Hickory Fund Inc.

Hickory Fund is a small, family-governed private foundation (EIN 39-6069677) run entirely by volunteer directors — President Cynthia L. Linnan, Treasurer John P. Linnan, VP Nicholas K. Linnan, and Secretary Jennifer D'Amato all report $0 compensation. That structure matters strategically: this is not a foundation with program officers who proactively source grantees, but a lean, relationship-oriented shop that reviews what comes through its GrantInterface portal. First-time applicants should not expect a fast transactional process; expect an LOI screen, possible follow-up questions, and for promising applicants, a site visit before a formal application is invited. Decisions are announced once a year, in November, so this is a once-a-cycle bet, not a rolling pipeline.

The foundation clearly favors organizations that mirror its own four 'pillars' — resiliency, longevity, versatility, and sustainability — language that shows up almost verbatim in its funding-priorities copy. Grantee data backs this up: repeat, multi-year relationships dominate the portfolio (Lowcountry Food Bank has received 4 grants totaling $95,000; Community Smiles Dental, Life Navigators, and Programs For Exceptional People each show 3-4 grants apiece), while true one-off, single-year gifts tend to be smaller ($400-$10,500). First-time applicants should read this as: come in small and prove out the relationship before asking for a capital-campaign-sized gift.

Given its origin story — founded in 1964 by the Ziemann family to fund disability care, renamed Hickory Fund in 2020 as a fourth-generation rebrand — organizations serving people with intellectual or physical disabilities remain the surest fit, but the foundation has visibly diversified into food insecurity, veterans' services, and (as a stated 'evolving interest') underserved youth. Applicants whose work sits at an intersection of these priorities — such as Lowcountry Food Bank's veteran-hunger programming — appear to score especially well, drawing the single largest cumulative award in the sample. Organizations entirely outside disability, food, or veterans services, or based outside Wisconsin/South Carolina, are a weaker fit absent a compelling geographic-expansion narrative.

Hickory Fund's own typical-grant-size data puts the median single grant at $12,500, averaging $14,063, within a $5,000-$35,000 range across 16 recently tracked awards. Broader grantee history (74 grants, $1,172,500 total to 35 identified organizations) shows a slightly higher $15,845 average per grant, reflecting a handful of larger multi-installment relationships. The single largest cumulative recipient is Lowcountry Food Bank ($95,000 across 4 grants for veteran-hunger programming), followed by Beyond Vision ($80,000 for a visibility-center capital campaign), and a cluster of $75,000 multi-year partners — Community Smiles Dental, Penfield Children's Center, and Opportunity Development Centers. The smallest identified gifts run as low as $400-$1,000, showing the foundation is willing to make modest, low-friction grants alongside its larger anchor relationships.

Geographically, Wisconsin still dominates with 48 of 74 tracked grants (roughly 65%), South Carolina follows with 21 (28%, concentrated in the Lowcountry/Bluffton area), and Ohio (3) and North Carolina (2) round out the rest — likely donor-advised-fund or incidental gifts (one line item, 'DAF GIVING' to American Endowment Foundation, totals $38,700 across 3 grants). By purpose, disability/special-needs programming accounts for roughly half of identified giving (Beyond Vision, Community Smiles Dental, Penfield, Opportunity Development Centers, Life Navigators, Programs For Exceptional People, Options For Independent Living, Hear Wisconsin, and others sum to over $580,000 of the $1.17M sample), food insecurity another 15% or so (Lowcountry Food Bank, Loaves Fishes Friendship Trays, Backpack Buddies, Second Helpings), and veterans/other priorities making up the remainder.

On the balance-sheet side, total assets have held in a fairly narrow $5.4M-$5.9M band since 2020 (peaking at $5,884,192 in 2021), funded mostly by investment income rather than new contributions — contributions_received is $0 in every filed year back to 2011, meaning this is a closed, endowment-style family fund, not one actively fundraising. Grants paid dipped sharply to just $35,000 in 2019 (likely a rebrand-transition year) before rebounding to $225,000 (2020), $240,500 (2021), $326,000 (2022), and $280,000 (2023) — a recent three-year average payout of roughly $282,000/year.

