Hornik Family Foundation Inc.

Hornik Family Foundation Inc. is a small, family-directed private foundation (EIN 65-0919356, Orlando, FL) run by President Steven Hornik alongside a traditional board (Todd Hornik, Melissa Regester Hornik, Elan Hornik, Leah Hornik, Terak Hornik) and Parritz-family directors (Robin, Ari, Jesse, Adam), plus an explicit 'youth board' — a structural signal that next-generation family members help steer giving toward causes that resonate with teens and young adults, which matches the foundation's own stated mission: fostering interest in Jewish and Israeli life among adolescents and young adults through Hebrew instruction, religious education, and Israel engagement, framed around the value of tikkun olam.

Critically, this is not an open-application funder. The foundation explicitly states it does not consider unsolicited requests and (per the DB record) operates on a preselected-grantee basis. Every path into its 68-grant, ~$73,700-per-year giving pattern runs through an existing relationship — a past grantee's staff introducing a peer organization, a Jewish federation connection (Federation of St. Paul, Minnesota Jewish Community Foundation), a Hillel director's network, or a personal tie to a Hornik or Parritz family member. First-time applicants without one of these channels should not expect a cold Grant Request Form submission to succeed; the form exists for organizations already inside the funding circle.

Once inside that circle, the relationship looks lightweight and recurring rather than a heavy LOI-to-full-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline: the grantee list shows the same organizations (University of Minnesota Hillel, Congregation Ohev Shalom, American Friends of Leket Israel, Congregation Beth Israel) receiving multiple grants across different named purposes in the same reporting period, suggesting an annual or semi-annual check-in cadence rather than a single big competitive proposal cycle. The foundation favors grassroots, program-specific asks (a fellowship stipend, a security upgrade, camp equipment) over general operating requests, though a handful of grantees are simply logged as 'Grant Request' with no itemized purpose, indicating some flexibility for trusted partners.

The most recent grantee snapshot shows 68 grants totaling $73,691, an average of $5,264 per grant — but the true individual-grant range is far tighter than that average suggests. The smallest identified award is $1,000 (Temple Beth El, High Holy Day service leader support); most itemized single-purpose grants cluster between $1,000 and $6,300 (Congregation Beth Israel $6,268 across 4 purposes; Multiracial Jewish Association of MN $6,276; Ohavay Zion Synagogue $3,622 for security enhancements across 4 grants). The largest cumulative relationship on record is University of Minnesota Hillel at $15,000 across 4 grants (Jewish Learning Fellowship, a Holocaust Museum trip), followed by Congregation Ohev Shalom at $10,525 and American Friends of Leket Israel at $10,000 (funding equipment, operations, and a tractor across 5 separate grants) — evidence that repeat, multi-purpose funding to the same grantee in one year is the norm, not single lump-sum checks.

Geographically, the 68 grants split: Minnesota 17, Florida 12, California 8, Kentucky 7, Maryland 4, New Jersey 5, New York 4, Ohio 4, Illinois 3, Wisconsin 3 — a footprint that tracks the DB's listed geographic focus (MN, FL, CA, KY, OH) and reflects family ties to the Twin Cities Jewish community as much as the Orlando home base. By program, the dollars split across Jewish day-school/Hillel education, Israel-linked giving (Friends of the IDF, United Hatzalah, American Friends of Leket Israel, the Tamid Group Israel Start-up Fellowship), synagogue operations and security, and Holocaust education/memory (Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center, Hebrew Union College manuscript digitization).

At the organizational level, total annual giving has fallen sharply from a 2011-2014 run rate of $339K-$359K down to $74K-$157K in 2019-2023, while total assets have stayed roughly flat ($2.0M-$2.9M) — a foundation increasingly distributing a smaller slice of a stable corpus. 2021's $157,119 in giving coincided with an outsized $972,642 net investment gain that year; absent similar market tailwinds, expect giving to track closer to the $74K-$110K band seen in 2019, 2020, and 2023.

