Jeremy Lin Foundation

The Jeremy Lin Foundation (EIN 27-4068790, Palo Alto, CA) is a founder-directed family foundation — Jeremy Lin serves as Board Chair, with Patricia Sun as President, Josh Lin as VP/Secretary, and Phil Jung as Treasurer, supported by Executive Director Stephanie Hsu. With roughly $10.6M in assets and $1.7M in FY2024 revenue, it is a mid-sized grantmaker, not a large institutional funder. Its mission centers on AAPI and cross-racial youth: 58 recorded grants totaling $2.65M went to organizations concentrated in NY (26 grants) and CA (25 grants), overwhelmingly coded as General & Unrestricted support. Critically, the foundation states plainly on its website that it 'does not fund unsolicited requests' — this is a closed, relationship-driven funder, not one that reviews open applications. Its recorded eligibility filter (youth populations that are 15-75% AAPI or other communities of color) functions as a screening criterion for the foundation's own outreach and referral network, not an open-call bar that applicants can trigger themselves. First-time contacts should not expect a portal, RFP, or LOI process; funding flows through the foundation's own identification of community-rooted organizations, frequently via formal multi-year collaboratives built in partnership with co-funders like TAAF (Stronger Together, 2022-2024; Thrive Together, 2025-2029). The realistic path in is visibility: cross-racial coalition-building, intra-AAPI solidarity programming, and a demonstrated track record serving low-income AAPI or intersectional youth in NYC, the Bay Area, or — as of 2025-2026 — Los Angeles. Organizations should build relationships with TAAF and with peer AAPI youth-serving nonprofits already in the foundation's network (Adhikaar, Apex for Youth, CAAAV, CACF, DRUM, Mekong NYC, MinKwon, SAYA, and Chinatown Youth Initiatives are current or recent grantees), since selection appears to run through referral and reputation within that ecosystem rather than direct solicitation. Once selected, the relationship is deep and multi-year: Stronger Together grantees each received 3-4 payments over three years, and Thrive Together grantees are being brought into a five-year, multi-city cohort with in-person convenings, capacity support, and access opportunities (e.g., NBA All-Star Weekend events) layered on top of the grant dollars themselves.

Across its recorded 58 grants (7 states, $2.65M total), the Jeremy Lin Foundation's average grant is $45,698, but that figure aggregates multiple payments to the same recipient over time — the top 24 grantees each show 1-4 grant installments. At the recipient level, cumulative totals range from $15,500 (Love Beyond Walls, single grant) up to $200,000 (Community Youth Center of San Francisco, 4 grants), with a dense cluster of grantees in the $140,000-$196,000 cumulative range: Asian American Coalition for Children and Families ($196K/3 grants), East Bay Asian Youth Center ($190K/4 grants), Harbor House Ministries ($155.5K/4 grants), and six of the nine Stronger Together Collaborative grantees at $150,000-$152,000 each (3 grants apiece — consistent with roughly $50,000/year over the 2022-2024 commitment). At the individual-grant level, the foundation's own reported typical grant size is a median of $33,750 (range $1,341-$52,500, average $35,778 across 12 recent grants), suggesting most single payments land in the $30,000-$52,500 band with occasional smaller top-ups. Total giving has grown sharply: from $6,664 in 2011 to $78,283 (2014), $408,179 (2019), $679,807 (2021), $1,044,639 (2022), and $1,291,773 (2023) — a roughly 165x increase in giving over the foundation's history, tracking a parallel rise in total assets from $116,021 (2011) to $10.6M (2024). Grants paid (a related but distinct 990 line) rose from $429,341 (2021) to $692,000 (2022) to $821,000 (2023). Geographically, giving is bicoastal and concentrated: New York (26 of 58 grants, driven by the NYC-based Stronger Together cohort) and California (25 of 58, reflecting the founder's Bay Area roots and organizations like East Bay Asian Youth Center and Community Youth Center of San Francisco), with a small tail in Massachusetts (4, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center), and single grants in Georgia, Illinois, and Texas (largely national organizations like Feeding America). Program-wise, the data shows near-total concentration in general operating support for AAPI/cross-racial youth-serving nonprofits, with only one grant explicitly tagged to a distinct initiative (Chinese for Affirmative Action's STOP AAPI Hate initiative, $50,000). The 2025-2029 Thrive Together Collaborative signals continued or accelerated giving growth and an expansion of program geography into Los Angeles.

