Pack Foundation

The Pack Foundation is a founder-directed micro-family foundation with exactly two trustees — R. Michael Pack and Christine Pack, both unpaid, with zero listed staff. There is no public grants program, no application portal, and no LOI process: the IRS enrichment data field for application instructions is blank, and the foundation's own domain (packfoundation.org) has lapsed into a generic web-hosting placeholder page. This is the clearest signal available: the foundation does not run a competitive process. The single most consistent thread in its giving is Michael Pack's loyalty to San Diego State University. A 1970 SDSU Business Finance graduate and President of SunCal Outdoor Advertising since 1977, Pack sits on SDSU's Campanile Foundation board and the College of Arts & Letters' International Business Advisory Board, and has personally funded more than 150 international business scholarships at SDSU since 2003. Accordingly, The Campanile Foundation is by far the largest and most reliable grantee relationship on record — $373,500 across 4 historical grants, plus a further $206,000 in FY2025 alone. Beyond that anchor commitment, the foundation recycles modest, recurring four- and five-figure gifts across a fixed roster of San Diego civic institutions — American Red Cross, Boys & Girls Clubs, Home Start, Old Globe Theatre, Planned Parenthood, Alpha Project, Broadway San Diego — rather than running an open RFP. Across 39 recorded grants the recipient list is strikingly stable year over year, which strongly suggests the Packs re-up existing relationships annually rather than reviewing new applicants competitively. First-time, cold-outreach applicants outside this circle should calibrate expectations accordingly: there is no evidence of a multi-stage LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline or site-visit process, because with two unpaid trustees and no staff, any decision is almost certainly informal and fast once a relationship exists — but getting to that relationship is the hard part. The realistic paths in are a direct personal connection to Michael or Christine Pack, an SDSU affiliation (especially International Business or general scholarship programs), or a warm introduction through an existing grantee working in San Diego homelessness, youth services, health, arts, or disaster relief.

The foundation's most recent Form 990 (FY2025, filed 2026-03-07) reports 11 grants with a median size of $10,000, an average of $14,087, and a range of $200 to $40,000 — small, repeated checks rather than large one-off awards. Across the full historical record captured in the database (39 grants, $781,150 total, averaging $20,029 per grant — inflated by Campanile's multi-grant cumulative total), giving by purpose breaks down as: scholarship programs 47.8% ($373,500, entirely to The Campanile Foundation/SDSU); general-purpose civic gifts 22.0% (~$171,650 across Red Cross, Old Globe Theatre, Alpha Project, Broadway San Diego, and a small fraternity gift); health services 14.3% ($112,000, Planned Parenthood and Population Connection); youth care/education 7.8% ($61,000, Boys & Girls Clubs); homeless rehousing 6.0% ($47,000, Home Start); and leadership programming 1.8% ($14,000, Aspen Institute). Total annual giving has grown steadily and then jumped sharply: $116,702 (FY2011) to $158,600 (FY2014) to $259,054 (FY2019) to $308,276 (FY2023), before an estimated $685,000-plus in FY2025 — more than doubling in two years. That jump tracks a $3.5 million contribution received in FY2025 (82.7% of that year's $4,234,228 in total revenue), which also pushed total assets from $6.4 million (FY2023) to $13.2 million (FY2025), the figure now reflected in the database's current asset total. Geographically, California recipients dominate by count (22 of 39 grants, concentrated in San Diego), with Washington, DC-headquartered national organizations (Red Cross, Population Connection, Aspen Institute) accounting for 12 grants, New York 4, and North Carolina 1 — consistent with the foundation's listed geographic focus of CA and DC. No single grant in the visible record has exceeded $40,000, even though cumulative multi-year commitments to Campanile run into six figures — this is a foundation that gives in small, repeated installments to a fixed set of relationships, not one that writes large discretionary checks to new organizations.

The database groups Pack Foundation with five education-focused private foundations of comparable asset size (roughly $13.0-13.4 million), though none disclose annual giving data in the record, and one (Breakthrough Prize Foundation) operates at a vastly different scale and mode despite the asset-size match.

Pack Foundation shares its peers' modest asset base and education orientation but is distinguished by an unusually personal, single-founder giving pattern — most peers with a scholarship-trust structure (like J Edward Lewis) likely run more formalized award processes than Pack's informal, two-trustee model. Three of the five peers list no public website at all, reinforcing that foundations in this asset tier typically operate with minimal public infrastructure and are best approached through personal or institutional relationships rather than cold applications.

The Pack Foundation maintains essentially no public media presence — web searches for foundation-specific news returned only unrelated results for the much larger David & Lucile Packard Foundation and the Green Bay Packers Foundation, confirming this is a low-visibility family vehicle rather than an institution that issues announcements. Its own domain, packfoundation.org, currently resolves to a generic HostArmada web-hosting welcome page, indicating the foundation's website has lapsed or was never fully built out. The most concrete recent signal is administrative: the FY2025 Form 990, filed 2026-03-07, shows a $3.5 million contribution into the foundation (versus $1.2 million received in FY2023 and $0 in FY2022), lifting total assets to $13,229,203 and enabling an estimated $685,000-plus in charitable disbursements across 11 grants — more than double FY2023's $308,276 in total giving. Known FY2025 grants include The Campanile Foundation ($206,000, SDSU scholarships), American Red Cross ($130,000, disaster relief), and a newly appearing recipient, San Diego Food Bank ($25,000), which does not appear anywhere in the foundation's historical top-grantee list. On the personal side, R. Michael Pack continues to be active in SDSU institutional life as a Campanile Foundation board member and College of Arts & Letters International Business Advisory Board member, a role that anchors the foundation's largest and longest-running commitment: over 150 SDSU international business scholarships funded since 2003. No leadership changes were found — R Michael Pack and Christine Pack remain the foundation's only two trustees, both uncompensated, as they have been across every filing in the record.

There is no published RFP, LOI form, deadline, or online application for the Pack Foundation — the IRS/enrichment data lists application instructions as blank, and the foundation's own website domain has lapsed into a third-party hosting placeholder page. Do not spend time searching for a formal portal; confirm interest by phone first at (619) 291-4441, the number on file (also SunCal Outdoor Advertising's line, the founder's business). The mailing address is addressed personally — "% R Michael Pack," 1709 Sebring Hills Dr, Henderson, NV 89052 — reinforcing that this is a personal, not institutional, front door; any written outreach should be addressed to Michael or Christine Pack directly rather than to a generic "grants department." Best-fit organizations are San Diego-based nonprofits working in homelessness/rehousing, youth development, reproductive or general health services, arts and culture, or disaster relief — the fixed set of causes the foundation has funded repeatedly for years. If your organization has any tie to San Diego State University — particularly the College of Arts & Letters, the International Business program, or scholarship funding broadly — lead with that connection explicitly; it is the single most reliable predictor of a gift, with The Campanile Foundation alone drawing $373,500+ historically and $206,000 in FY2025. Because gifts are personally approved by two unpaid trustees with no program staff, a warm introduction — through an existing grantee, the SDSU alumni network, or San Diego business/civic circles where Pack has operated since the 1970s — will substantially outperform an unsolicited mailed proposal or portal-style submission. Calibrate the ask to the funder's actual check size: the FY2025 median grant was $10,000 and the observed range was $200 to $40,000, so a first-time request in the $5,000-$15,000 range is far more realistic than a large one-off ask. The FY2025 jump in assets (to $13.2 million, after a $3.5 million contribution) and giving (to an estimated $685,000+) suggests the foundation may have more room for new relationships than its historical pattern implies, but there is no sign this has been formalized into any public application process — treat any new opening as relationship-driven, not competitive.