Lee Park Foundation

Lee Park Foundation is a small, founder-directed private foundation ($3.58M in assets as of its FY2024 filing) established in 2022 by the family of Dr. Jang Ho Lee, a Buddhist practitioner with a PhD in Asian medicine (herbal science and acupuncture), in gratitude for the nursing and clinical care he received at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, NJ, before his death in October 2022. Unlike a conventional open-application grantmaker, Lee Park runs two closed-loop giving channels rather than a competitive RFP process for the broader nonprofit sector. The flagship program is the Lotus Award for Nursing and Clinical Care, a nomination-based $10,000 cash award (plus a handcrafted silver lotus pin) given annually to individual nurses, patient care associates, surgical technicians, and other frontline clinical staff — not to organizations — at a small, growing roster of partner hospitals: Holy Name Medical Center (the founding partner) and, new as of 2026, The Brooklyn Hospital Center. Nominations come from patients, families, and colleagues, not from grant-seeking nonprofits. Second is a smaller stream of direct, founder-selected donations to organizations tied to the family's community and cultural interests — a reported $101,000 in 'education equity' giving announced in December 2025 that named the Korean School of New Jersey, and a single $5,000 grant to Bronx Letters Foundation for education recorded in FY2023 IRS filings. The foundation's own listing marks application_instructions as 'none' and third-party sources confirm it does not accept unsolicited proposals — funding is by invitation only. For the vast majority of nonprofits, a cold LOI or standard proposal pipeline will not work here. The most realistic paths in are: (1) if you are a hospital, exploring a Lotus Award partnership, or encouraging grateful patients/families/colleagues to nominate an exceptional nurse or clinical staff member at an existing partner hospital; or (2) if you serve education-equity or Korean-American community populations in the NY/NJ area, building the kind of personal or cultural connection that has characterized the family's past discretionary gifts. With officer compensation reported at $0 in FY2023 and revenue driven by one large $3.2M contribution that year, this reads as a small, unstaffed family vehicle still in its early build-out phase rather than a scaled competitive grantmaker.

Lee Park Foundation's financial trajectory shows FY2023 total revenue of $3,219,059, almost entirely from a single $3,200,000 contribution received plus $19,059 in net investment income, against total assets of $3,317,453. Reported grants_paid that year were $5,000, while total_giving (which likely folds in program/award payments beyond the 990 grants schedule) was $25,529 — the gap suggests Lotus Award cash prizes may be booked differently than organizational grants on the tax return. By FY2024, assets had grown modestly to $3,578,134 on much lower revenue ($197,774, consistent with the founding-year mega-contribution not repeating); grants_paid and total_giving for FY2024 are not yet publicly reported (null in the most recent filing). The only organizational grant captured in IRS-sourced grantee data is a single $5,000 award to Bronx Letters Foundation (Bronx, NY) for education — meaning the DB's grantee stats (1 grant, $5,000 total, $5,000 average) reflect just one data point, not a program. Web-sourced 2025-2026 activity tells a fuller story: the Lotus Award paid $10,000 cash to each of at least four named recipients in 2025 (Patrick Purcell, Donna Morgan-Stephen, Audrey Ridwald, Jennie DeCastro) — roughly $40,000 across that cycle — and a separate $101,000 'education equity' announcement in December 2025 named the Korean School of New Jersey as a recipient. Combined, disclosed 2025 giving activity (~$140,000+) runs well ahead of the $5,000 captured in the most recent processed 990, a common lag between filed tax data and current-year giving. Grant sizes cluster into two tiers: fixed $10,000 individual clinical-staff awards, and organizational gifts ranging from $5,000 (Bronx Letters Foundation) up to a reported $101,000 aggregate (education-equity, Dec 2025, likely spread across more than one recipient). Geography concentrates in the NY/NJ corridor — Teaneck, NJ (Holy Name), Brooklyn, NY, and the Bronx. By purpose, education accounts for the sole IRS-reported organizational grant, alongside a fast-growing but organizationally invisible healthcare-workforce-recognition line (Lotus Award) that never appears in 990 grantee data because it pays individuals.

