Making Waves Foundation Inc.

Making Waves Foundation operates as a private operating foundation (IRS Foundation Code 03), which is the single most important fact any grant seeker must internalize before approaching this organization. It primarily runs its own charitable programs — Making Waves Academy, a 5-12 public charter school serving 1,000+ students, and a College and Career Success Program supporting 430+ college students — rather than distributing grants to external nonprofits through open competitions.

External grants paid totaled $191,500 in FY2022 and have averaged approximately $131,343 per year across the five most recent years on record. Every confirmed external recipient shares geography and mission with the foundation: Making Waves Academy (technically a related entity) received 4 grants totaling $631,950, and West Contra Costa Unified School District received 2 grants totaling $20,000. This is not a foundation that scatters funding across diverse organizations or geographies — it invests in a tightly defined ecosystem.

For institutional partners — school districts, community colleges, universities, workforce training providers — the right posture is partnership, not grant application. The foundation maintains a VP of Partnerships role (Justin Douglas, jdouglas@making-waves.org) specifically to handle institutional relationships. Universities seeking to recruit Making Waves students or provide wraparound support are the clearest fit; corporate and health system partners aligned with the HealthX Fellowship pathway represent a newer and actively growing opportunity.

Chief Advancement Officer Darcy Deming (compensated at $286,560 as of the most recent filing) is the executive responsible for external affairs and philanthropic relationships. CEO Patrick O'Donnell ($304,159 compensation) sets overall strategy. Melissa Fries, Executive Director of College and Alumni Programs ($482,384 — the organization's highest-paid employee), controls the college pipeline that is most relevant to university and employer partners.

First-time applicants should know there is no published RFP cycle, no grant portal, and no listed application deadline for external institutional grants. Relationship development precedes any formal ask. The foundation responds to demonstrated alignment with its specific mission — educational equity for low-income, first-generation students of color in Richmond and Contra Costa County, CA — not organizational prestige or national reputation.

Making Waves Foundation's financial profile diverges sharply from traditional grantmakers and requires careful interpretation. The foundation reported total giving of $21,053,227 in both FY2022 and FY2023, and $19,032,804 in FY2021 — but this figure represents internally-operated program spending, not grants distributed to external organizations. Program expenses in the most recent year reached $17,166,917, covering direct costs of running the Academy and College and Career Success Program.

True external grants paid are far smaller: $191,500 (FY2022), $160,311 (FY2021), $78,179 (FY2020), $139,828 (FY2019), and $87,099 (FY2018). The five-year average is $131,383 per year. The FY2020 figure represents a COVID-era low; the trend since has been upward. Transaction-level data identifies 6 total external grants with a mean of $108,658 and a range from approximately $10,000 (individual West Contra Costa USD grants) to several hundred thousand dollars for the affiliated Academy.

Assets have been stable at $241-$256 million across 2018-2023, with the $252,006,095 figure appearing in both FY2022 and FY2023 filings. The asset base is not growing rapidly — net investment income was $0 in FY2022 and FY2023, with growth driven entirely by contributions received ($23.6M in FY2023, up from $8.1M in COVID-year 2020). FY2018 was a historical outlier: contributions spiked to $102.7 million, producing the highest-ever giving figure of $31.4 million that year.

Geographically, 100% of known external grants are California-based, concentrated in Richmond and West Contra Costa County. No evidence of national or out-of-state grantmaking exists in the available record.

By program focus, the foundation historically concentrated all spending on K-12 education and college access. As of 2025-2026, a meaningful portion of program budget is flowing to healthcare career pathways (HealthX Fellowship, Pathways to Health, Hands-On Health), representing a structural shift in funding priorities that creates new partnership openings for health workforce organizations.

Making Waves occupies a distinctive position among similarly-sized education foundations: it directs nearly all of its resources to internally-operated programs rather than external grants, making direct peer comparison on grantmaking volume misleading. The five peer foundations identified by asset size ($247-261M) all share the education NTEE category but represent different geographic focuses and application models.

Making Waves stands apart from this peer group in two critical ways. First, its operating model means its $21M in annual program spending stays almost entirely in-house — peers with comparable assets typically distribute a larger share externally. Second, its hyperlocal focus on a single city (Richmond, CA) is unusually concentrated for a foundation of this asset size. For grant seekers, the implication is clear: unless you serve Richmond-area students, this foundation is unlikely to be a funding prospect regardless of program quality.

The most significant recent development is the June 2025 publication of both the FY2024 Form 990-PF and full financial audit report directly on making-waves.org — this level of transparency is notable for a private operating foundation and suggests a commitment to public accountability that applicants should reference in outreach.

In December 2025, the foundation opened its annual College and Career Success Program applications (December 1, 2025 opening; January 23, 2026 close), consistent with prior-year cycles. Family and Student Orientation was held December 1, 2025. This cadence has been stable, confirming the foundation's operational rhythm.

The inaugural HealthX Fellowship cohort launch is the most consequential programmatic development in recent memory. Combined with the Pathways to Health and Hands-On Health programs — all showing active applications in early 2026 — the foundation is clearly building a healthcare career pipeline that rivals its college access work in strategic prominence.

No leadership changes were identified in web research. CEO Patrick O'Donnell, CFO Rong Clark, and Chief Advancement Officer Darcy Deming all appear across multiple years of IRS filings (2018-2023), indicating an unusually stable executive team. Chief Program Officer Aiyana Mourtos ($194,770 compensation) appears to be the program architect behind the healthcare expansion.

The alumni milestone of 750+ college graduates, 86% debt-free, now appears in all external communications as a cornerstone metric — any proposal for partnership should demonstrate how it contributes to improving or extending this outcome.

The most important application tip for Making Waves Foundation is structural: there is no grant application process in the traditional sense. This foundation does not publish RFPs, does not operate a grants portal, and does not list application deadlines for external institutional funding. Grant seekers who approach it as a conventional grantmaker will not find a path in.

For institutional partners and organizations seeking external grants:

Demonstrate geographic proximity first. Every confirmed external grantee is in Richmond or West Contra Costa County. National organizations without a Richmond presence have essentially no track record here. Local direct service organizations serving the same low-income, first-generation student population are the most credible candidates.

Enter through the partnership channel. Contact Justin Douglas, VP of Partnerships (jdouglas@making-waves.org), with a focused one-page alignment brief — not a full proposal. Describe your student population, geographic service area, and the specific Making Waves program your work could complement. Keep the first ask a 30-minute exploratory call, not a funding commitment.

Use the foundation's own metrics as your language. Their stated outcomes — 86% debt-free graduation, twice the graduation rate of comparable peers, 750+ alumni — are the benchmarks they care about. Any proposal should articulate impact in terms of college persistence, career earnings, and debt reduction, not broad educational improvement language.

For healthcare partners, position around HealthX and Pathways to Health specifically. This is the foundation's newest investment area, meaning decision-makers are actively seeking collaborators and the competitive landscape is less established than in the college access space.

For university partners, the foundation maintains an active University Partnerships page and a structured inquiry process. Universities willing to offer enhanced financial aid and pipeline enrollment commitments to Making Waves students have the clearest path to a formal relationship.

Timing: align outreach with the December-January student cohort planning window, when program staff have maximum visibility into the incoming class's needs and gaps that external partners could fill.

Avoid leading with organizational prestige or national scale. Making Waves values proximity to the community and demonstrable relationships with Richmond students above all.