Hickory Fund sits at the small end of the family-foundation spectrum by assets, but its payout ratio and grant sizing put it closer to mid-size peer funders than to mega-donors. Its closest structural peer is the Charles E. Kubly Foundation — another Milwaukee-based, single-issue family-linked funder with a comparably small balance sheet and similarly open application posture, though Kubly's mission (depression/mental health) doesn't overlap with Hickory's disability/food/veterans focus. Argosy Foundation, also Milwaukee-based, operates at a completely different scale and functions more as an invitation/relationship-driven funder given its far larger giving volume. On the South Carolina side, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry funds an overlapping set of causes (special needs, food insecurity, veterans) in the same Bluffton/Charleston geography where Hickory Fund has been expanding.

Hickory Fund's payout-to-asset ratio (roughly 5-6% annually) tracks close to the IRS private-foundation minimum, similar to Kubly, while Argosy's scale makes it a poor fit for cold LOIs. For an SC-based applicant, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry is the more accessible, higher-volume local alternative, while Hickory Fund offers a smaller but more issue-specific (disability/veteran-hunger) angle worth pairing with a CFL application rather than substituting for it.

Public-facing news specific to Hickory Fund is sparse — this is a low-profile, unstaffed family foundation that does not appear to issue press releases or host a news section, and no 2025-2026 grant-announcement coverage surfaced in search. The most recent verifiable filing is the FY2023 Form 990, showing $280,000 in grants paid against $5,427,242 in total assets and $332,422 in total giving, filed under EIN 39-6069677. The most substantive 'news' about the organization remains its identity: the foundation was incorporated in 1964 as The Ziemann Foundation and only became 'Hickory Fund' in 2020, a rebrand tied to the 2018 death of founder-family member Carolyn Wright (née Ziemann) and a generational handoff to current President Cynthia L. Linnan, alongside Treasurer John P. Linnan, Vice President Nicholas K. Linnan, and Secretary Jennifer D'Amato.

The foundation's own site frames this as an active, ongoing transition rather than a completed one: it describes itself as now in its fourth generation and actively working to 'expand our mission and geographic scope,' which lines up with the grantee data showing South Carolina Lowcountry organizations (Lowcountry Food Bank, Bluffton Jasper County Volunteers, Backpack Buddies Bluffton) now making up more than a quarter of tracked grants, alongside its historical Wisconsin base. Applicants should read the absence of press coverage as normal for this funder rather than as a sign of inactivity — the foundation's visibility runs through its GrantInterface portal and direct grantee relationships, not media.

Start early relative to the November decision date. The site is explicit that grant decisions are 'announced in November,' and the process runs LOI first, formal application second (by invitation), with a possible site visit in between — so an LOI submitted close to the decision month is almost certainly too late for that cycle. Check the Funding Guidelines document on hickoryfund.org/apply-now/ for the exact LOI deadline before assuming timelines from this report.

Apply only through the official portal — grantinterface.com/Home/Logon?urlkey=hickoryfund — and create the organizational account well before the deadline; the site does not appear to accept email or mail-in applications as an alternative route.

Mirror the foundation's own vocabulary. Its funding-priorities page repeatedly uses specific phrases — 'innovative ways to support inclusion, independence, and cost-effective solutions' for disability work, and full-'supply chain' language (education, sourcing, delivery) for food insecurity — and proposals that speak directly to these frames will read as better aligned than generic mission statements.

The most common mistake for an unfamiliar applicant will be asking for too much on a first approach. The realistic per-grant range is $5,000-$35,000 (median $12,500), and the two grants above $50,000 in the sample (Beyond Vision at $80,000, Eisenhower Center at $50,000) were capital campaigns from organizations that likely had prior relationships or strong local visibility — a cold first ask above $35,000 is a mismatch for this funder's typical check size.

Because this is an all-volunteer board with no paid staff (every listed officer shows $0 compensation), do not expect rapid email turnaround or a large administrative apparatus; build in patience and use info@hickoryfund.org for direct, concise questions rather than expecting a phone-based relationship-building process. Given the fund's stated interest in expanding geography and adding 'underserved youth' as an evolving priority, an applicant working at the intersection of two or more stated priorities (e.g., youth + disability, or veterans + food insecurity, as Lowcountry Food Bank's award for 'fighting hunger experienced by veterans' demonstrates) has a documented track record of outperforming single-issue asks in this portfolio. Finally, plan for a multi-year relationship rather than a one-time grant — the data shows the foundation strongly favors renewing existing grantees (multiple 3-4 grant relationships) over one-off gifts.