All five peers were matched to Hornik purely on asset size (each holds $2.566M-$2.567M, essentially identical to Hornik's $2.567M) rather than mission — the shared NTEE code 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' is a generic private-foundation classification, not a focus-area match, and none of these peers publish a website in this dataset. Of the five, Zichron Avigdor Foundation's name is the only one suggesting a Jewish/religious orientation similar to Hornik's, making it the most plausible mission-adjacent comparison, though its actual giving pattern is unverified here. The practical takeaway for grant-seekers: this asset tier ($2.5-2.7M) typically supports total annual giving in the low-to-mid six figures at most, and — as with Hornik — small family foundations at this size very often skip public application processes entirely in favor of trustee networks.

The most current public financial data point is the 2024 filing captured by Instrumentl/Cause IQ/GuideStar aggregators: $88,904 given across 18 awards, in line with the foundation's 2019-2023 giving band and confirming it did not meaningfully expand or contract its total distributions heading into 2025. No leadership transition was found — Steven Hornik remains President as of the most recent directors listing, with Melissa Regester (Hornik) as Secretary and a stable roster of Hornik and Parritz family directors.

Two structural changes are visible in the web footprint rather than in press coverage (no dedicated news coverage of the foundation was found in this search). First, the foundation's IRS/Candid-of-record domain, hornik.org, currently displays only a 'Launching Soon' splash page as of this research (2026-09-19), indicating an active rebuild of its primary public site separate from the older, still-functional hornikfamilyfoundation.org (which hosts the directors page and the downloadable grant forms). Second, at least one named program — the Israel Start-up Fellowship — now has a dedicated listing on the Zeffy grant-program platform under the foundation's EIN, suggesting the family has begun formalizing at least one recurring program's administration outside the plain paper-form process described on its legacy site.

Given the youth board's continued presence in governance and the concentration of recent grant purposes on campus-age and young-adult Jewish/Israel engagement (Hillel fellowships, the Tamid Group Israel Start-up Fellowship, security funding for synagogues), grant-seekers should read any near-term shift in priorities as an extension of — not a departure from — the foundation's long-stated mission, rather than a new strategic direction.

This is a closed, relationship-driven funder, so the single highest-leverage step is securing a warm introduction before drafting anything. The foundation explicitly states it does not review unsolicited proposals; the publicly posted Grant Request Form (HFF_Grant_Application.doc) and Grant Evaluation Letter (HFF_Grant_Evaluation.doc) at hornikfamilyfoundation.org/forms exist for organizations the family already knows, not as an open front door. Realistic entry points based on the grantee list: a connection through a Jewish federation (Federation of St. Paul, Minnesota Jewish Community Foundation), a campus Hillel relationship (University of Minnesota or University of Wisconsin Hillel are both current grantees), or a referral from an existing grantee such as Congregation Ohev Shalom, Congregation Beth Israel, or American Friends of Leket Israel.

When you do have a channel in, calibrate the ask to what this foundation actually funds: the grantee data shows a median single-purpose grant in the $1,000-$6,300 range, with the largest single relationships ($10,000-$15,000) built from several smaller, itemized grants rather than one large check. Requesting a modest, clearly scoped amount tied to a specific, named program — a fellowship stipend, a security upgrade, camp scholarships, a Holocaust-education initiative, an Israel-engagement fellowship — mirrors the pattern of nearly every itemized grant in the dataset far better than a general operating-support ask would, even though a minority of grants are logged simply as 'Grant Request' for trusted long-term partners.

Use the foundation's own language in any proposal: frame impact around tikkun olam, Jewish continuity, Hebrew and religious education, and — especially — engagement of teenagers and young adults, since that age cohort is the foundation's explicitly stated priority and the youth board's likely lens on any request. Because the foundation posts a Grant Evaluation Letter template, build a simple post-grant report into your plan from the outset; being an easy, low-friction grantee to steward is likely to matter more to renewal odds here than to larger institutional funders. Common mistake to avoid: treating this as a program-office funder with a review calendar — with no stated deadline, no portal, and an explicit no-unsolicited-requests policy, sending a cold proposal to the foundation's Orlando address or the number listed publicly (407-758-4656) without a prior introduction is very unlikely to get a response.