M E Raker Foundation Inc.

M.E. Raker is a hyper-local, family/board-run private foundation ($10.74M in assets as of FY2024) that funds almost exclusively within Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana — 225 of 232 recorded grants (97%) went to Indiana organizations, with only a handful crossing into Ohio and Missouri, typically tied to named scholarship programs (e.g., Ashland University, Friends of the Ashbrook Center) rather than general out-of-area giving. The board is lean: President Stephen J. Williams and Secretary/Grants Coordinator Jennifer J. Pickard each draw roughly $30,000 in compensation, and VP/Treasurer Emily Pichon $18,000 — combined officer pay of well under $100,000 against a $10M+ endowment signals no professional program staff and a genuinely relationship-driven review process. Grant seekers should expect a relatively slow, deliberate cycle: quarterly board meetings, a stated 3-6 month decision window, and written notification either way. The Foundation explicitly favors applicants that can show a diversified funding base, meaningful volunteer engagement, and collaboration with other local nonprofits — language pulled directly from its guidelines page and worth echoing in a proposal's opening paragraphs. First-time applicants use the standard Grant Application; organizations that received funding within the past three years graduate to a combined application-and-report form, which strongly suggests the Foundation prizes multi-year relationships over one-off asks — a pattern borne out by its top-50 grantee list, where organizations like Turnstone Center, World Baseball Academy, and Bridge of Grace Compassionate Ministries show four recorded grants apiece across the observed window. New applicants should size their request to the Foundation's real operating band (median $5,000, average $7,983, cap effectively around $30,000) rather than treating the $10.7M asset base as a signal of capacity for large, one-time gifts. A short introductory call to Grants Coordinator Jen Pickard before submitting is a well-documented practice given the Foundation's small, accessible governance structure.

M.E. Raker's grantmaking is remarkably consistent and modest in scale. Across the most recent full grant cycle captured in Foundation records (61 grants), the median award is $5,000, the average is $7,983, and awards range from $1,000 to $30,000 — figures corroborated by the FY2025 990 filing showing $480,436 distributed to roughly 78-80 grantees (an implied average near $6,159). Over a longer, ~4-year observed window the platform's grantee database shows 232 total grants worth $1,791,840 (average $7,723), heavily concentrated in Indiana ($225 of 232 grants, or 97%), with small spillover into Ohio (4 grants) and Missouri (3 grants) tied to named scholarship funds. Annual grants-paid has held in a narrow band for over a decade: $383,000 (2011) → $431,080 (2013) → $437,500 (2015) → $383,000 (2019) → $421,500 (2020) → $486,940 (2021) → $500,400 (2022) → $480,436 (2025 per web filing) — essentially flat payout despite total assets growing from $7.99M (2011) to a 2021 peak of $11.39M before settling at $10.74M (2024), reflecting 2021's outsized $1.77M net investment gain followed by market normalization. By program area, the largest historical grantees cluster around four priorities named on the Foundation's own site: accessibility/disability services (Turnstone Center $65,000/4 grants, Easter Seals ARC of NE Indiana $52,500, Community Transportation Network's medical-transport program $40,000), youth development (World Baseball Academy $60,000, Youth For Christ of Northern Indiana $40,000), human services/basic needs (Bridge of Grace Compassionate Ministries $60,000, Associated Churches of Fort Wayne food-bank network $45,000, Society of St Vincent de Paul $35,000), and health (Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana $36,000, Super Shot immunization program $35,000). Education support (Bishop Luers High School and Bishop Dwenger High School scholarships, $40,000 and $20,000 respectively) and historic-preservation-flavored culture grants (Embassy Theatre Foundation window replacement $30,000, Friends of the Lincoln Collection $25,000) round out the portfolio — notably, the Foundation's own eligibility data states it does not fund "the arts," so these culture grants are best read as historic-preservation or education gifts tied to physical assets, not arts programming.

