Hunter Fund

Hunter Fund (filed with the IRS as the Hunter-Jelks Fund, EIN 34-6513679) is a small, family-controlled private foundation run out of Mountain Brook, AL by the Jelks family: Daniel Hunter Jelks (President), Carolyn G. Jelks (Vice President), James Jelks (Board Member), and Rory Jelks (Secretary, the fund's only compensated officer at $5,500-$6,000/year). With $1.77M in assets and $120,000-$153,000 in annual giving, this is a low-overhead, high-touch family fund, not a staffed institution — there is no program officer, no online portal, and, as of this research, no working website; hunterfund.com is a lapsed, parked domain now listed for sale.

Applicants should understand the relationship model is repeatable rather than transactional. Of the 65 grants captured in the fund's history, the large majority went to the same organization two to three consecutive years at a flat or near-flat dollar amount — Barrow Neurological Foundation ($35,000 across 3 gifts), TROT-Therapeutic Riding of Tucson ($16,000/3 gifts), Smile-A-Mile ($15,000/3 gifts), Angel Charity For Children ($15,000/3 gifts). This behaves like a loyal recurring donor that renews modest commitments once a grantee is accepted into its circle, re-evaluating annually around a single September trustee meeting rather than running a competitive open RFP process.

First-time applicants should apply in writing, by mail, well ahead of the September 1 deadline, to the fund's registered address c/o MML Investor Services Inc. The published guidelines state a preference for Kentucky and Arizona nonprofits doing community, educational, or medical work, and explicitly exclude grants to individuals. In practice, the data shows Arizona dominates disproportionately (27 of 65 tracked grants — more than double any other state), with California (13) and the trustees' home state of Alabama (8) also well represented; Kentucky trails at just 5 grants, so Kentucky organizations should not assume outsized priority despite the boilerplate language.

Because there is no staff layer to build a relationship with beyond the family trustees themselves, the strongest approach is a complete, tightly-scoped paper application — financial statement, budget, and 501(c)(3)/509(a) documentation exactly as specified — submitted early, followed by a low-key phone check-in rather than repeated digital outreach the fund has no infrastructure to process.

Hunter Fund's giving is small and highly consistent. Across the tracked grant history (65 grants, $350,000 total, $5,385 average), award sizes cluster tightly: the fund's own reported typical-grant-size figures (its 23 most recent grants) show a median of $5,000, an average of $5,217, and a full range of just $3,000 to $15,000 — there is no evidence of outlier mega-grants. Even its largest cumulative relationship, Barrow Neurological Foundation at $35,000, was built from three separate $10,000-$15,000 gifts rather than one large award.

Annual grantmaking has grown steadily alongside the endowment. Form 990-PF data shows total giving of $66,000-$70,000/year in 2011-2014, rising to $129,499-$159,482/year in 2019-2023 (grants paid specifically: $100,000 FY2020, $105,000 FY2019, $120,000 in both FY2021 and FY2023, $125,000 FY2022). Assets grew in step, from roughly $1.06M (2011-2014) to $1.77M (FY2024), driven almost entirely by net investment income ($43,305-$473,942/year, highly volatile year to year) rather than new contributions — the fund received essentially $0 in outside contributions in every year on record. On a 2023 base of $1,756,231 in assets, $152,698 in total giving equates to roughly an 8.7% effective payout rate, well above the 5% IRS minimum distribution requirement for private foundations — a sign the trustees favor active granting over asset accumulation.

Geographically, giving skews heavily to Arizona: 27 of 65 tracked grants (41%) went to Arizona nonprofits — Southern AZ Law Enforcement Foundation, Arizona Burn Foundation, TROT, Los Charros Foundation, Angel Charity For Children, Patagonia Youth Enrichment Center, Hummingbird Health & Conservation — followed by California (13, 20%), Alabama (8, 12%, likely reflecting the trustees' Birmingham base), and Kentucky (5, 8%), notably smaller than the fund's own 'Kentucky and Arizona' preference language implies. By purpose, almost every grant in the sample is coded 'OPERATING FUNDS' — general operating support, not project or capital funding — spread across medical/health (Barrow Neurological, Arizona Burn Foundation, Kempe Foundation, Myotonic Dystrophy Foundation, Glut1 Deficiency Foundation), youth/education (CASA, Patagonia Youth Enrichment, Frontier Nursing University), and animal/community welfare (TROT, Handi-Dogs, K9's For Warriors, Reef Check).

