High Rock Foundation Inc.

High Rock Foundation Inc. is a small, closed, family-directed private foundation, not a program-driven institutional grantmaker. It was established with an IRS ruling date of April 2015, is run day-to-day by Dan and Shirley McCabe out of their Lakewood, Colorado address, and is governed by an all-volunteer board (Daniel E. McCabe, Shirley L. McCabe, Brian McCabe, Drew McCabe, Kimberly McCabe, Grady Miller, and Jody Miller) with zero officer compensation reported in every year of filings on record. Its own public website (highrockministries.org — not to be confused with the unrelated highrock.org, a Massachusetts church) does not describe an application process at all; the Support page instead solicits donations to fund the foundation's own Kenya and Colorado programs, and the only intake channel anywhere on the site is a generic contact form. There is no LOI, no portal, no published deadline (its IRS record explicitly lists application_deadline as 'Not applicable'), and no stated review cycle. For grant seekers, this means the realistic path to funding is relational, not competitive: of the 33 itemized third-party grants on record ($79,613 total, averaging $2,413), recipients cluster tightly around organizations and individuals already connected to the McCabe/Miller/Wenger family network — evangelical churches, missionary pastors, and parachurch ministries (Samaritan's Purse, Prison Fellowship, Cru, The Navigators, Community Bible Study, Alliance Defending Freedom, Prager University), plus a Colorado Christian University scholarship and direct payments to board-affiliated pastors (Grady Miller, Gill Miller). First-time, unsolicited applicants with no prior relationship to the foundation's leadership or its Colorado evangelical/mission-trip circles should expect a very low probability of funding regardless of proposal quality. Organizations with the best odds are Colorado-based faith ministries (73% of itemized grants went to CO recipients), groups serving Kadawa village near Victoria Falls, Kenya, or ministries aligned with the foundation's Salida, Colorado retreat-center work (special-needs family respite, prison re-entry ministry, missionary reclamation). The realistic opening move is a warm introduction or direct, personal outreach via the contact form or phone (303-980-8966) — not a formal grant proposal.

High Rock Foundation is a micro-grants funder. Per its own IRS-derived typical grant size data, the median grant is $1,000, the average is $2,536, and the full observed range is $100 to $13,153 (18 grants sampled); the broader 33-grant itemized list shows a top gift of $16,000 to 'Colorado Church Group' and a floor of $100 to Calvary Castle Rock Church. Total third-party grants on the itemized list sum to $79,613, while the FY2023 Form 990 reports total_giving of $100,354 against grants_paid of only $35,601 — the gap between these figures (plus the itemized-list total) suggests a meaningful share of 'giving' is direct program spending (Kenya village construction, well-drilling, retreat-center operating costs) rather than third-party grants, consistent with the foundation's description of itself as an operating/hybrid charity rather than a pure grantmaking pass-through. Giving has no clean growth trend across five reported years: $79,574 (2019), $139,016 (2020), $86,476 (2021), $158,812 (2022), $100,354 (2023) — swings that correlate with that year's contributions received ($229K, $100K, $126K, $475K, $375K) rather than a fixed percent-of-assets payout. Assets, by contrast, have grown steadily: $2.94M (2019) → $3.07M (2020) → $3.29M (2021) → $3.90M (2022) → $4.46M (2023) → $5.16M (current on-file figure), meaning the foundation retains and compounds far more capital than it distributes in any given year. Geographically, of the 33 itemized grants, 24 (73%) went to Colorado recipients, with small numbers to Oregon (3), Florida (2), and one each to Arizona, California, and Virginia — none recorded as going directly to Kenya, implying Kenya program costs are booked as direct expenses rather than grants. By purpose, virtually every itemized grant carries a 'Ministry,' 'Missions,' 'Charitable,' or 'Scholarship' label tied to evangelical Christian organizations; there is no secular, arts, environmental, or general-nonprofit-operating category represented in the data.

