Pleroma Inc.

Pleroma Inc. is a small, privately administered family foundation (EIN 20-0622367) based in Glen Rose, Texas, with roughly $13.3M in assets. It was established in 2004 and capitalized in 2006 with assets transferred from the Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation, a legacy New York philanthropy — director M Christine Jurzykowski carries that family lineage forward on the board. The foundation has only one paid staff member, director Claude Del Pepin, who works 35 hours per week and is compensated $128,438; the other two directors, Jurzykowski and Mark Finser, log roughly 8 hours per week each at ~$26,000 in compensation. That is the entire operating apparatus — there is no program staff, no communications function, and no public grants portal.

The single most important fact for any prospective applicant: every dollar of matched grant history in this dataset — six grants totaling $5.7M — has gone to one recipient, RSF Social Finance, a San Francisco-based nonprofit lender in the "regenerative economy" space. That concentration is not a coincidence; director Mark Finser co-founded RSF Social Finance in 1984 and served as its President/CEO before becoming Chairman of its Board of Trustees. In practice, Pleroma Inc. functions less like an open grantmaker soliciting proposals and more like a personal philanthropic vehicle for its directors, channeling assets to an organization one of them helped build and still governs.

First-time applicants without a pre-existing relationship to Del Pepin, Jurzykowski, or Finser — or without a clear tie to RSF Social Finance's world of impact investing, ecological land stewardship, food-systems finance, or Waldorf/anthroposophic education (the Jurzykowski and Finser networks both touch these areas) — should treat this as a very low-probability, relationship-first prospect rather than a competitive open funder. There is no evidence of an LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline, site visits, or a review committee; the filings show one recurring grant decision made annually by three people.

Pleroma Inc.'s giving is small, concentrated, and shrinking. Across the matched grant history in this dataset, the average grant size is $950,000 and the six tracked grants sum to $5.7M, but that entire total sits with a single grantee, RSF Social Finance (San Francisco, CA) — there is no median to compute across a diversified portfolio because there isn't one.

Annual figures from Form 990-PF filings tell a consistent story of gradual contraction: grants paid were $850,000 (2020), $1,100,000 (2021, the recent peak), $1,000,000 (2022), $900,000 (2023), and $750,000 in the most recent filing for 2024 — a roughly 32% decline in three years. Total giving (which includes grants plus related charitable disbursements) followed the same arc: $1,238,285 (2020), $1,480,646 (2021), $1,345,491 (2022), $1,300,702 (2023). Total assets have declined in step, from $14,769,759 (2021) to $13,299,371 (2024), a drop of roughly 10% in three years, driven partly by a 2024 net operating loss (revenue of $894,785 against expenses of $1,274,827).

By geography, 100% of tracked giving is directed to California (specifically San Francisco). By program area, 100% of grants are coded simply "CHARITABLE" rather than broken into education, health, or other categories — consistent with a single large annual grant rather than a program-driven portfolio. Officer/director compensation has stayed remarkably flat over a decade, ranging from $177,760–$182,438 in total across the three directors in most years, which — combined with declining grants paid — means overhead now consumes a growing share of a shrinking distribution budget. There is no indication in any filing of smaller discretionary grants, matching gifts, or a broader grantee list beyond RSF Social Finance; grant seekers should not expect this foundation to fund a wide range of causes or organization sizes.

All five peer foundations were matched on asset size alone (each holds roughly $13.29M-$13.30M in total assets) and share the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE classification — none has a public website, so their actual application posture, geography, or grantee concentration cannot be independently verified. What differentiates Pleroma Inc. within this peer set is not its size but its behavior: unlike a typical small family foundation that spreads a handful of grants across a home community, Pleroma's entire tracked grant history routes to one national nonprofit tied directly to a sitting director's professional legacy. Grant seekers evaluating this peer group should assume all six are closely held, low-transparency vehicles, but treat Pleroma's single-recipient pattern as unusually well-documented evidence of a closed giving model rather than an open one.

The most recent public filing (Form 990-PF for fiscal year 2024, submitted 2025-11-17) shows Pleroma Inc. reporting $894,785 in revenue against $1,274,827 in expenses — a net operating loss of roughly $380,000 for the year — with total assets down to approximately $13.3M (some aggregator estimates put year-end net assets closer to $12.4M after gains/losses are netted). The filing documents one grant: $750,000 to RSF Social Finance, continuing the foundation's multi-year practice of a single annual disbursement to that organization.

No news coverage, press releases, or public announcements from or about Pleroma Inc. were found for 2025 or 2026 in general web search. Search results under the "Pleroma" name are dominated by two unrelated entities: the open-source Fediverse/Mastodon-alternative software project at pleroma.social, and a separate charity called "Pleroma Foundation — Reaching the Unreached." Neither has any connection to this Texas private foundation, and this is worth flagging explicitly: the website listed in the foundation's own record (pleroma.social) resolves to the unrelated software project, not to any foundation page — likely a data-matching error rather than an active foundation web presence.

Leadership has been stable: the same three directors — Claude Del Pepin, M Christine Jurzykowski, and Mark Finser — appear across at least the last several years of filings with only minor compensation fluctuations (Del Pepin's compensation has ranged from roughly $23,760 to $128,438 depending on the filing year and role, while Jurzykowski's and Finser's have hovered near $24,000-$28,000). No leadership transitions, new program launches, or strategic announcements were identified.

The single most important tip is to recalibrate expectations: Form 990-PF filings show 100% of Pleroma Inc.'s tracked grant dollars ($5.7M across six annual grants) going to one recipient, RSF Social Finance — an organization co-founded and long chaired by sitting director Mark Finser. There is no visible open competitive process, no listed grants portal, and the foundation's own record lists its "application_instructions" as none on file. Treat unsolicited outreach as a long shot unless your organization has a genuine, demonstrable connection to the foundation's actual network.

The highest-value alignment angle is the "regenerative economy" and impact-investing space that RSF Social Finance itself occupies — ecological land stewardship, sustainable food systems, community lending, and mission-aligned finance — plus the Jurzykowski family's historical ties to education, science, and the arts (inherited from the predecessor Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation, which transferred assets to Pleroma Inc. in 2006). Proposals that speak fluently to either of these worlds, and ideally reference a warm connection to Del Pepin, Jurzykowski, or Finser, are far more likely to get read than a generic cold LOI.

Because the foundation has no online application system, do not search for a portal — none exists. The most credible channel is a brief written letter of inquiry mailed to PO Box 1796, Glen Rose, TX 76043, or a phone call to the number on file to ask how the directors prefer to receive requests. With only one part-time-equivalent staffer (Del Pepin, 35 hours/week) managing everything from compliance to correspondence, keep any outreach short: a one-page mission-fit paragraph, your 501(c)(3) determination letter, and a specific dollar ask. Avoid multi-attachment packets or grant-management-software submissions — there is no infrastructure here to receive them. Do not rely on pleroma.social as a source of guidance; it is an unrelated software project, not this foundation's website. Common mistakes to avoid: assuming this is a program-area-driven funder (it isn't — every grant is coded simply "charitable"), assuming a rolling or published deadline exists (none was found in any filing), and over-following-up given the foundation's minimal staff capacity — one polite follow-up after 4-6 weeks is appropriate, more is not.