Kamps Family Foundation

Kamps Family Foundation is a young, closely-held private foundation (IRS ruling date March 2023) based in Wilmington, DE, administered through Foundation Source — a third-party compliance service used by thousands of small family foundations rather than a staffed grantmaking institution. There is no mission statement on file, no NTEE program focus beyond the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" classification, no grants page, no LOI portal, and the database's own `application_instructions` field is explicitly blank ("__none__"). The board consists entirely of Kamps family members — John, Kacey, and Kamryn Kamps — plus an outside treasurer, Bracknell Baker, and none draw compensation, a strong signal this is a personal giving vehicle, not a public program with staff who field cold inquiries. Grantseekers should treat this as a relationship-gated funder, not an open-application one: the realistic path to funding is a pre-existing personal, professional, faith, alumni, or community connection to a Kamps family director, not a generic proposal submission (there is no portal to submit one to). Organizations that do have such a connection should approach informally — a warm introduction or direct letter to a named director referencing shared community ties — rather than a formal grant application. First-time applicants without any personal link should not spend limited grant-writing capacity here; conversion odds for cold outreach to a foundation with this administrative profile are very low. That said, the foundation is actively funded and growing: assets rose from an initial $5.0M contribution in 2022 to $5.54M by the end of 2024, with a fresh $594,100 gift added that year, indicating the family intends to keep feeding the vehicle and increasing its giving capacity going forward. Organizations already in the Kamps family's orbit (Wilmington/Delaware civic, faith, or education institutions are a reasonable geographic guess given the foundation's registered address, though this is not confirmed by any published geographic-focus field) are the best-positioned prospects. Everyone else should deprioritize this funder relative to peer foundations with published LOI processes and track records of unsolicited giving.

No line-item grant recipient data is publicly available for this foundation — its Form 990-PF schedules of grants paid are not exposed through the standard nonprofit-data APIs, so a median grant size or per-recipient breakdown cannot be calculated. What the filings do show is a clear ramp in aggregate giving: $0 in charitable distributions in fiscal year 2022 (the foundation's first, seed-funding year, when it received a $5,000,000 contribution and made no grants), $137,660 in grants paid against $174,859 in total giving for fiscal year 2023, and $250,558 in charitable disbursements (98.5% of total expenses) for fiscal year 2024. Total assets grew in step, from $5,003,224 (2022) to $5,050,726 (2023) to $5,538,942 (2024), helped by both investment returns (net investment income of $222,281 in 2023) and a new $594,100 family contribution booked in 2024. Applying the IRS-mandated ~5% minimum-distribution requirement for private foundations to the current asset base implies a sustainable go-forward giving capacity in the range of $270,000–$280,000 per year, roughly consistent with the 2024 actual of $250,558 — suggesting the foundation has now reached, or is close to, its steady-state annual payout level after two years of under-distributing relative to its endowment size. There is no data on program-area or geographic breakdown of giving; the foundation's NTEE code (T22, Private Independent Foundations) and category (Philanthropy & Grantmaking) describe its own legal form, not the causes it funds, and no `focus_areas`, `geographic_focus`, or `typical_grant_size` fields are populated in either the foundation's own record or its public filings. Grantseekers should treat total annual capacity (~$250K–$280K, likely split across a small, undisclosed number of recipients given the family-directed model) as the only reliable financial benchmark available.

Kamps Family Foundation sits in a cluster of near-identically-sized ($5.5M asset) private foundations classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, none of which have a published website or public application process in this dataset — a pattern consistent with small, single-family, Foundation Source-style vehicles rather than institutional grantmakers.

All five peers share Kamps's asset scale almost exactly (within $20K of $5.53–5.54M) and the same broad NTEE category, but none list a website, mission, or application process either — this is a structural feature of small family foundations at this asset tier, not something specific to Kamps. Grantseekers should not expect any foundation in this peer set to behave like a program-driven funder; due diligence (personal-network mapping, board-name searches, state charity-registry filings) matters far more here than proposal quality.

No press releases, news coverage, or social media activity were found for Kamps Family Foundation in any 2025–2026 search — expected for a foundation with no communications function and no staff. The most concrete recent signal is administrative: the foundation's fiscal-year-2024 Form 990-PF, filed September 11, 2025, shows total assets climbing to $5,538,942 on the strength of a new $594,100 contribution from the family (on top of $218,425 in interest income and $24,700 in dividends), and charitable disbursements rising to $250,558. The same filing shows the governing board expanding from John Kamps alone (as director, president, secretary, and treasurer with $0 compensation) to a four-person board: John, Kacey, and Kamryn Kamps as directors, plus Bracknell Baker as an outside treasurer — still entirely uncompensated. This pattern (rising contributions, rising payout, broadening family board) reads as a foundation still in its build-out phase two to three years after its March 2023 IRS ruling date, rather than a settled program with a fixed annual cycle. Because the foundation publishes no grants list, newsletter, or annual report, grantseekers have no way to track its funding decisions in real time beyond the annual Form 990-PF filing, which typically posts to ProPublica and Candid roughly 9–12 months after each fiscal year-end.

There is no published application process for this foundation — the `application_instructions` field is explicitly empty and no LOI portal, RFP calendar, or grants-page URL exists anywhere in its record or on the web. Practical guidance for this specific funder type: (1) Do not submit a cold, generic grant application; there is no mechanism for the foundation to receive or process one, and family-directed vehicles of this kind typically fund organizations the family already knows personally. (2) If your organization has any tie — board, staff, volunteer, alumni, congregation, or civic — to John, Kacey, or Kamryn Kamps, or to the Wilmington, DE area (the foundation's registered address), lead with that connection directly rather than a formal proposal. (3) A short, personal letter (not a full grant application) addressed to a named director, explaining the specific relationship and the concrete outcome funding would produce, is more likely to get read than a portal-style submission, because none of the usual portal infrastructure exists. (4) Avoid spending significant proposal-writing time here without a known relationship — with total 2024 giving of roughly $250,000 across an unknown (likely small) number of recipients, capacity is limited and, given the closely-held board, largely pre-allocated. (5) Watch for the annual Form 990-PF filing (typically posted to ProPublica/Candid 9–12 months after each December fiscal year-end) as the only public signal of the foundation's actual grantmaking; a jump in disbursements or a new program note in a future filing would be the first indication of any shift toward more open giving. (6) Double-check you are not accidentally following guidance written for the similarly named Kampe Family Foundation of Sandpoint, ID — its published $250–$14,000 grant range and LOI process belong to a different, unrelated organization and do not apply here.