Kelly Heritage Foundation Inc.

Kelly Heritage Foundation is a mission-locked institutional foundation, not a general community grantmaker — it functions as the philanthropic arm of Port San Antonio, created to turn the legacy of the decommissioned Kelly Air Force Base into STEM/STEAM career pipelines for the city's aerospace, cybersecurity, robotics, and space-science sectors. Every grantee identified in IRS filings and web reporting — San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology ($205,600), Dee Howard Foundation ($150,000 for a drone-technology curriculum), and the WEX Foundation ($465,000 combined across two LCATS space-science cohorts) — sits inside this same Port San Antonio / Tech Port ecosystem. A smaller carve-out ($46,710 across three grants) goes to the City of San Antonio for historic preservation of Kelly's military buildings and monuments and park upkeep on the former base, reflecting the foundation's namesake 'heritage' mandate alongside its education focus.

First-time applicants should understand this is a closed, relationship-driven funder: its board is chaired by community and Port San Antonio-affiliated leadership, and Port San Antonio's President/CEO Jim Perschbach personally sits on the Kelly Heritage board and is quoted championing specific grants. There is no public RFP, portal, or published funding cycle. The realistic path in is a warm introduction through Port San Antonio, Tech Port, or an existing grantee (WEX Foundation, Dee Howard Foundation) rather than a cold letter of inquiry. Grants function less like competitively awarded contracts and more like sponsorships of specific, named programs the foundation has already helped conceive — its own description of the Dee Howard partnership notes the foundation 'immediately raised its hand to help' launch the program.

With only six grants and four distinct recipients identified in the most recent tracked year, this is a low-volume, high-conviction funder: expect a handful of six-figure, often multi-year commitments rather than a broad portfolio of small grants. Organizations outside the aerospace/tech-workforce/Kelly-heritage lane are unlikely to be competitive regardless of merit. Prospective partners should lead with concrete youth or workforce outcomes tied to the aerospace, cyber, robotics, or space-science pipeline, cite specific participant counts, and be prepared to co-locate or co-brand programming with Tech Port/Port San Antonio.

Based on FY2023 IRS filings — the foundation's most recent complete reporting year — Kelly Heritage Foundation reported $465,600 in grants paid against total assets of $8,639,044, down from $10,105,760 in FY2020, a roughly 14% asset decline over three years as grantmaking has outpaced the $432,500 in FY2023 contributions received. Total giving reported to the IRS was $1,127,171 in FY2023 (a figure that includes non-grant exempt-purpose spending beyond direct grants), following $712,281 in FY2022 — a year with $0 in grants paid, suggesting a pause or accrual period — and $848,805 in FY2021. History also shows a striking outlier: FY2019 recorded $8,454,322 in both revenue and grants paid, almost certainly a one-time pass-through transaction tied to the foundation's founding or an initial capitalization/distribution event rather than a representative giving year.

Among the four distinct recipients captured in matched grantee data ($512,310 across 6 grants, averaging $128,078 per grant), amounts range from $46,710 (City of San Antonio, split across 3 grants for historic preservation and park maintenance in the Kelly district) up to $205,600 (San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology). The median grant to a single organization is roughly $130,000. STEM/workforce education dominates: San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology ($205,600), Dee Howard Foundation ($150,000), and WEX Foundation ($110,000 in this dataset, though press coverage shows $465,000 cumulative across two award cycles) together account for over 90% of tracked giving, with historic preservation/civic infrastructure taking the remaining roughly 9%.

Geographically, 100% of tracked grants stay within San Antonio, TX — there is no evidence of giving outside Bexar County. Press coverage corroborates a cumulative total of 'over $880,000' contributed to STEM/STEAM programs since 2023, concentrated in three to four named initiatives rather than spread across dozens of smaller grants. This confirms a concentrated, few-large-bets funding style rather than a broad-based grants program, and applicants should expect competition to be less about volume of applicants and more about fit within an already-small circle of partners.