High Rock sits squarely in the middle of this asset-size peer band ($4.87M-$5.37M) but is distinct from the group in structure: it is a hands-on family foundation with an active operating program (Kenya village support, Colorado retreat center) rather than a pooled-giving vehicle, and its $100K in FY2023 giving implies a payout rate under 2.5% of current assets — low relative to the 5% minimum distribution requirement private foundations typically target, partly explained by its operating-foundation classification (is_operating: true) which changes the payout calculation. None of the five peers were within scope for this report's web research, so their application posture and giving levels are not independently confirmed here and would need separate research before a grant seeker approaches them.

No 2025-2026 news coverage, press releases, or public announcements were found for High Rock Foundation Inc. in web searches — unsurprising for an all-volunteer family foundation with under $6M in assets and no communications function. The most recent verified data points are administrative: the foundation's database record was last verified 2026-08-22 and web-enriched 2026-02-22, and its most recent available Form 990 financial data on file is for fiscal year 2023 (filed in 2024), reporting $689,449 in total revenue, $375,301 in contributions received, and $100,354 in total giving. Leadership has been stable across every filing snapshot in the data — Daniel E. McCabe (President), Shirley L. McCabe (Treasurer), Brian McCabe (Secretary), Drew McCabe (Vice President), Kimberly McCabe, Grady Miller, and Jody Miller (Directors) — with no reported turnover and zero officer compensation in any year, consistent with an unpaid, family/church-network-run operation rather than a professionally staffed grantmaking institution. The foundation's own website content (last checked during this research) still describes its core, unchanged programs: the 'Kids for Kids' program ($75 sponsorships for goats and school uniforms), a $10 mosquito-net program, an HIV/AIDS support program, a clean water project, an agriculture feeding center, a community medical clinic, and micro-finance work, all centered on Kadawa village near Victoria Falls, Kenya — indicating program continuity rather than a recent pivot. Grant seekers should treat this as a low-news, steady-state funder: absent a personal connection to the McCabe/Miller family or their Colorado ministry network, there is no recent announcement, RFP, or priority shift to react to.

Because High Rock Foundation runs no formal grants program, standard grant-writing tactics (LOI-then-full-proposal sequencing, portal submissions, deadline tracking) do not apply here — the tips below reflect what the underlying data actually shows about how this funder operates. First, confirm you're contacting the right entity: use highrockministries.org, call 303-980-8966, or mail 11227 W. Ford Dr., Lakewood, CO 80226 — the highrock.org domain that appears in aggregator listings belongs to an unrelated Massachusetts church and will not reach this foundation. Second, lead with relationship, not proposal polish: the itemized grant history shows gifts going to organizations and individuals already inside the McCabe/Miller/Wenger circle (including direct payments to sitting board members serving as pastors), so an unsolicited cold proposal from an organization with no prior connection to this network is unlikely to be read as a competitive application — it will be read as a donation request, which is literally how the foundation's own Support page frames the relationship (it asks for donations TO High Rock, not FROM it). Third, calibrate the ask to reality: request amounts should sit near the historical median of $1,000, with $2,500-$3,000 realistic for an established, personally-vetted relationship, and five-figure asks (the observed ceiling is $16,000, to a single 'Colorado Church Group') reserved for what appears to be a long-standing, flagship partner. Fourth, use faith-aligned language explicitly: successful past grantees are overwhelmingly evangelical Christian ministries — church building/planting, missions and mission trips, prison ministry, pregnancy-center/pro-life work, Christian higher education (Colorado Christian University), and disaster/mission-team logistics — so framing a request around discipleship, evangelism, or direct ministry to the poor/orphaned/incarcerated will resonate more than a secular program-outcomes framing. Fifth, geography matters: Colorado-based organizations account for 73% of itemized grants, so local, in-person visibility (attending events, being introduced by a current grantee or board member) is a more productive strategy than a mailed or emailed proposal. Finally, there is no stated deadline or cycle — outreach can happen any time of year, but expect an informal, personal decision process from an unpaid family board rather than a scheduled committee review.