Hough Foundation

Hough Foundation is a closed, family-run private foundation, and grant seekers should calibrate expectations accordingly. It is governed entirely by the Hough family and two outside directors: David R. Hough (President), Bonnie J. Hough (Vice President), Trevor D. Hough (Treasurer), and directors Hilary M. Romkey, Shannon M. Hough, and John E. Grenke — none of whom draw compensation in any reported filing year. The foundation was created in 2012 from the estates of Richard T. and Nancy R. Hough, continuing a philanthropic line traced to William James and Helen Trevellyan Hough. Its own FAQ page states without qualification: "The Hough Foundation does not accept solicitations." That single sentence should reset any applicant's expectations before drafting a proposal.

Given that posture, the effective strategy here is relationship-building, not proposal polish. The foundation's ~$5.9M in cumulative recorded giving across 99 grants shows two distinct tiers. Tier one is a pair of flagship, multi-year recurring commitments — Hillsdale College ($2.52M across 5 gifts) and Beaumont Hospital Foundation ($1.84M across 5 gifts) — together 73% of every dollar given. These read as loyalty gifts to an alma mater and a regional health system rather than the product of any competitive review. Tier two is a long tail of roughly 30 smaller grants ($1,000-$410,000) that map to personal ties: Michigan community organizations (75 of 99 grants), a Montana conservation group (Big Sky Community Organization, plausibly tied to a family second home), rare-disease research and advocacy nonprofits (MitoAction, Frank McLean Forever/SUDC awareness, Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation), and a Presbyterian church.

For an organization without an existing tie to the family or its directors, the realistic path in is: (1) identify any personal, professional, alumni, or congregational connection to David, Bonnie, or Trevor Hough, or to Hilary Romkey, John Grenke, or Shannon Hough; (2) align the mission with a demonstrated recurring interest — Michigan community development, medical/rare-disease research, higher-education scholarships, or land and water conservation; and (3) pursue a warm introduction through that connection rather than a cold submission, since there is no formal LOI process, application portal, or published deadline.

Across 99 recorded grants totaling $5,947,600 in IRS Form 990-PF data, Hough Foundation's giving is sharply concentrated. The top 2 recipients — Hillsdale College ($2,516,100) and Beaumont Hospital Foundation ($1,835,000) — account for 73.2% of every dollar given. Extending to the top 5 recipients (adding Big Sky Community Organization at $410,000, University of Michigan Health System at $290,000, and Blank Park Zoo at $200,000) pushes concentration to 88.3%. The remaining roughly 27 recipients split just $696,500 between them, averaging about $25,800 each — that long tail, not the flagship gifts, is where an unconnected applicant realistically competes. The foundation's own typical-grant-size figures for its smaller, non-flagship tier show a median of $5,000 and a range of $1,000-$410,000.

By purpose, scholarships are the single largest category at roughly 44% of total dollars (about $2.62M), driven almost entirely by Hillsdale College plus a smaller $100,000/5-gift stream to Kalamazoo College. Medical services and medical research combined form the second-largest bucket at roughly 37.6% (about $2.23M) — split between the Beaumont Hospital flagship gift and a cluster of rare-disease research nonprofits (MitoAction $52,000, American Heart Association $30,000, Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation $10,000). Land and water conservation account for roughly 7.7% (about $457,500, led by the $410,000 Big Sky Community Organization commitment in Montana). Religious giving (Northbrook Presbyterian Church, $132,500) and general education/youth programs make up most of the remainder.

Geographically, 75 of 99 grants (76%) went to Michigan organizations, consistent with the foundation's Bingham Farms base and stated Michigan geographic focus. The rest scattered to Iowa (7 grants), Montana (6), Texas (4), Florida (2), Indiana (2), North Carolina (2), and California (1) — almost certainly tracking family members' personal or second-home locations rather than an open geographic mandate.

Financially, the foundation appears to be drawing down its corpus: total assets fell from $15.81M in FY2019 to $12.24M in FY2024, a 22.6% decline, while grants paid held steady at $1.0M-$1.5M per year against modest net investment income of $311,000-$666,000 in recent years. That implies an effective payout rate of roughly 9-12% of assets annually — well above the 5% IRS minimum. FY2023 is the latest year with confirmed grants-paid data ($1,244,000); the FY2024 grants figure had not yet been filed at the time of this report.

