Mohawk Carpet Foundation Inc.

The Mohawk Carpet Foundation is a corporate-officer-run philanthropic pass-through for Mohawk Industries (NYSE: MHK), the world's largest flooring manufacturer headquartered in Calhoun, GA. Established in 1990, the foundation operates on a lean model: total assets sit at just $1.33M (FY2024), but the foundation is recapitalized annually with $1.2M-$1.6M in contributions from the parent company, then disburses 90-100% of revenue the same year. Over the last decade it has averaged roughly $1M/year in giving on minimal endowment — a true conduit, not an asset-builder.

Governance is internal and unpaid. All four officers — Robert Webb (CEO), James Brunk (CFO), Dave Patton (Secretary), and Shailesh Bettadapur (Treasurer) — serve without compensation and are senior Mohawk Industries executives. There is no independent program officer, no public application portal, and no public website for the foundation itself (the IRS-listed URL mohawkind.com redirects to the parent company's corporate site, which makes no mention of the foundation).

This is a relationship-driven funder, not a competitive one. The foundation has made 212 grants totaling $4.99M in our database — 164 of which (77%) went to Georgia recipients, and within Georgia, the dominant cluster is Whitfield, Gordon, and Murray counties (the Calhoun/Dalton HQ region). The second-largest geographic cluster is Glasgow, Virginia (where Mohawk operates a major plant), followed by Davidson County, NC. If your organization does not serve a community within ~50 miles of a Mohawk Industries facility, you are out of scope.

First-time applicants should: - Identify the nearest Mohawk plant or distribution center and the senior HR/community-relations contact there. - Pitch through your local United Way affiliate first if one exists — United Way chapters have received approximately $1.4M of the foundation's lifetime giving and are the most trusted relay. - Frame the ask around "Education, Financial Stability, Health" — the three pillars Mohawk uses for all community giving, drawn from the United Way framework. - Plan for a multi-year relationship arc, not a one-shot gift. 60%+ of the top-30 grantees received 3 or more grants.

Total lifetime giving in our database: $4.99M across 212 grants. The foundation has disbursed between $514K and $1.75M annually since 2019, with FY2024 at $739K (22 grants), FY2023 at $1.28M (22 grants), and FY2022 at $1.23M (a notable outlier with 140 grants — likely a year of unusually broad small-gift activity, possibly tied to pandemic-era responsiveness). The most recent two years (2023-2024) suggest a deliberate consolidation strategy: roughly the same total dollars deployed through 1/6th as many grants, lifting average grant size from ~$17K (2022) to ~$34K (2023) and ~$34K (2024).

Grant size distribution is extremely wide:

• Minimum recorded grant: $250
• Maximum recorded grant: $425,000 (single gift to United Way of Northwest GA — Whitfield & Murray County)
• Median grant: $5,750
• Mean grant: $23,539

The wide gap between median ($5.75K) and mean ($23.5K) tells you this funder writes a small number of very large anchor checks to flagship community partners (United Way affiliates, Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful, Creative Arts Guild, Shepherd Center) alongside a long tail of $1K-$10K supporting gifts. Anchor relationships frequently exceed $75K per year.

Top-of-list lifetime totals (illustrative anchor relationships):

• Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful — $500,000 across 2 grants (avg $250K/grant)
• Creative Arts Guild — $470,000 across 6 grants (avg $78K/grant)
• United Way of NW GA (Whitfield & Murray) — $425,000 across 3 grants
• United Way of Northwest Georgia — $390,000 across 4 grants
• Shepherd Center Foundation — $300,000 across 3 grants
• Floor Covering Industry Foundation — $280,000 across 3 grants

Geographic concentration is striking. Of $4.99M lifetime: $4.44M (89%) went to Georgia recipients, $324K to Virginia (entirely Glasgow-area), $172K to North Carolina (Davidson County United Way), and trace amounts to AL, DC, NY, SC, OH. For a Northwest Georgia 501(c)(3) operating in Mohawk's three core focus areas, the probability-weighted expected first-gift size is $5K-$25K, scaling to $75K-$425K once a multi-year anchor relationship is established.

Mohawk Carpet Foundation operates at an unusual scale: its net assets ($1.33M) are tiny relative to its annual giving ($739K-$1.75M) because the parent corporation recapitalizes it each year. That pass-through profile makes traditional asset-based peer comparison misleading. The most useful comparison is to other Georgia-based corporate and family foundations with similar disbursement volume.

