Herbert Family Foundation

Herbert Family Foundation (EIN 56-2337949, Corona del Mar, CA) is a closed, family-directed vehicle for Gavin S. Herbert — the Allergan/Botox founder — and four family/associate directors (Gavin S. Herbert Jr., Cynthia H. Mjolsness, Lauri H. Delson, Pamela Dunzer), none of whom draw compensation and none of whom function as program officers. IRS enrichment data flags the foundation as 'preselected only,' and independent grant databases confirm it does not solicit or evaluate unsolicited applications — there is no published LOI form, deadline, or portal (application_instructions is blank in IRS-derived data). This is not a funder to cold-apply to; it is a relationship-and-loyalty funder that has spent over a decade reinforcing the same institutions.

The clearest on-ramp is medical: University of California Irvine has received 8 grants totaling $715,000 since the foundation began reporting individual grants, tied explicitly to 'the Discovery Center for Eye Research,' COVID vaccine research, and the Leopold Fund — a direct extension of Gavin Herbert's decades of personal eye-research philanthropy (he separately funded the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute at UC Irvine Health with multimillion-dollar personal gifts). Discovery Eye Foundation ($120,000/3 grants), the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology ($10,000), and Hoag Hospital Foundation ($75,000/3 grants) round out a clear ophthalmology-and-medicine cluster.

Outside medicine, giving is hyper-local Orange County civic and faith philanthropy in small, repeat amounts: St. Francis Episcopal Church, St. James Episcopal Church, Casa Romantica Cultural Center, Sherman Library & Gardens, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Richard Nixon Foundation, Charitable Ventures of Orange County, and Orange County Community Foundation. These read as personal loyalty gifts near the family's Corona del Mar home rather than a competitive grants program.

First-time applicants without a warm connection to the Herbert family, UC Irvine ophthalmology, or an existing grantee's board should not expect a response to a direct inquiry. The realistic strategy is indirect: build a relationship with an existing grantee (e.g., Discovery Eye Foundation, Hoag Hospital Foundation) or with UC Irvine's eye-research leadership, since the foundation's giving pattern shows it renews and expands ties to organizations already inside its circle rather than adding new, unconnected recipients.

Across the 37 individually tracked grants in the foundation's record ($1,041,750 total, average $28,155), giving is heavily concentrated: University of California Irvine alone accounts for $715,000 — 68.6% of all tracked dollars — across 8 grants averaging $89,375 each. Strip out UC Irvine and the remaining 29 grants to 12 organizations total $326,750, averaging just $11,267, which aligns closely with the foundation's IRS-reported typical_grant_size (median $7,500; range $1,000-$150,000; average $28,250 on an 8-grant sample). In practice this means two very different grant sizes coexist: large, strategic medical-research commitments to UC Irvine, and small, recurring $1,000-$20,000 civic/faith gifts to everyone else.

By cause, medicine and eye research dominate: UC Irvine ($715,000), Discovery Eye Foundation ($120,000), Hoag Hospital Foundation ($75,000), and the Foundation of the American Academy of Ophthalmology ($10,000) sum to $920,000 — about 88% of tracked giving. The remaining ~12% ($121,750) spreads across civic/arts/faith organizations: Richard Nixon Foundation ($30,000/3 grants), St. Francis Episcopal Church ($20,000/4 grants), Casa Romantica Cultural Center ($20,000/4 grants), Charitable Ventures of Orange County ($20,000/2 grants), Sherman Library & Gardens ($16,250/4 grants), two Episcopal parishes ($5,000 each), Segerstrom Center for the Arts ($4,500), and Orange County Community Foundation ($1,000/2 grants).

Geographically, 100% of tracked grantees (37/37) are California-based, and every named recipient sits in Orange County — there is no out-of-state or national giving despite the foundation's income scale.

Financially, total assets grew from $1.1 million (2011) to $5.4 million (2023-2024), while annual grants paid grew roughly 6.8x over the same period: $52,195 (2011) → $110,000 (2014) → $220,750 (2020) → $270,500 (2022) → $280,000 (2023) → $354,176 (FY2024, per the most recent 990-PF). Growth has been funded almost entirely by net investment income (e.g., $1.19 million in 2021, $305,000 in 2023) rather than new outside contributions — contributions received were $0 in most years, with two notable exceptions ($1.51 million in 2014, $1.11 million in 2012) that appear to be additional family funding of the endowment. The foundation is a non-operating, pure grantmaking vehicle (is_operating: false) with no direct programs of its own.