These five peers were matched on near-identical asset size (all within $30,000 of Jeremy Lin Foundation's $10.6M), but the dataset does not include their annual giving, focus-area detail, or application posture, so a direct payout or access comparison isn't possible from this data alone. What differentiates Jeremy Lin Foundation within this peer set is specificity and public visibility: it has a named, mission-specific focus (AAPI and cross-racial youth) backed by public-facing collaboratives (Stronger Together, Thrive Together) and active social media and press presence, whereas the matched peers show minimal or no public web presence (three of five list no website in this dataset). For a grant seeker, that means Jeremy Lin Foundation is more discoverable and better documented than typical similarly-sized family foundations, even though its funding model remains closed to cold applications.

The foundation's most consequential recent move is the October 30, 2025 launch of the Thrive Together Collaborative, a five-year (2025-2029) funding commitment to roughly 20 youth-serving organizations across New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — a significant scale-up from the prior flagship program, the $1.5M, nine-grantee Stronger Together Collaborative (2022-2024) built with TAAF and an anonymous co-funder. The foundation has since been actively convening this new cohort: a Queens (Elmhurst) convening and a Jeremy Lin youth Q&A both took place May 12, 2026, and the foundation logged a distinct Los Angeles activation on February 23, 2026, consistent with the stated LA expansion. On the relationship-building side, the foundation continues its signature NBA All-Star Weekend grantee event — the February 22, 2025 edition brought 200+ grantee youth and families together with Jeremy Lin and NexPlayground for an invite-only Q&A and play session, a pattern likely to recur around NBA All-Star Weekend 2026 (Los Angeles). Leadership has remained stable: Jeremy Lin (Founder/Board Chair), Patricia Sun (President), Josh Lin (VP/Secretary), Phil Jung (Treasurer), and Executive Director Stephanie Hsu, with no reported leadership changes in the news coverage reviewed. An October 30, 2025 Inside Philanthropy feature ('Beyond Linsanity') profiled the foundation's faith-based giving philosophy and its evolution from Jeremy Lin's personal athletic platform into a structured, multi-year institutional grantmaker. No 2025 or 2026 Form 990-PF data was available in the DB bundle at the time of this report (most recent complete financials are FY2023, with FY2024 assets/revenue only), so dollar-figure grant activity for the current Thrive Together cohort is not yet independently verifiable beyond the foundation's own announcements.

Do not send an unsolicited proposal or LOI — the foundation states directly on its About page that it does not fund unsolicited requests, and no application portal, RFP calendar, or grant guidelines exist on its website. The single most effective entry point is indirect: build a public track record of cross-racial or intra-AAPI coalition work (bridge-building between AAPI, Black, and Latino communities, or organizing within underrepresented AAPI subgroups such as Nepali-speaking, Indo-Caribbean, Vietnamese, South Asian, or Cambodian communities) since that is the explicit selection language used for the Stronger Together Collaborative. Get visible to TAAF (The Asian American Foundation), which co-designed and co-funded Stronger Together and is a recurring institutional partner — a relationship with TAAF's grantmaking or community teams is a plausible indirect channel into the foundation's referral pipeline. Watch for announcements of new collaborative cohorts (Thrive Together launched October 2025 with a five-year runway through 2029) since new cohort formation, not a rolling calendar, is when the foundation actually adds grantees; a general inquiry to info@jeremylinfoundation.org timed near a cohort announcement is more likely to get a response than one sent mid-cycle. When and if a relationship does develop, come prepared to receive general operating/unrestricted support rather than pitch a narrow restricted project — nearly all 58 recorded grants are coded 'General & Unrestricted,' and typical grants run $30,000-$52,500 per payment, often repeated annually over a 3-5 year commitment. Emphasize youth population composition explicitly: the foundation's own eligibility language requires organizations serve youth populations that are 15-75% AAPI or other communities of color, so quantify your population data up front rather than assuming a plain AAPI-majority framing is required. Finally, don't mistake the foundation's substantial public presence (active Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, press coverage, and an NBA-platform-driven news cycle) for openness to cold contact — its visibility is a byproduct of the founder's celebrity and its convening-heavy model, not an invitation for general applicants.