North Lake Foundation

North Lake Foundation is a small, closed-door family private foundation, not a competitive open-application grantmaker. IRS Form 990-PF filings (EIN 36-4927741) mark it as directing contributions to preselected charitable organizations, and the giving history bears that out: across 18 disclosed grants totaling $962,321 since 2019, every dollar traces to organizations with an apparent personal or institutional tie to its two unpaid officers, Kimberly Shea (President) and Kevin Shea (Vice President). There is no program staff, no RFP process, and no functioning public application channel — the website on file (northlake.org) actually resolves to an unrelated Georgia church that happens to share the foundation's listed phone number, a data mismatch grant seekers should not rely on for guidance.

For organizations hoping to be considered, the realistic relationship progression is informal: a warm introduction or existing personal connection to the Shea family precedes an invited gift, typically structured as a lump sum or a multi-year pledge rather than a single competitive cycle. The clearest evidence is The Papal Foundation, which alone has received 3 grants totaling $450,000 (47% of all disclosed giving) — a Catholic major-donor consortium that operates through membership pledges, not an applicant pool. Fishtown Preservation Society in Philadelphia received 4 grants totaling $130,000 across multiple years, again consistent with a sustained relationship rather than a fresh annual ask.

First-time applicants without an existing tie to the Sheas should treat North Lake as a low-probability, relationship-first prospect rather than a pipeline target worth building a standard LOI for. The more realistic paths in are indirect: a shared institution (University of Notre Dame, Hillsdale College, Catholic philanthropic circles) or a shared geography — Michigan accounts for 12 of the 18 known grants, far more than the foundation's own Naples, Florida address would suggest. Applicants should also calibrate capacity expectations: this is a foundation with $5.29 million in assets paying out roughly $240,000-$392,000 a year across what appears to be six to ten standing relationships, meaning room for perhaps one or two genuinely new relationships in a given year.

North Lake Foundation's disclosed giving covers 18 grants totaling $962,321 (average $53,462 per grant) to a small set of named recipients, per its 990-PF-derived grantee data. Per-recipient annualized amounts range from $10,000 (Anti-Cruelty Association, 1 grant) up to $150,000 per grant to The Papal Foundation (3 grants, $450,000 total) — the widest and largest relationship in the portfolio at 46.8% of all disclosed dollars. Fishtown Preservation Society, a Philadelphia historic-preservation nonprofit, is the second-largest at $130,000 across 4 grants (13.5%). Higher education claims 10.4% combined via single $50,000 grants each to Hillsdale College and the University of Notre Dame. Health (Lymphoma Research Foundation, 2 grants, $20,000) and animal welfare (Anti-Cruelty Association, $10,000) round out the smaller end. An unspecified bucket, "Various Charitable Orgs" (4 grants, $228,571, 23.8% of total), likely represents smaller undisclosed gifts aggregated in filings.

Geographically, the pattern is notable given the foundation's Naples, Florida mailing address: Michigan receives the plurality of grants (12 of 18), followed by Pennsylvania (3), New York (2), and Indiana (1) — no Florida-based recipients appear at all, reinforcing that the Sheas' philanthropic ties run through prior home states or personal networks rather than their current residence.

On total-giving trend, annual payout has climbed from $73,500 (FY2019, the foundation's first full year post its June 2019 tax-exempt ruling) to $208,333 (FY2020), $260,654 (FY2021), $257,084 (FY2022), $236,250 (FY2023), and $392,000 in the most recent FY2024 filing — a 66% year-over-year jump. Assets have grown correspondingly from $2.97 million (2019) to $5.29 million (2024), fueled by two large contribution years (2019: $3.0M received; 2021: $2.05M received) rather than steady annual inflows, plus investment income (peaking at $180,076 in 2022). With income of $1,528,094 reported against $5.29M in assets, North Lake has ample capacity to sustain or grow its current ~$390K annual payout, but nothing in the filings suggests it is scaling toward a broader, competitive grantmaking program.

North Lake Foundation sits in a large, largely invisible tier of private family foundations sized between $5.29 million and $5.30 million in assets, all coded to the same Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category, with no public grants program. The five closest asset-matched peers in this dataset:

Four of the five peers list no website at all, and North Lake's own listed website is a data-integrity error rather than a working page — underscoring that this entire asset tier is dominated by quiet, closely held family vehicles rather than institutions built to solicit or process applications. Grant seekers should not expect any foundation in this comparison set to behave like a mid-size community or program-officer-staffed foundation; due diligence and warm introductions matter far more here than proposal quality.

The most concrete recent data point is North Lake Foundation's FY2024 Form 990-PF, filed August 20, 2025, which reported total assets of $5,294,315 (up from $4,846,980 in FY2023), revenue of $561,115, and grants paid of $392,000 — up sharply from $236,250 the prior year. No press release, news article, or foundation announcement accompanies this increase; it surfaces only in the IRS filing itself, consistent with a foundation that does not publicize its grantmaking.

Leadership has been stable and unchanged across all available filing years: Kimberly Shea as President and Kevin Shea as Vice President, both reporting $0 in officer compensation every year since the foundation's June 2019 tax-exempt ruling. No leadership transition, new program announcement, or public statement of changed priorities appears anywhere in web search results, on the foundation's nominal website (which does not actually belong to it), or in secondary foundation-tracking sources like Instrumentl or Cause IQ.

Given the absence of any genuine news footprint, the most reliable read on "recent activity" is the filing trend itself: a foundation quietly increasing its payout rate (grants paid as a share of assets rose from about 4.9% in FY2023 to roughly 7.4% in FY2024) while keeping its circle of recipients essentially unchanged — behavior typical of family foundations deepening commitments to existing partners (The Papal Foundation, Fishtown Preservation Society) as asset growth from earlier large contributions (2019, 2021) matures, rather than a foundation entering a new expansion phase seeking new grantees.

There is no formal, publicly documented application process for North Lake Foundation to give tips against — and that absence is itself the most important piece of advice. The foundation's own IRS filings indicate preselected giving, its DB record for accepting_applications should be treated with skepticism given that flag directly contradicts the preselected-only designation and the total lack of any grants page, portal, or published guidelines, and its listed website (northlake.org) does not belong to the foundation at all — it resolves to an unrelated church in Tucker, Georgia. Do not submit an LOI to that address or attempt to use a contact form there.

The single most actionable step for a genuinely mission-aligned organization is to establish a real-world connection before requesting funding. Every disclosed grant traces to a discernible affinity: Catholic philanthropy (The Papal Foundation, a major-donor consortium requiring $1 million multi-year membership pledges, not standard grant applications), Michigan or Notre Dame/Hillsdale higher-education ties, and Philadelphia historic preservation (Fishtown). Organizations without one of these threads should not expect a cold approach to succeed.

If attempting outreach anyway, use the mailing address on IRS record — 445 Dockside Dr Unit 604, Naples, FL 34110 — by physical letter rather than email, since info@northlake.org is tied to the mismatched website and may not reach the Sheas reliably. Keep any unsolicited inquiry brief (one page), lead with the specific shared affinity (institution, geography, or cause) rather than a generic funding pitch, and set expectations low: with roughly $390,000 in annual capacity spread across an established set of six-to-ten relationships, this is not a foundation positioned to add many new grantees in a given cycle. Common mistakes to avoid: treating this like a competitive RFP process, assuming the listed website reflects the real foundation, and pitching general operating requests without first identifying which existing relationship category (Catholic giving, Michigan/higher-ed ties, or historic preservation) the request could plausibly extend.