No peer foundation set was returned in the data bundle for Hunter Fund, so the table below pairs it against a compliance benchmark and against other, distinctly separate 'Hunter'-named foundations surfaced in web research — useful for sizing expectations, though their financials were not available in this research pass.

Hunter Fund sits at the smallest, least formalized end of this comparison set: its ~8.7% effective payout rate is well above the 5% floor every private foundation must clear, meaning the trustees are actively distributing rather than warehousing assets, but its total giving ($120K-$153K/year spread across roughly 20-25 grants) is a fraction of what staffed, nationally-scoped funds like Roy A. Hunt Foundation typically deploy. Unlike A.V. Hunter Trust, which funds individuals directly, Hunter Fund's guidelines are organization-only — a meaningful screening difference for grant seekers who might otherwise confuse these similarly-named funds.

No news coverage, press releases, or announcements referencing Hunter Fund or the Hunter-Jelks Fund were found in web searches covering 2025-2026 — consistent with a fund that has no active communications presence (its own website has lapsed into a parked domain-for-sale listing, observed 2026-09-21). This is itself the most notable recent development: as of this research, hunterfund.com no longer hosts any foundation content, guidelines, or contact form, meaning applicants must rely on the mailing address and phone number on file with the IRS and third-party grant databases rather than the foundation's own site.

On the financial side, the most recent full year of filed data is FY2023 (Form 990-PF): $500,174 in total revenue (largely a $473,942 spike in net investment income), $152,698 in total giving, and $1,756,231 in year-end assets. A partial FY2024 record shows $164,432 in revenue and $1,774,650 in assets, with grants-paid not yet reported in the data available — consistent with either an extension or incomplete filing processing rather than any change in operations. Board composition has been stable across every filing reviewed: Daniel Hunter Jelks (President), Carolyn G. Jelks (Vice President), James Jelks (Board Member), and Rory Jelks (Secretary) appear unchanged across all years of data, with no leadership transitions, new trustees, or governance changes identified in either the 990 history or web research.

Hunter Fund's process is unusually old-fashioned for 2026: there is no online application, no LOI portal, and — as of this research — no functioning website at all, so applicants should not spend time searching for digital guidelines beyond the boilerplate captured in nonprofit-database listings (Instrumentl, Grantmakers.io, Impala.digital) and IRS 990-PF filings.

Timing is everything. The trustees meet exactly once a year, in the first two weeks of September, and want requests in before September 1. A grant request arriving in October or later will sit for roughly eleven months before the next review — plan the mailing to land in July or August so it has time to be logged and reviewed ahead of the deadline, rather than mailing right at the wire.

The required package is short and specific: (1) a current income and expense statement of operations, (2) a projected budget showing exactly how the requested funds will be used, and (3) a copy of the IRS determination letter confirming 501(c)(3) status along with 509(a) public-charity classification. Because the fund is trustee-run with no program staff, a package that is complete and precisely matches these three items on first submission is far more likely to get traction than a narrative-heavy proposal — there's no one to call back with follow-up questions before the annual meeting.

A common mistake would be over-indexing on the published 'Kentucky and Arizona' geographic preference: the fund's actual grant history shows Arizona nonprofits receiving well over double the grants of any other state, while Kentucky trails behind California and even the trustees' home state of Alabama. Arizona and Alabama-based community, medical, and education nonprofits are better-positioned bets than the guidelines alone suggest.

Request amounts in line with precedent — the median grant is $5,000 and the observed range is $3,000-$15,000 for general operating support; asking for $50,000 or for a capital campaign has no precedent in the fund's history and is likely to be declined or scaled down. Finally, because most grantees who receive funding once tend to receive it again for two more years at a similar amount, frame the request as the start of an ongoing partnership rather than a single transactional ask — that appears to be how this fund actually behaves in practice.