Nerney Family Foundation

The Nerney Family Foundation is a closely-held family foundation chaired by Thomas P. Nerney (President/Treasurer/Director, uncompensated in every year of available data) and administered day-to-day by Executive Director Felicia Caviesel, whose compensation has run $84,615-$90,346 in recent filings. Its mission targets education, human services, and social transformation for underserved populations, primarily in Greater Philadelphia. The single most important signal for applicants: the foundation's own IRS record flags itself as 'preselected_only,' and its website funnels inquiries to an email contact rather than an open portal — this is a relationship-driven, largely invitation-based funder, not an open-RFP shop. Of 143 tracked grants, 98 (69%) went to Pennsylvania organizations and 21 (15%) to New Jersey, making regional presence close to a prerequisite. The grantee list shows a strong repeat-funder pattern: institutions like Bryn Mawr Hospital Foundation, Mount Saint Joseph's Academy, La Salle College High School, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the National MS Society each received identical or near-identical amounts across 3-4 consecutive years, indicating multi-year renewal relationships rather than one-off awards. First-time applicants should understand they're competing for a small number of 'new relationship' slots rather than a broad annual competition. The top recipient, Uplift Solutions Inc ($1,275,000 across 4 grants), shows the foundation is capable of sustained six-figure commitments once a relationship is established, but that scale appears reserved for long-term partners, not new applicants. With no formal LOI process or online portal documented, a direct, professional email to the foundation's listed administrative contact (nwinterbottom@usli.com) is the only confirmed path in. Because Caviesel manages the program operationally while Nerney and a small family-dominated board (Christine Walker Nerney, Christine Todd, Cathy Nerney, Ryan Nerney, Stephen Lyons) set direction, proposals should speak to both practical fit and mission alignment. The notable concentration of Catholic-affiliated grantees — Cabrini University, Chestnut Hill College, Villanova University, Kolbe Academy, La Salle College High School — suggests organizations with a Philadelphia Catholic or Augustinian lineage may find an easier point of entry, though secular health and human-services organizations are funded at meaningful scale too.

Across the 143 grants captured in the database, the foundation has distributed $5,323,801 total, averaging $37,229 per grant. The foundation's own typical-grant-size record (a 39-grant sample) shows a $5,000 median, a $250-$300,000 range, and a $28,571 average — evidence of a barbell distribution rather than a uniform grant size. Confirming this, the top 5 recipients alone — Uplift Solutions Inc ($1,275,000/4 grants), Shape Tomorrow Campaign-EA Playground ($600,000/2 grants), Cabrini University ($549,000/2 grants), National Multiple Sclerosis Society ($439,469/4 grants), and Villanova University ($420,000/4 grants) — account for roughly $3.28M, or 62% of all tracked giving, while the remaining 138 grants split the other 38% ($2.04M), most in the $1,000-$60,000 range. Geographically, Pennsylvania dominates with 98 of 143 grants (68.5%), followed by New Jersey (21, 14.7%), Texas (5), California (7), Kentucky (4), Rhode Island (4), New York (3), and Illinois (1) — a footprint tightly anchored to the Wayne, PA headquarters despite the foundation's stated 'and beyond' language. Annual Form 990 data shows grants paid of $987,008 in FY2023 (total giving $1,151,014 including administrative costs), down from $1,114,284 in FY2022 and $1,414,883 in FY2021 — a steady decline from the 2020 peak of $1,680,350, tracking a smaller asset base in those years (total assets bottomed at $964,343 in 2020). Contributions received have held remarkably steady near $1.6M annually since 2019 ($1,604,234 in FY2023), nearly matching total revenue ($1,677,995), which suggests the Nerney family funds the foundation through a consistent annual contribution rather than relying on a large permanent endowment to throw off investment income (net investment income was just $61,557 in FY2023). Notably, the foundation's current IRS-listed asset figure ($7,494,924) is more than 3x the FY2023 990 total assets ($2,117,719), an unexplained jump worth monitoring. By program, 100% of grant purposes in the database are coded simply as 'unrestricted contribution to charity (community)' — the 990 itself doesn't break spending out by education, human services, or social transformation, though the grantee mix of schools, hospitals, health nonprofits, and workforce programs maps cleanly onto those three stated pillars.

