Maud Glover Folsom Foundation Inc.

The Maud Glover Folsom Foundation is not a conventional grantmaker for nonprofits — it is a single-purpose scholarship trust that funds individual young men directly, with no organizational grantee pathway at all. IRS data shows 16 recorded grant transactions totaling $1,233,978, dominated by one aggregate "attached list of scholarship recipients" line item worth $1,163,978 across two payments, alongside roughly six named individual students (e.g., Elijah R Loudenback, Garrett F Mueller, Jason Martin, Noah T Mitchell, Tyler T Phillips, Christopher J Kephart, William Helfgott) each receiving $10,000 recorded across two annual disbursements — consistent with the foundation's stated $5,000-per-year minimum award. Recipients span seven states (CT, GA, IA, IL, PA, TX, WA), confirming the program recruits nationally by ancestry, not by geography.

The eligibility bar is unusually narrow and non-negotiable: applicants must be male, aged 13-19, U.S. citizens, and able to document German and/or Northern European ancestry on both parental lines for at least four generations. The relationship progression is genealogy first, academics second — a completed application with a fully documented ancestry section, a submitted photo ID, and an online interview precede any funding decision. Once selected, the award is structured as a long-term annuity rather than a one-time gift: it renews automatically through undergraduate, graduate, and PhD study provided the recipient maintains full-time enrollment, a C+ average, and an online student profile that forwards grades to the foundation, plus attendance at an annual July 20 graveside memorial for the foundation's namesake.

The most important strategic fact for any prospective applicant or advisor right now: the foundation's own website states it has suspended new applications due to high demand, with no published reopening timeline. First-time applicants should treat this as a monitoring exercise rather than an active campaign — check the applicants.php page periodically, have the genealogy documentation prepared in advance, and be ready to move quickly if intake reopens, since incomplete ancestry paperwork is the most commonly cited rejection reason in third-party summaries of the foundation's process.

Total giving has swung widely over the last 14 fiscal years on file: $328,397 (2011) → $439,604 (2012) → $575,369 (2013) → $456,895 (2014) → $558,181 (2018) → $1,003,499 (2019, a peak) → $268,033 (2020, a sharp dip likely tied to pandemic-era program disruption) → $802,834 (2021) → $1,274,265 (2022, the highest year on record). Grants paid (cash actually disbursed to recipients) followed a similar but distinct pattern: $135,000 (2011) up to $835,000 (2019), down to just $35,000 (2020), then $581,989 (2021) and $979,992 (2022) — the gap between "total giving" and "grants paid" in most years reflects scholarship commitments accrued but not yet disbursed.

Asset growth has been the dominant story: total assets more than tripled from $3,753,605 (2011) to $12,688,366 (most recent CauseIQ figure, 2025), while contributions received from outside donors were $0 in most years on file (2011, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022) — this is a closed, self-funding endowment growing almost entirely through investment returns, not fresh philanthropy. Net investment income spiked to $6,878,970 in 2022 (on $7,056,569 total revenue that year) and $701,315 in net asset-sale gains drove the 2025 revenue jump to $1,304,090. Officer/trustee compensation is modest and stable: Treasurer William F. Austin and Secretary Richard Dias each drew $7,050-$15,805 depending on year; President Charles Leonard drew $7,050-$7,500.

Grant-size data in the DB sample is bimodal rather than following a smooth median: the individual named-student awards cluster tightly at $10,000 recorded per student (two $5,000 annual tranches), while one aggregate "attached list" disbursement of $1,163,978 covers an unspecified larger cohort in a single 990 line item. Excluding that aggregate outlier, the effective per-student unit award is consistently $5,000/year, matching the foundation's own stated minimum — there is no evidence of variable award sizing by need or merit tier beyond that floor.

The Folsom Foundation sits in a small, idiosyncratic niche of ancestry-restricted individual scholarship trusts. Public financial detail on true peers is thin (most are too small or too closely held to have granular third-party profiles), so the comparison below leans on program structure and access model rather than precise dollar figures for every peer.

Folsom stands out among these peers for two reasons: it is a fully independent, self-funded private foundation with a genuine multi-million-dollar endowment rather than a program running inside a larger heritage nonprofit or lineage society, and its ancestry bar (four generations, both parental lines) is markedly stricter than comparable heritage scholarships, which typically require only one qualifying ancestor. It is also the only one of these five currently closed to new applicants — a meaningful competitive-access difference for families evaluating where to direct effort right now.

The most recent primary tax filing, submitted November 12, 2025, shows a strong financial year: total revenues of $1,304,090, up 198.7% from $436,587 the prior year, driven by a $701,315 net gain on investment/asset sales (up 132.7% year-over-year) and $322,214 in investment income. Total expenses were $814,475 and year-end assets stood at $12,688,366, essentially flat to the DB-recorded $12,198,751-$12,699,629 range across 2022-2024. Leadership remains unchanged and stable: William F. Austin continues as Treasurer (most recently reported compensation around $9,000), with Richard Dias as Secretary and Charles Leonard as President — the same three-person officer slate that has run the foundation across every filing year in the data set, with compensation consistently in the $7,000-$16,000 range per officer.

No press releases, media coverage, or public announcements were identified for 2025 or 2026 — this is a low-visibility family foundation that does not appear to seek publicity for its grantmaking. The single most consequential operational fact uncovered in this research is that the foundation's website now states applications are suspended due to high demand, with no reopening date given. This is a departure from the open (if narrow) application process implied by earlier cached versions of the application form (dated 2014 and 2016), suggesting the suspension is a relatively recent administrative decision rather than a longstanding policy. There is no indication of a new program area, expanded eligibility, or geographic pivot — the foundation's activity in 2025-2026 reads as steady-state endowment management and scholarship renewal for existing recipients rather than a phase of new grantmaking growth.

Because the foundation has suspended new applications, near-term "application tips" are really monitoring-and-preparation tips: check maudgloverfolsomfoundation.org/applicants.php periodically for a reopening announcement, and do not submit unsolicited inquiries in the interim, since no waitlist or standing inquiry channel was found on the site.

When intake does reopen, the genealogy section is the highest-leverage part of the application. Third-party summaries of the foundation's own materials are explicit that applications "lacking ancestry documentation may be rejected" — treat the four-generation, both-parental-lines German/Northern European ancestry proof with the same rigor as a legal filing, not a narrative essay. Gather birth/marriage/immigration records, family trees, or genealogical society documentation well before an application window opens, since this research typically takes months, not days.

The eligibility filter is absolute and cannot be argued around: male, age 13-19 at time of application, U.S. citizen, and documented qualifying ancestry. Applicants and families outside any one of these criteria should not spend time on this funder — there is no discretionary exception process evident in any source reviewed.

Once funded, the relationship is long-term and has real maintenance obligations: recipients must stay full-time enrolled, hold a C+ average or better, maintain an online profile that forwards grades to the foundation, and attend the annual July 20 graveside meeting honoring Maud Glover Folsom. Missing any of these is a plausible renewal risk — families should budget the annual travel/attendance commitment as a real cost of the award, not an optional courtesy. A common mistake inferred from the structure of the process is treating this as a one-time scholarship application: it is closer to entering a multi-year stewardship relationship with a small family foundation, and demonstrating genuine respect for the founder's memory (via the memorial attendance requirement) is baked into the program design as a condition of continued funding, not a symbolic add-on.