Kelly Heritage Foundation sits in a tight asset band ($7.6M-$8.6M) alongside several similarly sized foundations classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, though its identity is far more operationally distinct than its size-matched peers.

Unlike its five nearest asset-band peers — mostly family or single-purpose foundations with no public giving data, and only one (Rochford Foundation) with even a website — Kelly Heritage Foundation is unusual in having an active public website, a named institutional affiliation (Port San Antonio), and a clearly defined thematic mandate spanning aerospace/tech workforce development and historic preservation of a specific military site. That makes it more transparent about its priorities than its immediate peer cohort, even though its actual application process is just as closed and invitation-driven as the rest — none of the six foundations in this comparison offer a public application path.

The most substantive recent activity falls in the 2023-2025 window. In 2024, the foundation awarded $315,000 to the WEX Foundation to fund two additional LCATS (Lunar Caves Analog Test Sites) cohorts of 35 students each, bringing cumulative WEX Foundation support to $465,000 since an initial $150,000 award in 2023. In the same period, Kelly Heritage contributed $150,000 to the Dee Howard Foundation to launch a two-year drone-technology curriculum — covering assembly, repair, engineering, design, FAA regulations, and pilot certification — for over 200 San Antonio middle and high schoolers, and more than $200,000 to fully fund a 'Build Your Future' computer-build day serving 100 students in partnership with the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology.

Port San Antonio's own coverage states the foundation has directed more than $880,000 to San Antonio STEM/STEAM programming since 2023, reaching nearly 1,000 K-12 students. A recent board addition — philanthropy-sector executive Shantel Wilkins — was announced by Port San Antonio, suggesting the board is actively building out fundraising and development capacity.

No distinct 2025-2026 grant announcements beyond continuation of the LCATS and drone-curriculum programs surfaced in this research. The foundation's IRS-reported FY2023 grants-paid figure ($465,600) remains the most recent audited data point available; press-reported 2024-2025 activity (the $315,000 LCATS award, in particular) will not appear in official filings until a future 990 is released, so applicants should treat the web-reported figures as directionally accurate but not yet independently confirmed by tax filings.

There is no public application form, LOI portal, RFP calendar, or funding cycle listed on kellyheritage.org or in IRS filings — the foundation's own application-instructions field is blank in available records. Treat this as a fully invitation-based funder rather than one that accepts unsolicited proposals. The single most effective strategy is building a relationship with Port San Antonio / Tech Port directly, since the foundation's board draws heavily from that ecosystem and Port San Antonio's President/CEO Jim Perschbach personally sits on the Kelly Heritage board and is quoted championing specific grants in foundation press coverage. Organizations already embedded in Port San Antonio's tenant network, or that can position a program as physically or programmatically connected to the Tech Port campus, have a structural advantage over outside applicants.

Every publicly confirmed grant funds a named, multi-year workforce or education initiative in aerospace, cybersecurity/IT, robotics, drones, or space science — not general operating support, capital campaigns, or causes outside that lane. Use the foundation's own language when making a case: 'life-changing educational and career opportunities,' 'Gen-Next tech talent,' and explicit ties to Kelly AFB's legacy or Tech Port's future. The one adjacent-but-different track is heritage/historic preservation tied specifically to the former Kelly AFB site (monuments, markers, commemorative bricks, public parks in the Kelly district) — the $46,710 across three City of San Antonio grants shows this is a live but much smaller lane than STEM education.

The common mistake to avoid is treating this as a general San Antonio community foundation and submitting a cold, broad-purpose proposal — its roughly $512,000 in recently tracked grants went to exactly four organizations, all pre-existing partners. Instead, identify which current grantee (WEX Foundation, Dee Howard Foundation, San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology) or Port San Antonio staff contact could make an introduction, and frame any ask as extending a program model the foundation has already funded — another LCATS-style cohort, another drone-curriculum cohort, another computer-build day — rather than proposing something entirely novel. Given the FY2022 year with $0 grants paid, timing an ask around active board fundraising pushes (the foundation has run public fundraisers, e.g., 'Building Futures') may also improve odds versus approaching during a quiet accrual period.