All five peers sit within roughly $30,000 of Nerney's $7.49M asset base, forming a tight cohort of similarly-sized, family-run foundations classified under the same 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category — the match appears to be purely asset-size driven, not mission overlap, since none published a comparable focus statement in available records. Nerney stands out within this peer set for maintaining an active, content-rich public website that names explicit focus areas, a board roster, and a real (if informal) inquiry contact, whereas most of these same-size peers have no discoverable website or public grantmaking philosophy at all — making Nerney comparatively more approachable for cold outreach than the typical foundation its size, even though it is still a preselected, relationship-based funder rather than an open one.

Searches for 2025-2026 news coverage turned up no dedicated press releases or local Philadelphia media coverage of the Nerney Family Foundation — it does not appear to issue public announcements, and no article-level news hits were found for that window. What is confirmed from the data: the foundation's IRS Business Master File record was last updated 2026-06-20, showing current assets of $7,494,924, well above the $2,117,719 recorded on its FY2023 Form 990 (the most recent full year in the financial history), which implies a large new contribution or an as-yet-unreflected data update. Leadership has been stable — Thomas P. Nerney continues as uncompensated President/Treasurer/Director across all recent filings, and Felicia Caviesel remains Executive Director, with her compensation dipping slightly from $90,346 to $84,615 across the two most recent years in the record. Per the foundation's own website, the board comprises six members: Thomas Nerney, Christine Walker Nerney, Christine Todd, Cathy Nerney, Ryan Nerney, and Stephen Lyons — all family or closely affiliated names, consistent with a closely-held operation with no outside governance turnover to report. No new program launches, funding-priority pivots, or major gift announcements surfaced in the 2025-2026 window; instead, the clearest recent pattern is the continuation of multi-year renewal support to a core group of roughly 15-20 institutions — Uplift Solutions, Cabrini University, Villanova, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, National MS Society, and several Catholic secondary schools. For applicants, the absence of news should be read as a signal of a stable, low-turnover, relationship-based funder rather than one actively expanding its criteria or leadership.

There is no online application portal, downloadable LOI form, or published deadline for the Nerney Family Foundation — this is the most important thing to know before applying. The foundation's own IRS record flags itself as 'preselected_only,' and multiple third-party grant databases describe it as not accepting unsolicited funding requests, consistent with a 13-year grant history dominated by repeat, multi-year gifts to the same core group of institutions. Practically, a cold, unsolicited LOI is unlikely to get a response. The one documented path in is a direct email to nwinterbottom@usli.com, listed publicly as the contact for 'additional information on the application process' — this appears to be an administrative contact tied to the foundation's Devon Park Drive office rather than Executive Director Felicia Caviesel herself, so treat it as a gatekeeping step and expect a screening conversation before any request reaches Nerney or Caviesel directly. Because 68.5% of tracked grants (98 of 143) went to Pennsylvania organizations and another 14.7% to New Jersey, out-of-region applicants face a steep uphill climb regardless of mission fit — Greater Philadelphia presence or programming is close to a prerequisite. Given the concentration of Catholic-affiliated grantees (Cabrini University, Chestnut Hill College, Villanova, Kolbe Academy, La Salle College High School, Mount Saint Joseph's Academy), organizations with any Catholic, Augustinian, or Philadelphia-archdiocese lineage should foreground that connection explicitly in outreach. For health and human-services applicants, note the precedent set by the National MS Society ($439,469 across 4 grants) and Bryn Mawr Hospital Foundation ($225,000 across 4 grants) — disease research, mitigation, and hospital-foundation partnerships fit the funder's pattern well. The median tracked grant size is just $5,000 (range $250-$300,000), so a first ask should be modest and specific rather than a large general-operating request; the data shows the foundation builds relationships incrementally, starting around $1,000-$10,000 and scaling over 3-4 years of renewed funding rather than committing to one large initial gift. Avoid generic proposal language — mirror the foundation's own framing of 'visionary initiatives... in their early stages of development' and its explicit education/human-services/social-transformation pillars.