Holland Family Foundation

Holland Family Foundation is a small, all-volunteer family foundation with no paid staff, no application portal, and no published guidelines — the opposite of a program-driven institutional funder. Its three trustees (Katie Black, Travis J Holland, Sara M Blatnik) each log roughly half an hour per week on foundation business and receive no compensation, which tells applicants everything about the likely review process: informal, relationship-based, and slow rather than form-driven. Every grant in the visible record is coded "GENERAL FUND," meaning the foundation does not solicit or evaluate proposals against a stated program area; it simply writes checks to organizations trustees already know or trust. That pattern is visible in the grantee list itself: four Texas Christian universities in the Abilene/Hill Country corridor (Abilene Christian, Hardin-Simmons, McMurry, Schreiner), San Antonio-area human-services groups (San Antonio Food Bank, Serving Our Seniors), children's and family causes (One Hope for Kids, Book Drive for Kids, Camp of the Hills), and one outsized $250,000 gift to The ALS Association that looks like a personal or family cause rather than an open funding priority. First-time applicants should not expect an LOI-to-full-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline of the kind larger foundations use — there is no evidence of one anywhere in Cause IQ, grantmakers.io, or Candid's profiles. Instead, the realistic path in is a short letter or phone call, ideally introduced through an existing grantee (one of the four funded universities, or a San Antonio human-services peer), sent to the foundation's listed contact, "% David S Holland," at its Grapevine, TX post office box. The foundation's own Form 990-PF does not mark it as restricted to a preselected list of recipients, so cold outreach is not disqualifying, but with only three part-time trustees and no communications function, warm introductions will carry disproportionate weight. Applicants should size their ask to the foundation's real capacity — a $12.4M-asset, ~$560K/year giving foundation — and expect a general-support grant in the low five to low six figures rather than a large, multi-year commitment.

Holland Family Foundation's giving has scaled sharply since 2019. Grants paid rose from $39,100 (FY2019) to $125,000 (FY2020), $318,000 (FY2021), $490,000 (FY2022), and $506,898 (FY2023), with total giving (including qualifying distributions) of $564,788 in FY2023 and $589,922 in FY2022. More recent third-party filings show $469,150 disbursed against $11.6M in assets, and a later-indexed filing shows $562,999 disbursed against $12,379,124 in assets and $1,362,612 in revenue — establishing a steady-state range of roughly $470K-$590K per year since 2022. This step-change traces to two large one-time inflows: $4,943,436 in contributions received in FY2019 and $4,457,307 in FY2020, which third-party aggregators tie to the Estate of Jacque Holland. In the most recent full giving snapshot captured in this platform's data, the foundation made 13 grants totaling $615,000 (average $47,308), 100% to Texas-based recipients. By cause area, that breaks down to roughly 41% health/medical research ($250,000 to The ALS Association alone), 35% higher education ($215,000 combined across Abilene Christian, Hardin-Simmons, McMurry, and Schreiner universities), and 24% human services and community programs ($150,000 across Serving Our Seniors, San Antonio Food Bank, One Hope For Kids, Camp of the Hills, and a children's book drive). Grant size varies widely: this platform's typical-grant-size model puts the median at $32,500 (range $3,000-$55,000, average $31,800, n=10), while grantmakers.io's broader 22-grant historical set shows a lower median of $13,000 (range $4,500-$80,000) — the gap reflects the ALS Association outlier pulling recent averages upward. Applicants should read the median (low five figures) rather than the mean as the realistic target for a first grant, with six-figure asks reserved for causes with a demonstrated personal connection to the trustees.

The striking similarity in asset size across all five peers (within a $10,000 band of $12.37M-$12.38M) reflects an asset-matched peer-selection method rather than genuine strategic overlap — these are five geographically scattered, unstaffed family foundations (NE, AL, MI, IL, WA) with no public websites, none of which disclose an application process. That absence of public information is itself the useful signal: at this asset tier, private family foundations overwhelmingly operate as informal, trustee-directed giving vehicles rather than program-area grantmakers, so Holland's own grantee pattern (Texas higher education, San Antonio human services, one large personal-cause gift) is a more reliable strategy guide than any cross-foundation benchmark.

No independent news coverage, press releases, or media mentions of Holland Family Foundation were identified for 2025-2026, and there is no evidence of a communications program, website, or social presence — consistent with an all-volunteer, three-trustee operation. The most recent Form 990-PF data available shows continued steady giving: one filing reports $469,150 in grants against $11,644,816 in assets, and a later-indexed filing (labeled most current by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer) reports $562,999 distributed against $12,379,124 in net assets and $1,362,612 in revenue for the year, roughly in line with the $490,000-$506,898 disbursed in FY2022-FY2023. No leadership changes were found — Katie Black, Travis J Holland, and Sara M Blatnik appear as the sole trustees across every filing and database reviewed, unchanged since at least 2021. No new programs, RFPs, or funding-priority announcements were located. One important correction for applicants: the domain listed in some databases as the foundation's website, holland.org, actually belongs to the Holland Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, a tourism-marketing organization for Holland, Michigan — it has no connection to this foundation, and applicants should disregard it as a source of guidance. In the absence of a confirmed foundation website, the PO Box 805, Grapevine, TX contact and (210) 275-7696 phone number are the only verified outreach channels.

There is no formal application form, online portal, letter-of-inquiry template, or published deadline for Holland Family Foundation in any database reviewed (Cause IQ, grantmakers.io, Candid, Zeffy) — this is a name-your-own-format funder. Address a concise one-to-two-page letter, not a full grant application packet, to the foundation's listed contact, "% David S Holland," PO Box 805, Grapevine, TX 76099, or call (210) 275-7696 (a San Antonio-area code, worth noting since the registered address is in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro). Because every disclosed grant is coded "GENERAL FUND," do not tailor a proposal to a specific program category the foundation has never actually published — ask plainly for general operating or project support. The grantee record shows clear affinity clusters: Texas Christian higher education in the Abilene/San Angelo/Hill Country corridor (Abilene Christian University, Hardin-Simmons University, McMurry University, Schreiner University), San Antonio-area human services (San Antonio Food Bank, Serving Our Seniors), children's and family programs (One Hope For Kids, Book Drive For Kids, Camp of the Hills), and one outsized $250,000 gift to The ALS Association that reads as a personal or family cause rather than an open priority — organizations outside these lanes, or without any Texas nexus, are working against the pattern. Because the three trustees log only about half an hour per week each on foundation business, expect a slow and informal review cycle with no committed timeline; do not lead with a hard deadline or a time-sensitive matching-grant ask. The single most effective lever available is a warm introduction — through one of the four already-funded universities, a San Antonio human-services peer, or any shared board or family connection — since a foundation this small and unstaffed has no mechanism to evaluate cold, unreferred proposals at scale. A common mistake would be over-formatting the request as if for a large staffed foundation with a defined RFP cycle; a short, direct, personally-addressed letter is more likely to get read than a polished multi-page proposal packet.