All six foundations sit within an unusually tight ~$3,000 band of reported assets ($3.576M-$3.579M), which indicates this peer set was matched on asset size within the 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category rather than on program focus — four of the five peers have no public website at all, and none disclose a giving program or application process. Lee Park is the outlier of the group: it is the only one with an active public-facing website, a named signature program (the Lotus Award), press coverage, and a documented (if closed) giving pattern, giving grant seekers meaningfully more visibility into its behavior than into any of its size-matched peers.

Lee Park Foundation's most visible recent activity centers on the Lotus Award for Nursing and Clinical Care. On October 1, 2025, Daily Voice covered the award ceremony at Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck, NJ, where three of four 2025 recipients — Patrick Purcell (RN), Donna Morgan-Stephen (Residential Care Associate, palliative care), and Audrey Ridwald (Residential Care Associate) — were profiled alongside a fourth, Jennie DeCastro (night-shift ICU nurse); each received a $10,000 cash award and a handcrafted lotus pin. On December 31, 2025, the foundation's own News & Stories page announced $101,000 in donations to support education equity, naming the Korean School of New Jersey as a recipient — the foundation's most sizable disclosed organizational giving to date. On May 31, 2026, the foundation announced its 2026 Lotus Award recipients under the theme 'Compassion, Service, and Clinical Excellence.' Separately, The Brooklyn Hospital Center announced it had joined as the program's second partner hospital, opening 2026 nominations (for Brooklyn-based nurses, Assistant Patient Care Coordinators, Patient Care Associates, and Surgical Technicians) through September 16, 2026, with winners to be announced October 14, 2026 — indicating the award is scaling geographically beyond its original New Jersey home. No leadership changes, new staff hires, or shifts toward an open competitive grants program for nonprofits were found in available sources; the foundation remains small, closely held, and centered on its two existing giving channels.

Lee Park Foundation does not run an open, competitive grants program for nonprofit organizations and does not accept unsolicited proposals — its own listing marks application_instructions as 'none,' and funding is by invitation only. That reframes what 'applying' means here. First, if you are a hospital or health system, the realistic entry point is proposing a Lotus Award partnership; the program has added one new partner hospital roughly every few years (Holy Name Medical Center from the 2022 founding, The Brooklyn Hospital Center added in 2026), so administrators should reach out directly to the foundation rather than wait for a public call. Second, if you are a nurse, patient care associate, surgical technician, or other clinical staff member at a partner hospital, you cannot apply for yourself — awards are nomination-based, submitted by patients, family members, or colleagues through the partner hospital's own nomination form (for example, The Brooklyn Hospital Center's dedicated Lotus Award nomination page). Encourage grateful patients and families to submit a nomination; the 2026 cycle ran nominations through September 16 with winners announced October 14, a cadence likely to repeat annually. Nomination narratives should emphasize compassion, resilience, and going 'above and beyond' — the award's stated criteria — rather than clinical metrics or institutional achievements. Third, if you lead an education-equity or Korean-American community nonprofit, note that the foundation's only two known organizational gifts (Bronx Letters Foundation, $5,000; Korean School of New Jersey, part of a $101,000 December 2025 announcement) reflect personal and cultural affinity giving tied to the Lee family's own ties to education and the Korean-American community in the NY/NJ area — a genuine relationship (board introductions, shared community events, direct correspondence) is far more likely to succeed than a cold letter of inquiry. A common mistake would be treating Lee Park as a standard $3-4M family foundation with a typical open education or health RFP; in reality its giving is bifurcated between fixed $10,000 individual cash prizes and occasional large discretionary organizational gifts, and neither channel runs through a competitive proposal process. Finally, monitor leeparkfoundation.org/news-stories periodically — the foundation has expanded its footprint (new hospital partner, new named awards) roughly annually since 2022, so new partnership windows may open even as core funding stays closed to cold applicants.