Mujigye Foundation Inc.

Mujigye Foundation Inc. is a small, family-run private foundation (EIN 83-4517375, formed 2019) with no paid staff — its four officers (Tae Woo Park, President; Young Park, Vice-President; Christina Park, Secretary; Meng Jea Joo, Treasurer) all draw zero compensation, and the foundation lists no grants page, no application form, and no open call on its own website. Instrumentl's aggregator independently confirms '0 live grant opportunities.' In practice, this is not a competitive grantmaking program that solicits or reviews unsolicited proposals; it is a vehicle for the Park family to direct support to a small, closed circle of Christian churches and ministries they already know. Of $590,508 in total tracked giving across 11 grants, 98% ($581,508) went to just two recipients — Hope Church NYC ($390,908 across 4 grants) and Seoul Baptist Church of Houston ($190,600 across 4 grants) — with only $9,000 spread across two small ministries (Life Tree Ministry, New Mission). That concentration is the single most important fact for any prospective applicant: this looks far more like sustained, personal-relationship giving to a home church and an affiliated congregation than a discoverable grants program. First-time, cold applicants should expect very long odds. The mission statement — 'supporting Christian churches and organizations in the fulfillment of their mission, in the New York City and outward from there,' with stated priorities of discipleship, investing in the next generation, serving the poor, and integrating faith and work — signals a values-driven, small-church and ministry orientation rather than institutional or programmatic grantmaking. The website's Mother Teresa quote ('It's not how much we give, but how much love we put into giving') and its 'Join the Community' framing reinforce a relational, not transactional, posture. Realistically, the only credible path in is through an authentic connection to the Park/Joo family's church network — Korean-American evangelical congregations in New York City or Houston are the clearest thread — rather than a written proposal. Organizations without that kind of relationship should treat this foundation as a very low-probability, long-horizon prospect and focus energy on funders with an actual open application process.

Lifetime tracked giving totals $590,508 across 11 recorded grants (average $53,683), but the distribution is extremely top-heavy: Hope Church Nyc alone accounts for 66% of dollars ($390,908/4 grants, ~$97,727 average) and Seoul Baptist Church Of Houston for 32% ($190,600/4 grants, ~$47,650 average) — together 98% of all giving. The remaining 2% split between Life Tree Ministry ($6,000/2 grants) and New Mission ($3,000/1 grant). By state, the underlying grant records split 4 grants to NY and 7 to TX, though NY dollars run larger per grant given Hope Church's size. Year-by-year Form 990 data shows total giving (which includes grants plus related program costs) has swung from $206,117 (2019) to $340,573 (2020) to $326,599 (2021) to a peak $399,381 (2022) before falling to $325,899 (2023); the grants-paid line specifically was $150,000 (2019), $152,000 (2020), $124,600 (2021), $202,908 (2022, the high-water mark), and $111,000 (2023). Third-party 990 tracking (Instrumentl) shows the decline continuing sharply into 2024 (2 grants) and 2025 (1 grantee, $66,000 total giving) — roughly an 83% drop from the 2022 peak. Assets have contracted in step, from $5,793,883 (2019) to $5,063,678 (2020) to $4,905,126 (2021) to $4,692,045 (2022) to $4,543,154 (2023), landing near $4.1 million currently — a steady spend-down rather than a growing endowment. This tracks a matching collapse in new money coming in: contributions received were $3,000,000 (2019) and $2,176,000 (2021), then $0 in both 2022 and 2023, meaning the foundation is no longer being actively replenished by its founders and is drawing on existing assets to sustain its now much smaller annual giving. Grant size historically ranged roughly $3,000 to $142,908 per the web-tracked range, with a typical individual check in the $30,000-$60,000 band for the two anchor churches and $3,000-$6,000 for smaller ministry gifts.

Mujigye sits in a cluster of similarly small, Religion-category private foundations, none of which appear to run open, competitive grant programs — a common pattern for family foundations at this asset scale.

All six foundations cluster tightly in asset size ($4.05M-$4.16M), suggesting Mujigye is a fairly typical mid-sized family religious foundation for its peer set rather than an outlier on capacity. What sets Mujigye apart in the available data is transparency about its concentration: its own grantee records show 98% of dollars flowing to just two churches, and its website confirms zero open grant opportunities — a pattern likely shared by several of these peers (family religious foundations at this scale rarely publish grant guidelines) but not independently confirmed here. Grant seekers evaluating this peer set should expect all of them to require warm introductions rather than cold applications, and should not assume asset size correlates with actual annual disbursement, since Mujigye's own giving has fallen roughly 83% from its 2022 peak.

No news coverage, press releases, or third-party announcements about Mujigye Foundation Inc. were found for 2024, 2025, or 2026 — this appears to be a foundation with no public communications program. The foundation's own blog, hosted on its website, has not been updated since May 23, 2019, when officer Christina Park-Hyun (Secretary) posted three short farm/garden-themed reflections ('Tomatoes are Now in Season,' 'New Additions to the Farm,' 'Spring Favorites: Kale'). No leadership changes have been identified; the same four officers (Tae Woo Park, Young Park, Christina Park, Meng Jea Joo) appear across the available filing years, all uncompensated. The most notable recent development is financial rather than programmatic: third-party 990 tracking (Instrumentl, data current to August 13, 2026) shows total giving fell to $66,000 in fiscal year 2025 with just one recorded grantee, down from $202,908 in grants paid at the 2022 peak — a continuation of a multi-year contraction visible in the foundation's own 990 filings from 2019-2023. No new program announcements, no site visits, no board additions, and no notable large single grants beyond the existing Hope Church NYC / Seoul Baptist Church of Houston pattern were identified. In short: for a funder of this size, the near-total absence of recent public activity is itself the story — this remains a quiet, family-operated giving vehicle rather than an actively growing or publicly engaged foundation.

There is no formal application to optimize for here — Instrumentl's tracker confirms '0 live grant opportunities,' the foundation's website has no Grants, Programs, or How to Apply page, and the IRS filing field for application instructions is blank. Given that 98% of all tracked giving ($581,508 of $590,508) has gone to two churches — Hope Church Nyc and Seoul Baptist Church Of Houston — the realistic path in is relational, not procedural: an organization's best chance is a pre-existing connection to the Park/Joo family, to Hope Church NYC's congregation, or to the Korean-American evangelical church network these two grantees suggest. Cold, generic grant applications mailed or emailed to info@mujigye.org are unlikely to be reviewed the way a staffed foundation would review them, since all four officers are uncompensated volunteers with no program staff to triage inbound requests. If an organization does have a genuine connection, keep outreach personal and modest: reference the foundation's own stated priorities verbatim — 'making disciples,' 'investing in the next generation,' 'serving the poor,' and 'integrating faith and work' — and frame the ask at a realistic scale; historical grants to smaller ministries (Life Tree Ministry, New Mission) were $3,000-$6,000, well below the $47,650-$97,727 average given to the two anchor churches. Timing should account for the foundation's shrinking giving capacity: total giving has fallen from $399,381 (2022) to $66,000 (2025), so the funding pool available for any new relationship is now very small. Common mistakes to avoid: treating this like an open RFP funder and submitting a formal LOI or grant application through a portal (none exists); assuming the $4.1M asset base implies meaningful new-grant capacity, when in fact new contributions to the foundation have been $0 for two consecutive filed years and assets are being drawn down; and reaching out repeatedly without a relational foothold, given there is no staff to process a pipeline of unsolicited requests. The most productive move for an unconnected organization is to redirect effort toward funders with a published, open application process rather than pursue Mujigye directly.