Hough Foundation's five closest database peers were matched purely on asset size (all within about $15,000 of its $12.24M in total assets) rather than on programmatic similarity, since none of the peers have public grantee data on file. All five share Hough's generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" (NTEE T20) classification — an administrative catch-all the IRS assigns to private foundations that haven't declared a specific program category, not a reflection of actual giving focus.

Hough Foundation is unusual among this peer set for having a fully transparent, well-documented 15-year grant history (99 grants, $5.9M) despite its closed application posture — most similarly-sized single-family foundations, including these five peers, disclose far less about actual giving patterns in public data. The practical takeaway for a grant seeker is that asset size alone is a weak signal of accessibility here: a $12M family foundation with no staff and an explicit no-solicitation policy behaves very differently from a similarly sized foundation that runs an open RFP, and none of these five peers have confirmed application processes either.

No foundation-specific news, leadership changes, or program announcements for Hough Foundation (Bingham Farms, MI, EIN 45-2697781) turned up in 2025-2026 web search results. This is consistent with the organization's profile: it has no staff, no news page, and a three-page public website (About Us, Contact Us, FAQ) that has not been updated to reflect new initiatives. Search results for "Hough Foundation" news are dominated by two unrelated, similarly named organizations — the Hough Family Foundation Inc. of St. Petersburg, FL (EIN 59-3395491, a much larger ~$82M foundation running events like a 2025 "Hoedown" and 2026 "Sip & Stroll") and the Hough Foundation / Partners in Education in Vancouver, WA (a school-support nonprofit for Hough Elementary, unrelated to the Hough family of Michigan). Grant seekers researching this funder online should take care not to conflate these organizations, since their financial capacity, application posture, and geography differ substantially.

The most recent verifiable activity for the actual Bingham Farms foundation is its FY2023 Form 990-PF, filed with $1,244,000 in grants paid against $12,724,599 in year-end assets. No FY2024 grants-paid total had been filed at the time of this research, though FY2024 total assets ($12,241,956) and total revenue ($597,272) were already on file, suggesting the FY2024 return had been submitted but grant-level detail was not yet reflected in available data sources. Leadership (David R. Hough as President, Bonnie J. Hough as Vice President, Trevor D. Hough as Treasurer, and three directors) has shown no turnover across the filing years reviewed.

The single most important fact for any applicant: Hough Foundation's own FAQ states "The Hough Foundation does not accept solicitations." There is no online application portal, no LOI form, no published deadline, and the database's application fields (application_process, application_form_url, application_deadline) are all empty, confirming this is not an open-cycle funder despite being technically "accepting applications" in a generic registry sense.

Given that, generic grant-writing advice does not apply here. What does apply:

• Do not cold-email a full proposal. The foundation's only public contact is TheHoughFoundation.mi@gmail.com; if you use it, send a short, specific note (a few sentences) explaining the mission fit and any personal connection — not an unsolicited packet.
• Lead with connection, not need. Every large grant in the 15-year record (Hillsdale College, Beaumont Hospital Foundation, Kalamazoo College) reads as a loyalty relationship rather than a competitively won grant. If your organization has no tie to David R., Bonnie J., or Trevor D. Hough, or to directors Hilary M. Romkey, Shannon M. Hough, or John E. Grenke, treat this as a very low-probability cold target.
• Match a proven interest area. The realistic opening for a new relationship is in the smaller giving tier: Michigan-based community, youth, or human-services organizations (76% of all grants by count); rare-disease or medical research nonprofits (the foundation has funded MitoAction, the Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation, and SUDC-awareness group Frank McLean Forever, suggesting personal family health connections are a real pathway); land/water conservation (Big Sky Community Organization, Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance, Gallatin River Task Force); or Presbyterian/faith-based institutions (Northbrook Presbyterian Church).
• Do not target the two flagship relationships. Hillsdale College and Beaumont Hospital Foundation together absorb 73% of all giving through recurring, multi-year commitments; there is no evidence the foundation is adding new institutions at that scale.
• Verify through filings, not the website. The public website (thehoughfoundation.org) carries almost no operational detail — treat the Form 990-PF filing history (available via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer or Instrumentl) as the authoritative source on actual grantmaking patterns and recipients, since it will surface new causes long before the website does.
• Watch for name confusion. Confirm you are researching EIN 45-2697781 (Bingham Farms, MI) and not the larger, unrelated Hough Family Foundation Inc. in St. Petersburg, FL, which does run more conventional grant programs.