M.E. Raker sits at the small end of the Fort Wayne private-foundation landscape, dwarfed by the city's two dominant funders but comparable in scale to other family foundations.

M.E. Raker's asset base is closest to the Vann Family Foundation's, and both operate as lean, board-run shops with sub-$1M annual payouts, in contrast to Foellinger and the Community Foundation, which each move at least 15x more capital annually and maintain professional program staff. For grant seekers, this means Raker and Vann are realistic targets for a $5,000-$30,000 general-support or small-project ask, while Foellinger and CFGFW are better suited to larger, more competitive, multi-year capacity or capital requests.

The Foundation's most recent primary tax filing was submitted November 14, 2025, reporting $480,436 in grants across approximately 78-80 grantees — in line with the prior several years' run rate and showing no material change in payout strategy. Recent named grantees include World Baseball Academy, Community Transportation Network, and Bishop Luers High School, all of which also appear among the Foundation's historical top-50 recipients, indicating renewal of existing relationships rather than a shift toward new grantee categories. No press releases, local news coverage, or social media presence were found for the Foundation in 2025-2026 searches — results returned only nonprofit-database and 990-aggregator profiles (Instrumentl, ProPublica, Cause IQ, Candid), confirming this is a quiet, non-publicity-seeking family foundation. Leadership has been stable across the years captured in Foundation records: Stephen J. Williams (President), Jennifer J. Pickard (Secretary and, per the Foundation's own website, its Grants Coordinator), and Emily Pichon (Vice-President and Treasurer) hold the same three officer roles with no turnover evident. Total assets declined modestly from an $11.39M peak in fiscal year 2021 to $10.74M in fiscal year 2024, tracking broader market conditions rather than any change in organizational direction — net investment income swung from a $1.77M gain in 2021 to more modest levels in subsequent years. Grant seekers should not expect a large-scale new initiative or major asset infusion in the near term; the most useful recent signal is simply that the Foundation continues funding its established base of Fort Wayne human-service, health, disability, and youth-development partners at a consistent ~$480K-$500K annual clip.

Time your application to the quarterly cycle: the Foundation's FY2027 deadlines are July 24, October 30, January 29, and April 30 — with the next deadline (July 24) falling just days out from any application prepared today, plan for the following cycle (October 30) unless materials are already complete. Keep the written application to four pages and submit exactly three documents: the grant application itself, a project budget built on the Foundation's own template (not a generic budget), and your organization's current operating budget — incomplete document sets are an easy, avoidable rejection reason for a board this process-oriented. Use the correct form: if your organization received Raker funding within the past three years, use the combined application-and-report form rather than the standard new-applicant application — submitting the wrong form signals unfamiliarity with the Foundation's process. Mirror the Foundation's own stated priority language in your narrative — "diverse funding base," "volunteer engagement," and "collaborate with other organizations" are phrases pulled directly from its guidelines page, and proposals that explicitly address all three tend to align with what the board says it screens for. Size requests realistically: the effective range is $1,000-$30,000 with a median around $5,000, so a first-time ask above $20,000 should be reserved for a clearly-scoped capital or equipment item (the Foundation's largest single grants, like Embassy Theatre Foundation's $30,000 window replacement, are capital-specific, not general operating). General operating support is fundable — many of the top-50 historical recipients (Turnstone Center, Youth For Christ, Cass Housing) list "Operating support" as their purpose — so don't over-engineer a program-specific ask if unrestricted funding better fits your need. Geography is a hard filter: 97% of dollars stay in Fort Wayne/Allen County, so applicants outside that footprint should not apply unless the request is a named scholarship or program serving local residents specifically. Because this is a three-person, unstaffed board (no professional program officers), a short pre-application call or email to Grants Coordinator Jen Pickard (raker.jen@frontier.com, 260-436-2182) to confirm fit before investing time in a full application is standard practice and likely to be well received given the Foundation's small scale.