The closest behavioral peers are not the family foundations of similar asset size (West, Oakmont, Lumpkin — typically donor-advised pass-throughs) but rather the Shaw family/Shaw Industries philanthropy ecosystem, which dominates Dalton/Whitfield County giving at roughly 10-20x Mohawk's scale, and the Floor Covering Industry Foundation (an industry-wide hardship fund Mohawk co-funds with $280K over three years). Applicants in NW Georgia frequently approach both Shaw and Mohawk in parallel — they fund similar civic infrastructure (Creative Arts Guild, United Way, Shepherd Center) and treat regional quality-of-place as a workforce-retention issue. Strategically, treat Mohawk as a complementary check rather than a lead funder; lead with United Way of Northwest Georgia or the Community Foundation of Northwest Georgia and bring Mohawk in via the corporate-relations side.

FY2024 (most recent 990-PF available) shows the foundation in a steady-state corporate-giving rhythm. Total disbursements: $739,000 across 22 grants. Largest FY2024 commitments were $92,000 to United Way of Gordon County, $80,000 to United Way of Northwest Georgia, and $75,000 to Keep Dalton-Whitfield Clean and Beautiful. Net assets grew to $1,332,812 from $859,453 at the end of FY2023, reflecting a $1.2M contribution from Mohawk Industries that exceeded the year's grantmaking — building a modest reserve.

The 2023-2024 consolidation is the most consequential recent trend. In FY2022 the foundation made 140 grants; in FY2023 and FY2024 it made 22 grants each. Total dollars are roughly stable, but the average grant has roughly doubled. Anchor partners (United Way affiliates, Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful, Creative Arts Guild, Floor Covering Industry Foundation, Shepherd Center) absorbed most of the volume that previously went to small-dollar gifts. Implication: small-ask first-time applicants are now significantly less likely to be funded than they were in 2022.

Notable continuing partnerships (active through 2024):

• Glasgow Volunteer Fire Department, VA — 4 grants totaling $170K through 2024 (a multi-year facility-town civic commitment)
• Floor Covering Industry Foundation — $280K across 3 grants through 2024 (industry-wide worker hardship relief)
• Habitat for Humanity of Gordon County — 3 grants totaling $110K through 2024
• Family Support Council — 4 grants totaling $50K through 2024
• Voluntary Action Center — 5 grants totaling $110K through 2024

At the corporate parent level, Mohawk Industries CEO Jeff Lorberbaum has continued to emphasize the company's decade-plus partnership with Tunnel to Towers Foundation (housing for severely wounded veterans) — a 2023 Dalton Daily Citizen feature highlighted Lorberbaum personally honoring veterans at a Mohawk facility. While these veteran-focused gifts flow primarily through corporate product donations rather than the Foundation's cash grants, they signal that veterans and first-responder organizations in Mohawk facility towns have a credibly aligned narrative.

1. Stop looking for an application portal — there isn't one. The Mohawk Carpet Foundation does not maintain a public website, does not publish guidelines, and does not run an open RFP cycle. The IRS-listed URL mohawkind.com is the parent corporation's site, where the foundation is not mentioned. Cold-submitting a proposal will not work. Identify a relationship path first.

2. Map the nearest Mohawk facility. Mohawk Industries has 20+ U.S. plants, warehouses, and showrooms. If you're in Calhoun, Dalton, LaFayette, Chatsworth, Adairsville, or Cartersville GA — you're inside the high-probability zone. If you're in Glasgow VA, Lexington NC, or other facility towns — you're plausible. If you're more than 50 miles from any Mohawk location, you should redirect your effort elsewhere.

3. Lead with United Way. Roughly $1.4M of the foundation's lifetime giving (≈28% of all dollars) has flowed through United Way affiliates in NW Georgia, Gordon County, Davidson County NC, and Southwest Virginia. If your work fits a United Way priority area, getting a partnership designation from your local UW is the highest-yield single move you can make — Mohawk follows United Way's lead.

4. Use the "Building Blocks" language. Frame your work explicitly around Education, Financial Stability, or Health — the three pillars Mohawk uses for all community giving. Avoid arts-only or advocacy-only framing; even the Creative Arts Guild gifts are positioned as community-development infrastructure.

5. Pitch a multi-year arc. Six of the top ten grantees received 3+ grants. Anchor relationships ($75K-$425K) are built over years, not signed at first ask. A 3-year ramp (year 1: $5-25K trial, year 2: $25-75K, year 3: $75K+ anchor) is the realistic pattern.

6. Engage Mohawk plant leadership, not the foundation. Officers Webb, Brunk, Patton, and Bettadapur are senior Mohawk executives in Calhoun who do not field cold inquiries. Your real entry point is the local plant manager or HR/community-relations lead at the Mohawk facility nearest you. Build the relationship through employee volunteer days, plant tours, and United Way workplace-campaign collaboration.

7. Don't ask for individual scholarships or grants to individuals. The foundation only funds 501(c)(3) organizations.

8. Be patient with timing. The foundation operates on an annual fiscal-year cycle tied to Mohawk Industries. There is no published deadline. Initial outreach is best made in Q1-Q2 to be considered in the same calendar year's giving.