaster County) — a region with a dense network of small family-run charitable trusts tied to local Plain and Mennonite/Anabaptist communities. Organizations already active in that geography and sector are best positioned to eventually be "preselected," typically through board introductions, shared church or community affiliations, or visibility at local events rather than through formal grant-seeking channels.

First-time applicants should not spend cycles drafting a cold proposal package for this funder; there is nowhere to send it. Instead, treat Helping Hands the way you would a family donor-advised fund: build genuine local presence, get known by name within the Quarryville/southern Lancaster County nonprofit community, and let a warm introduction do the work an LOI would do elsewhere. Because the foundation is only three years past its founding filing, its giving pattern is still forming — worth periodically re-checking its 990-PF grant schedule (once filed with itemized grantees) for the first real signal of what it actually funds, which this data bundle does not yet capture.

Three years of Form 990-PF data are on file, and they tell a clear founding-then-granting story rather than a steady-state pattern. FY2022: $4,012,294 in total revenue (almost entirely a one-time $4,004,708 contribution), only $4,708 in disbursements, and $0 in grants paid — this was a seeding year, not a grantmaking year. FY2023: revenue fell to $179,155 (net investment income), while total giving jumped to $514,670 and grants paid were $489,044 — the first real year of activity. FY2024: revenue was $199,322, and charitable disbursements were $477,821 against $501,220 in total expenses (a 95.3% program-expense ratio, per ProPublica).

Net assets have declined steadily as the foundation spends down faster than it earns: $4,000,370 (2022) to $3,799,340 (2023) to $3,650,916 (2024) — a roughly 3-4% annual drawdown. Combined FY2023-2024 disbursements total roughly $967,000-$992,000 over two years, against a asset base of $3.65-$3.8M — an effective payout rate near 13%, well above the 5% federal minimum, which signals the founders intend to distribute principal, not just investment income, over time. No individual grantee names, amounts, or geographic/program breakdowns are captured in this data bundle or in any public source found (the "top_50" grantee list and "matched_grants" are both empty) — so a median grant size, per-grant range, or sector split cannot be reported honestly. Given roughly $480,000-$515,000 in annual giving, if that were split across even 10-20 grantees a year, individual grants would plausibly fall somewhere in the $20,000-$50,000 range, but this is an inference from the aggregate payout, not an observed figure, and should not be treated as a stated grant range.

Helping Hands sits in a tight cluster of similarly-sized, similarly-obscure Human Services private foundations, all with total assets between roughly $3.55M and $3.74M and none showing a public website in this dataset:

All six entries, including Helping Hands, are almost certainly small family or closely-held private foundations rather than institutional grantmakers — none has a website on record in this dataset, which is itself a strong signal for the category. Helping Hands is distinguished mainly by having a confirmed, documented practice (preselected_only) of not accepting unsolicited applications; whether the five peers operate the same way could not be confirmed from available data, but their asset size and lack of any public footprint make that the reasonable working assumption for any of them.

There is no foundation-specific news to report. Four separate news/announcement searches surfaced only unrelated organizations sharing the common "Helping Hands" name (a Gerstner Family Foundation program, an APA Foundation medical-student grant, Salvation Army and Anaheim Community Foundation local programs, among others) — none referencing EIN 88-3289173 or Quarryville, PA. This foundation has never been covered by local or philanthropy press as far as searches show.

The most meaningful "recent activity" is what the 990-PF filings themselves show: the foundation was newly established in November 2022, received a single large founding contribution of just over $4 million that same year, and only began active grantmaking in 2023 ($489,044 paid) and 2024 ($477,821 disbursed). Leadership has been stable and unchanged across all three years on file — Levi Kauffman (President), Kristina Kauffman (Treasurer), and Shira Zimmerman (Secretary), none of whom draw compensation, consistent with an all-volunteer family board. No program announcements, staff hires, or public initiatives were found. One notable and actionable finding from this research: the foundation's website field (helpinghands.org) points to an unrelated nursery school in Clifton Park, NY, not to this foundation — grant seekers relying on the site-on-file for outreach will reach the wrong organization entirely.

Because Helping Hands has no LOI form, no grants page, and no listed program officer, generic "how to apply" advice does not apply here — the standard playbook of drafting a compelling proposal and submitting it into a portal simply has no destination. The data explicitly marks this funder preselected_only with application_instructions recorded as none, and no working, funder-specific website could be found (the domain on file belongs to an unrelated nursery school in New York).

What is actually actionable: - Do not send a cold LOI or proposal; there is no channel confirmed to receive or review one, and time spent drafting one for this specific funder is unlikely to be rewarded. - Focus energy on visibility within Quarryville, PA and southern Lancaster County's human-services and faith-community nonprofit network. The founders' names and the foundation's geography point to local, relationship-based giving rather than a competitive open cycle. - If your organization has any existing tie — board overlap, shared church or community affiliation, prior in-kind partnership — with Levi Kauffman, Kristina Kauffman, or Shira Zimmerman, that is the highest-value entry point available; pursue a warm introduction rather than a written application. - Track the foundation's future Form 990-PF filings on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (EIN 88-3289173). Once it lists individual grant recipients (its 2022 and early filings show aggregate disbursements only), that grant schedule will be the first real evidence of the organizations and causes it actually favors — worth a periodic check rather than a one-time lookup. - Watch for the foundation ever standing up its own website or public contact channel; none has been observed as of this research (September 2026). If one appears, it should show a domain distinct from helpinghands.org. - Given giving is concentrated in a single sector (Human Services) and a single state (PA) so far, organizations well outside human-services programming or outside the mid-Atlantic region are the least likely fits regardless of outreach approach.