Kunes Family Foundation Inc.

Kunes Family Foundation Inc. is a corporate family foundation funded by Kunes Auto Group's pledge of 10% of pre-EBITDA profits, governed entirely by unpaid family and company directors: Gregg Kunes (President), Deborah Kunes (Vice President), and Scott Christian. All three are listed at $0 compensation, confirming this is a hands-on, personally-run vehicle rather than a staffed grants office — every check is signed off by Gregg Kunes and family. That structure shapes the whole approach: the foundation is flagged internally as "preselected_only," meaning the large majority of its 396 recorded grants go to organizations the family already knows through dealership relationships, employee nominations, or event sponsorships, not to unsolicited applicants. The foundation's own guidance confirms this — its first instruction to prospective grantees is to find a Kunes Auto Group employee or dealership general manager who can personally endorse the request before anything is submitted in writing. Grantee data backs this up: many organizations (Lakeland Community Church, Lake Geneva Youth Camp, Christian Life Church, Faith Christian School) appear twice, suggesting the foundation prefers building repeat relationships over one-off gifts to strangers. Typical grant size skews small — a median of just $1,000 across 152 tracked awards — meaning most support is modest, local, and sponsorship-like (event tables, small operating gifts), even though the top of the distribution includes seven-figure multi-year commitments like the $450,000 pledge to Aram Public Library. First-time applicants should not expect a formal LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline; there is no published deadline, funding cycle, or application form (application_instructions is explicitly blank). The realistic path in is either (1) a warm introduction through a local Kunes dealership, or (2) a short, plain submission through the Community Partner Portal or foundation@kunes.com that clearly states who is being served and why it matters to the specific community where Kunes operates a store.

The foundation's giving has grown roughly 20-fold in assets since 2019 ($350,980 → $7,010,249 in the FY2024 filing), funded almost entirely by fresh corporate contributions rather than investment returns — net investment income was $0 in 2020-2021 and just $1,335-$6,331 in the years it's reported, confirming this is a pass-through vehicle for Kunes Auto Group profits, not an endowed grantmaker. Total giving climbed from $824,179 (FY2019) to $1,150,656 (FY2020) to $2,721,847 (FY2021), and third-party aggregation of the 2023 Form 990 shows roughly $3.34M distributed across 203 grants — consistent with a foundation still scaling alongside its parent auto group's dealership footprint. Across the 396 grants captured in Granted's database, total disbursed is $5,426,222 at an average of $13,703 per grant, but the median tells a very different story: just $1,000, with a typical range of $63 to $110,500 (n=152). That gap between average and median reflects a barbell pattern — a large volume of small local sponsorships and community gifts, plus a small number of very large, multi-year capital commitments (Lakeland Community Church tops the list at $1,030,030 across 2 grants; Impact Foundation at $400,000; Eternal Word at $336,000). Purpose tags in the top-50 grantee list are dominated by religious support and ministry outreach (at least 18 of the top 50 recipients are churches or faith-based ministries), followed by education ($121,600 to Faith Christian School, $110,948 to Delavan Darien School District Foundation, $79,000 to Gateway Technical College Foundation), youth camping/character programs (Lake Geneva Youth Camp $204,000, Silver Birch Ranch $100,000), and health/medical (Mayo Clinic $240,000, Hazelden Betty Ford $11,808). Geographically, giving is concentrated where Kunes operates dealerships: Wisconsin (228 of 396 grants, 57.6%) and Illinois (94 grants, 23.7%) dominate, with smaller counts trailing into Indiana, Missouri, Arizona, California, Minnesota, Florida, Tennessee, and Texas as the auto group has expanded.

These five foundations are asset-matched (all clustered within ~$1,400 of each other at roughly $7.01M in total assets) but are otherwise a loose comparison set — they're scattered across Kansas, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Massachusetts with no public grantee data, website, or NTEE detail beyond the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" classification, suggesting they may be lower-activity family vehicles or donor-advised-style pass-throughs. Kunes stands out among this peer set as unusually transparent and active for its asset size: it has a live public website, a defined (if informal) application channel, and a documented multi-year grant history spanning 396 recorded gifts, none of which is visible for the other four. Grant seekers should treat the peer comparison less as "similarly-sized alternatives to apply to" and more as a signal that Kunes is atypically accessible — most $7M-asset family foundations in this bracket don't publish any application path at all.

The Kunes Family Foundation's largest recent documented commitment is a $450,000 pledge (July 2022, paid over three years) toward Aram Public Library's 23,162-square-foot expansion in Delavan, WI — Gregg Kunes framed the gift around reciprocity with the community: "when we invest in and take care of the communities we serve, then they will take care of us, too." Activity through 2026 has shifted toward a steady cadence of event sponsorships tied to individual dealership markets rather than single mega-gifts: a $10,000 donation to Tree House Child and Family Center along with Pot of Gold sponsorship of its Blue Ribbon Dinner and Bingo (March 13, 2026) and Platinum sponsorship of An Evening at the Derby (May 2, 2026); title sponsorship of the LGYC Golf Classic supporting Lake Geneva Youth Camp youth programs (May 22, 2026); sponsorship of Max Happy Fest in Woodstock, IL, focused on youth mental health, suicide prevention, and substance-use prevention across McHenry County (May 30, 2026); and sponsorship of Pulling for Hospice in Beloit, WI, benefiting Beloit Regional Hospice (June 7, 2026). No leadership changes are evident — Gregg Kunes, Deborah Kunes, and Scott Christian remain the sole directors, and no new formal grant program, portal overhaul, or published RFP was found. The pattern strongly suggests an organization whose giving calendar is built around the sponsorship needs of its individual dealership locations (Delavan, Lake Geneva, Woodstock, Beloit) as much as around a centrally planned grant cycle.

There is no formal application form, published deadline, or funding cycle — application_instructions on file is blank and the foundation itself confirms this informally. The single highest-leverage move is finding a Kunes Auto Group employee, salesperson, or general manager at a nearby dealership who can personally vouch for the request; the foundation's own guidance names this as the preferred entry point ahead of any written submission. Absent a personal connection, submit through the Community Partner Portal linked from the foundation's site, or email a short request directly to foundation@kunes.com — keep it to a concise statement of the organization's mission, the specific need, and the community it serves, since every grant is personally reviewed and approved by Gregg Kunes and family rather than a program staff. Geographic fit is a hard filter in practice: 81% of tracked grants (322 of 396) went to organizations in Wisconsin or Illinois, so applicants outside a Kunes dealership market (WI, IL, IN, MO, AZ, CA, MN, FL, TN, TX) face materially longer odds unless the ask ties to a national partner like Mayo Clinic or Samaritan's Purse. Framing matters: faith-based language and church/ministry affiliation appear disproportionately among top grantees (18+ of the top 50), and "helping the needy," widows, orphans, and family-crisis support are explicitly cited themes — proposals that speak to direct human need or community safety net rather than abstract mission statements will read as a better fit. Expect most awards to be modest (median $1,000) unless the ask is a defined capital project with a multi-year pledge structure, following the Aram Public Library model ($450,000 over three years for a named, physical community landmark). A common mistake would be treating this like a large staffed foundation and submitting a lengthy formal LOI/proposal packet — the evidence points to this being a fast, relationship-driven, plain-language process, and over-formality is more likely to slow a response than help it. Event sponsorship (galas, golf outings, fun runs) is also a proven entry channel distinct from a direct grant ask, and several 2026 examples show the foundation saying yes to sponsorship asks tied to hospice, youth camps, and youth mental health causes in its dealership towns.