Irions Foundation Inc.

Irions Foundation Inc. is a small, founder-led family foundation ($9.1M in assets) established in 1997 by Tom Irions, CEO/co-founder of ASA Electronics, and now run alongside his wife Jennifer Hernandez-Irions and director Julia Willis (with Aaron Irions and Eric Irions having held the treasurer/secretary roles in past filing years) — this is not a staffed institution with a program office, it is a family exercising direct, hands-on stewardship of its own capital. Its stated mission is narrow and explicit: 'promote the education, development and welfare of the Michiana community with a focus on youth.' Every one of the 109 grants captured in the foundation's grantee history went to an Indiana organization, and its own site restricts eligibility to 501(c)(3)s 'serving the Michiana area' specifically — this is a hyper-local funder, not a regional or national one, and out-of-area applicants should not apply. The relationship progression is explicit on the foundation's own site: application submission (passcode required, requested via phone or contact form), review by a program manager, a site visit or interview, an approval/denial notification, and a December check distribution. Critically, the foundation states that new applicants or any organization requesting more than $5,000 are expected to meet with an officer before the deadline — this is a relationship-first funder where a cold, unsolicited written application is a weak entry point. The grantee list shows this dynamic clearly: roughly 20 organizations (Lifeline Ministries, Bashor Children's Home, Mishawaka Education Foundation, Woman's Care Center, Boys & Girls Club of Elkhart County, and others) receive repeat, multi-year support, some appearing in 3-4 separate grant cycles, indicating the foundation strongly favors renewing relationships with proven local partners over funding one-off requests from unfamiliar groups. First-time applicants should expect a long runway — introduce the organization well before the deadline, be prepared for a site visit, and lead with how the request addresses root causes and demonstrates sustainability rather than describing a single program in isolation.

The foundation's most recent single-year Form 990-PF snapshot shows 21 grants ranging from $900 to $53,500, with a median of $10,000 and an average of $18,638 — a useful benchmark for sizing a first request. Looking at the fuller multi-year grantee history (109 grants totaling $1,740,001, averaging $15,963 each), giving is heavily concentrated: the top 10 recipients alone account for roughly $972,000, or about 56% of all tracked dollars, led by Lifeline Ministries ($175,000 across 4 grants), Bashor Children's Home ($155,000/4 grants), Mishawaka Education Foundation ($150,000/3 grants), Woman's Care Center ($122,000/4 grants), and Reta ($110,000/4 grants). By theme, categorizing the grantee list by recipient mission (the foundation's own 990 data tags 100% of grants simply as 'CHARITABLE,' with no further breakdown provided), human-services and family-support organizations — Lifeline Ministries, Bashor Children's Home, Woman's Care Center, Church Community Services, Bristol Community Food Pantry, Faith Mission, Salvation Army, and similar — account for roughly 43% of total dollars ($751,571). Education and youth-education organizations (Mishawaka Education Foundation, Crossing Educational Center, Junior Achievement of Elkhart County, two local Dollars for Scholars chapters) take about 24% ($415,000). Youth recreation and enrichment (Boys & Girls Club, 5 Star Life, Loveway, Ryan's Place, shooting-sports programs) run about 12% ($208,000), with community development/housing (Habitat for Humanity chapters, Elkhart County Community Foundation) near 10%, animal welfare/health (Elkhart Humane Society, Kindness to Prevent Blindness) near 6%, and arts (Premier Arts) around 5%. On the giving trendline, total annual giving grew from $81,305 (2011) to $694,948 (2019), dipped to $422,004 in 2020, and has since climbed steadily to $523,507 (2023) and roughly $537,048 in the latest available filing — broadly tracking the foundation's asset growth from $2.23M (2011) to $9.12M (current). Net investment income has consistently funded distributions (e.g., $1.02M in 2023 against $465,351 in grants paid), meaning the foundation gives well within its investment returns and shows no signs of financial strain.

These five peers were matched purely on asset size (all cluster within about $10,000 of Irions' $9.12M) and shared NTEE classification (Philanthropy & Grantmaking) — the underlying data bundle does not include their annual giving totals or application postures, so those columns cannot be filled in without a separate research pass on each. The meaningful contrast is geographic: Irions is unusual among this asset-size peer group for concentrating 100% of its giving in a single home county cluster (Elkhart, Goshen, Mishawaka, Bristol, Middlebury, Nappanee, Granger, South Bend), whereas peers span California, Oklahoma, Florida, and Delaware with no confirmed geographic restriction on file. Applicants should not treat similarly-sized foundations as substitutes for Irions — its Michiana-only eligibility rule is a hard filter, not a preference.

The most notable recent development is personal rather than programmatic: foundation president Tom Irions was inducted into the RV/MH Hall of Fame on August 18, 2025, in recognition of nearly five decades leading ASA Electronics, the company whose wealth underwrites the foundation (source: RVBusiness). This kind of visibility can modestly increase inbound interest from local organizations, but there is no indication it has changed the foundation's giving posture, staff, or criteria. Third-party 990 aggregators (Instrumentl, Impala) report the foundation's most recently filed fiscal year distributed $537,048 across 26 grants, consistent with the multi-year upward trend visible in the DB financials ($523,507 total giving in FY2023, up from $498,672 in FY2022 and $424,672 in FY2021). No new program announcements, leadership changes, website relaunch, or shift in geographic or thematic focus were found in web searches covering 2025-2026 — the foundation's own website content (mission statement, three-officer structure, application process) appears unchanged from prior periods. In the absence of fresh news, the most actionable recent-activity signal for applicants is the steady, moderate growth in total dollars available (roughly 3% year-over-year from 2022 to 2023, and continuing into the 2024 filing), which suggests the funding pool is stable-to-growing rather than contracting — a favorable but not dramatically improving environment for new requests.

Because Irions Foundation has no professional program staff, the entire review runs through three people — Thomas Irions, Jennifer Hernandez-Irions, and Julia Willis — so the single highest-leverage move is securing a face-to-face or phone introduction with one of them well before the deadline, which the foundation's own site explicitly requires for new applicants and any request above $5,000. Do not attempt to apply cold through a generic form; the application is passcode-protected on irionsfoundation.org/application-form, and the foundation directs prospective applicants to call (574) 264-3135 or use the site's contact form to be vetted for preliminary eligibility before receiving access. Confirm the actual current-year deadline by phone — the foundation's own website states August 1st with December distributions, but third-party 990-derived aggregators list April 15th; this inconsistency likely reflects stale or misread filing data on the aggregator side, but a mismatched deadline is an easy way to be automatically excluded, so verify directly rather than trusting either source blindly. Address all three stated review criteria explicitly in the narrative: impact (does the program reach a substantial share of the community, not a handful of people), benefit (does it address a root cause rather than treat a symptom), and sustainability (does the organization show durable leadership and community support, not dependence on this one grant). Applicants should also anticipate a site visit or interview as a standard part of the process — this is not a red flag, it is built into the foundation's stated five-step review. A common mistake for organizations outside Elkhart, Goshen, Mishawaka, Bristol, Middlebury, Nappanee, Granger, or South Bend is applying at all: the foundation is explicit that funding is restricted to the greater Michiana area, and the grantee data confirms 100% of tracked grants (109 of 109) went to Indiana organizations. Given the grant-size data (median $10,000, average $18,638, range $900-$53,500 in the most recent 990 year), first-time applicants unfamiliar to the foundation should size their initial ask conservatively — in the $5,000-$15,000 range — and treat a larger, multi-year relationship (as seen with repeat grantees like Lifeline Ministries and Bashor Children's Home) as something to earn over subsequent cycles rather than request up front.