Lang Family Foundation

Lang Family Foundation is a closely held, four-person family board — G Thomas Lang (President/Secretary/Treasurer), Patricia P Lang (Vice President), Bruce E Lang (Assistant Treasurer), and Sean P Lang (Assistant Secretary), all serving without compensation — operating out of Saegertown, Crawford County, Pennsylvania. With $9.2 million in assets and roughly $330,000-$590,000 in annual giving since 2019, it functions less like an institutional grantmaker with open RFPs and more like a family's personal philanthropy vehicle. The database record shows no application form URL, no funding cycle, and no published deadline, and the application_instructions field is literally marked "__none__." Third-party aggregators (Instrumentl, Cause IQ) explicitly describe it as not accepting unsolicited proposals, with funding awarded by invitation only — consistent with the "preselected_only" flag in our own data.

The grantee list confirms this pattern. Of $1,238,000 in cumulative giving tracked across 16 grants, $1,050,000 (85%) went to a single recipient — Cleveland Clinic Foundation — across three separate grants, almost certainly reflecting a personal or family connection (a board member's medical history, service on an affiliated board, or similar) rather than a competitive review. The remainder splits between hometown Saegertown institutions (the volunteer fire department, the high school, French Creek Valley Conservancy) and a handful of niche personal interests (Wild Sheep Foundation, a hunting/wildlife conservation group, at $100,000; Golf Fore Africa at $28,000).

For grant seekers, this means cold applications are unlikely to succeed. The foundation is best approached by organizations that already have — or can credibly build — a personal relationship with a Lang family member, particularly ones rooted in Crawford County, PA, northeast Ohio, or the causes above. Organizations without an existing tie should not expect a portal or LOI process to open a door; instead, look for warm introductions through Saegertown-area civic networks, Cleveland Clinic philanthropy staff, or shared board memberships. First-time applicants should treat any outreach as relationship-building, not a proposal submission — a short, personal letter of introduction mailed to the foundation's registered address is more appropriate than a formal grant application packet.

Lang Family Foundation's giving is small in scale and highly concentrated. Across the 16 grants captured in IRS Form 990-PF filings, the average award is $77,375, but that figure is skewed heavily by the three Cleveland Clinic Foundation grants totaling $1,050,000 — excluding those, the other 13 grants average just $14,462 and range from $5,000 to $28,000. The foundation's own "typical grant size" data for its most recent tracked filing year shows a median of $5,000, an average of $107,600, and a range of $5,000 to $500,000 across 5 grants — again reflecting one or two outsized awards pulling the average well above the median.

Annual total giving has fluctuated with investment performance: $171,161 (2018), $386,538 (2019), $331,349 (2020), $590,726 (2021), $455,060 (2022), and $439,303 (2023) — a nearly 3.5x swing tied more to the foundation's net investment income (which ranged from $145,593 to $595,400 over the same years) than to any stated grantmaking strategy. Assets grew from $8.3 million (2019) to $9.2 million (2023), aided by an $8.3 million contribution the foundation received in 2018 that roughly doubled its asset base in a single year.

Geographically, grants cluster in Pennsylvania (8 of 16 tracked grants), followed by Ohio (3), Arizona (2), and one each in Florida, Montana, and New York — consistent with the foundation's stated geographic focus of PA, OH, and AZ, and likely reflecting where family members live or have ties (Saegertown, PA is roughly 30 miles from Cleveland, OH, which fits the health-system relationship). By purpose, funding is almost entirely unrestricted "general fund" support rather than program-specific or capital grants — every grant in the top-10 recipient list is tagged GENERAL FUND, suggesting the foundation prefers to write a check to a trusted institution rather than fund defined projects with outcomes-based reporting.