Herbert Family Foundation sits in a cluster of similarly sized, single-family, closed-door private foundations, most self-classified under the generic 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category rather than a specific cause area — a strong signal that all five are personal giving vehicles, not competitive grant programs.

All six foundations cluster within roughly $2,000 of each other in total assets ($5.398M-$5.403M), which is more a function of the dataset's peer-matching (assets within a narrow band) than shared strategy — none of the peers publish grantee-level detail or an application process in available records. What distinguishes Herbert Family Foundation from this peer set is that it does have a documented, findable grant history (37 tracked grants, an IRS-published typical grant size, and a decade of 990-PF filings), giving applicants far more to work with than the peer foundations, even though all six operate as closed, relationship-driven family funders rather than open grant programs.

There is no evidence of foundation-specific press releases, an annual report, or social media activity — Herbert Family Foundation itself keeps no public communications channel. Visibility instead comes through Gavin S. Herbert's personal business-press coverage: in 2025, the Orange County Business Journal named him the recipient of its first-ever Lifetime Achievement Recognition as part of its OC500 list, citing his founding of Allergan (developer of Botox) and decades of eye-research philanthropy with his wife Ninetta, including establishing the Gavin Herbert Eye Institute at UC Irvine Health. The same profile notes he remains active in two ventures unrelated to the foundation directly — Regenesis, an environmental remediation firm recognized by Time Magazine as one of 2024's 200 best inventions, and TechImmune, focused on long-COVID treatment, where he recently stepped back to vice chairman after recruiting infectious disease expert James Young as executive chairman.

On the foundation's own numbers, the most recent filing available (FY2024, per CauseIQ's summary of the Form 990-PF) shows charitable disbursements of $354,176, up from $280,000 in FY2023 and $270,500 in FY2022 — a continuation of the multi-year upward trend rather than a step change. Total net assets stood at $5,402,992 with revenue of $811,679, still driven overwhelmingly by investment gains rather than new contributions (contributions received: $0). No new grantees, program areas, or leadership changes at the foundation level were identifiable in public records; the board (Gavin S. Herbert, Gavin S. Herbert Jr., Cynthia H. Mjolsness, Lauri H. Delson, Pamela Dunzer) appears unchanged across the filings reviewed. A website purporting to be the foundation's (herbertfamilyfoundation.org) actually describes a different, unrelated 'Herbert Family Foundation' run by Jim and Judi Herbert in Lansing, Michigan, focused on health and hunger relief — its content should not be attributed to this Corona del Mar entity.

Do not submit a cold LOI or general inquiry expecting a review process — third-party grant databases and IRS enrichment data both flag this foundation as accepting only preselected organizations, and there is no published application form, deadline, or portal to target. Any inquiry should go to melissa@herbertfamilyfoundation.org, but treat this as a long shot absent a prior connection, and independently verify the address before relying on it, since the same email surfaces on an unrelated Michigan foundation's website.

The highest-probability strategy is indirect: build or leverage a relationship with UC Irvine's ophthalmology and eye-research programs (Gavin Herbert Eye Institute, Discovery Center for Eye Research) — this is where 68.6% of tracked dollars ($715,000 across 8 grants) has gone, reflecting Gavin Herbert's personal, decades-long commitment to vision research rather than a competitive selection. Organizations adjacent to that network — Discovery Eye Foundation, the American Academy of Ophthalmology's foundation, Hoag Hospital Foundation — are proven, repeat grantees and plausible introduction paths.

For non-medical organizations, the realistic opportunity is a small, renewable gift ($1,000-$20,000) rooted in geographic and civic proximity to Corona del Mar/Newport Beach: Episcopal parishes, Orange County arts and library institutions (Sherman Library & Gardens, Casa Romantica, Segerstrom Center), and Orange County-wide intermediaries (Charitable Ventures of Orange County, Orange County Community Foundation) have all received small, multi-year gifts. A first ask modeled on these amounts ($1,000-$5,000) is far more realistic than a large, unsolicited proposal.

Common mistakes to avoid: treating this like an open RFP funder (it isn't — there's no committee cycle to time an application against); requesting amounts near the $150,000 ceiling without an existing UC Irvine-caliber relationship; and using generic health/hunger-cause language pulled from the unrelated Michigan 'Herbert Family Foundation' website, which does not reflect this foundation's actual eye-research and Orange County civic focus. Because the five-person board is entirely uncompensated family and associates, the only real lever is a genuine personal or institutional relationship, not proposal quality alone.