These five peers were selected because they sit within roughly $300K-$500K of Lang's $9.2M asset base and share its "Public Benefit" NTEE classification, but our dataset does not capture their annual giving levels, stated focus areas, or application processes, so a like-for-like comparison on generosity or accessibility isn't possible from this data alone — treat the table as an asset-size benchmark, not a full competitive profile. What is clear is that Lang Family Foundation sits at the small end of the private-foundation spectrum: a $9.2M asset base with sub-$600K annual giving and a four-person, uncompensated family board puts it firmly in the "closely held family" tier rather than the professionally staffed institutional tier, a structure likely shared by these similarly-sized peers, since foundations under $10M in assets rarely support dedicated program staff. Applicants should treat all six as long-shot, relationship-dependent prospects rather than as a diversified, portal-based application strategy.

Coverage of Lang Family Foundation in the trade and philanthropy press is essentially nonexistent — as a four-person, uncompensated family board with no communications staff, it does not issue press releases or program announcements. The most current verifiable financial signal comes from its most recent indexed Form 990-PF activity: FY2025 filings referenced by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer show revenue of $629,662 and expenses of $606,222, with charitable disbursements comprising roughly 93.5% of expenses and net assets holding around $9.2 million — consistent with the foundation's historical pattern of directing the large majority of its budget straight to grants rather than overhead. Revenue composition (contributions ~47.6%, dividends ~39.3%, asset sales ~13%) suggests the family continues to make periodic contributions to the corpus alongside investment income, rather than relying solely on endowment growth.

Third-party grant-tracking aggregators report differing counts for 2025 activity — one lists roughly $567,000 distributed to 15 grantees, another cites only 6 grants for the year — a discrepancy likely explained by aggregators indexing different 990-PF schedules or partial-year data rather than a real change in the foundation's behavior. No leadership changes, new program areas, or major gift announcements were found; G Thomas Lang, Patricia P Lang, Bruce E Lang, and Sean P Lang appear to remain the sole officers, unchanged across the filing years reviewed. Given the size and structure of this foundation, the most useful "recent activity" signal for applicants is simply that giving has remained in the $400K-$600K annual range and concentrated in the same handful of causes for several consecutive years, with no evidence of an imminent strategy shift.

Treat this as a closed, relationship-driven funder rather than an open grant program. The foundation's own record lists no application form URL, no funding cycle, and no deadline, and third-party aggregators explicitly state it does not accept unsolicited proposals — funding is by invitation only. Important caution: the website on file (langfamilyfoundation.org) resolves to a different, unrelated Lang Family Foundation based in Racine, Wisconsin, affiliated with A&E Incorporated, which does run a formal online/PDF application process (contact julie.lang@aetools.com, board meets 3-4 times a year). Do not submit that foundation's application form expecting it to reach the Saegertown, PA Lang Family Foundation (EIN 46-3945957) — the two are unrelated organizations that happen to share a name, and no independently verified web presence was located for the Saegertown foundation itself.

Given that, the highest-leverage approach is a warm introduction. Because 85% of tracked giving has gone to Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and the balance to Saegertown/Crawford County, PA civic institutions (fire department, schools, land conservancy) and a small set of personal-interest causes (wildlife/hunting conservation, golf-for-a-cause charity work in Africa), organizations with a genuine tie to one of these threads — a Crawford County nonprofit, a Cleveland Clinic-affiliated program, a conservation or sportsmen's organization — have far better odds than a generic national nonprofit with no local or personal connection.

Practical steps: skip online portals entirely; there isn't one verified for this entity. Mail a brief, personal letter (not a full proposal packet) to 20619 Brown Rd, Saegertown, PA 16433, addressed to G Thomas Lang as President, or call (814) 724-7710 to ask how the family prefers to be approached. Keep the ask modest and specific — most non-Cleveland Clinic grants have run $5,000-$28,000 for general operating support, not program-restricted funding, so a simple, unrestricted-support request in that range is more consistent with their giving pattern than a multi-year program grant proposal. Because every grant in the sample is tagged "general fund," lead with organizational credibility and community reputation rather than a detailed logic model or outcomes framework — this board does not appear to evaluate grantees on formal metrics.