Progeny Foundation Inc.

Grant seekers should know upfront: Progeny Foundation Inc. (EIN 26-2837637, Indianapolis, IN, tax-exempt since August 2009) is coded in IRS and philanthropic databases as a Human Services private foundation, but its actual operations — confirmed directly from progenyfoundation.org — are those of a direct-service youth basketball development organization, not a grantmaker that reviews outside proposals. The foundation runs its own AAU/travel basketball program (team rosters spanning graduating classes 2025 through 2031), competing on the Under Armour RISE and Future circuits, out of its own facility ('The Guru Arena') equipped with Shoot 360 shooting technology, strength-and-conditioning space, and one-on-one academic tutoring in subjects like calculus and biology. There is no grants page, LOI form, RFP process, or program officer listed anywhere on its site. Its IRS-filed mission statement — 'provide high quality educational and development opportunities to middle school and high school students through mentoring, physical and nutrition training, and sports' — describes this same direct program, not a pass-through funding stream. Leadership is a small, uncompensated family/board team: David Deram (President), Brooke Deram (Secretary), Vicki Perry (Chairperson), and Jason Zoch (Treasurer) — a structure typical of a closely held family operating foundation rather than an institutional grantmaker with staff and open cycles. The organization's own Form 990-PF filings report $0 in the 'grants paid' line for both FY2022 and FY2023, meaning essentially all of its ~$350K-$400K in annual charitable spending funds its own coaching staff, facility, equipment, and tutoring — not checks to outside 501(c)(3)s. For nonprofits doing prospect research, the realistic path here is not a grant proposal; it is either (a) crossing this foundation off an active-funder list, or (b) approaching it as a potential partner or in-kind collaborator (e.g., a youth-development or academic-tutoring organization proposing a joint program with Progeny's existing athletes) rather than as a check-writing funder. Any outreach should go through the general contact line, (317) 259-4958, with the clear understanding that response likelihood is low and no formal review process exists.

Progeny Foundation Inc.'s own IRS filings confirm it does not make grants to unrelated organizations: the 990-PF 'grants paid' field is $0 in both FY2022 and FY2023. What the database labels 'total giving' — $399,494 in FY2022 and $348,015 in FY2023 — is charitable program spending on the foundation's own basketball, tutoring, and mentoring operations, not third-party awards; ProPublica's summary of the FY2024 filing similarly shows $350,669 in charitable disbursements against $431,659 in total expenses (about 81%), consistent with an operating, not grantmaking, cost structure. Net assets have held roughly steady over the three most recent filed years — $9,380,288 (FY2022), $8,959,947 (FY2023), $9,161,901 (FY2024) — while revenue has been volatile and driven mostly by investment activity rather than steady public fundraising: FY2024 revenue of $431,155 was 85.9% asset-sale proceeds ($370,410) plus dividends ($108,979) and interest ($55,293), with only $57,937 (13.4%) from direct contributions. FY2022 looked very different, with $431,749 in contributions received against $265,673 in net investment income on $703,452 total revenue, while FY2023 saw contributions collapse to just $27,200. That swing — a nearly 16x drop in contributions from 2022 to 2023 — suggests the foundation's cash inflows depend heavily on a small number of large, irregular family or donor contributions rather than a broad, renewable base, reinforcing that it functions as a family-funded operating vehicle rather than a public grants program with a predictable annual payout. Because no grantee data exists in this record (grantees.stats show zero total grants and no top recipients), there is no median grant size, program-area breakdown, or geographic distribution to report — a direct consequence of this being a non-grantmaking operating foundation rather than a gap in available records.

All five peers sit in the same $7.2M-$9.4M asset band and share the 'Human Services' NTEE classification, but three of the five have no listed website at all, and none of the six organizations in this set (including Progeny) shows a public grant application process, portal, or published grantee list in available records. This pattern — small, closely held foundations with modest, stable asset bases and little to no public grants infrastructure — is common among family/closely held private foundations of this size; grant seekers should expect that most, and possibly all, of these six are better classified as either dormant, pass-through-to-a-single-cause, or (like Progeny) direct-operating vehicles rather than active, appliable grant sources.

No 2025 or 2026 news coverage, press releases, or grant announcements attributable to Progeny Foundation Inc. as a funder were found in web searches. The organization's current public-facing activity is entirely programmatic: its website lists active basketball rosters for graduating classes 2025 through 2031, ongoing participation in the Under Armour RISE and Future youth basketball circuits (10+ games annually), and its home training facility, 'The Guru Arena,' featuring Shoot 360 shooting-technology courts and a dedicated weight room. No leadership changes were identified — the same four officers (David Deram, President; Brooke Deram, Secretary; Vicki Perry, Chairperson; Jason Zoch, Treasurer) appear across the most recent filings, all serving without compensation. Financially, the most recent filed year (FY2024) shows total assets of $9,161,901 and a near break-even result (revenue $431,155 against expenses of roughly $431,659), a modest improvement in scale over the leaner FY2023 filing ($100,405 in revenue). Given the absence of any grants-program activity to report, grant seekers should treat this foundation as functionally quiet from a philanthropic-award standpoint — its 'recent activity' is entirely about running its own youth basketball program, not about disbursing funds to the nonprofit sector.

The most important tip is a caution: based on the foundation's own website and its 990-PF grants-paid history ($0 in both FY2022 and FY2023), Progeny Foundation Inc. does not appear to run an application process for outside nonprofits at all, so a conventional LOI or full-proposal strategy is unlikely to produce a funding decision because there is no review mechanism to receive it. Before investing staff time, confirm this hasn't changed by checking progenyfoundation.org for a new 'Grants' or 'Apply' page and pulling the most recent 990-PF from ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer (projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/262837637) to see whether the grants-paid line has moved off zero. If it's still zero, redirect grant-seeking effort toward the five similarly sized Human Services peer foundations in this same asset tier, or toward larger, actively grantmaking Indianapolis-area human-services and youth-development funders instead. For organizations that still want to explore a relationship — for example, a tutoring nonprofit, sports-medicine provider, or youth mental-health organization that could plausibly partner with Progeny's existing athlete population — the more realistic approach is a partnership or in-kind collaboration pitch, not a grant request: propose a joint program that uses Progeny's existing roster and facility rather than asking the foundation to fund an unrelated program. Any outreach should go through the general phone line, (317) 259-4958, or the listed contact 'c/o David Deram,' since no dedicated grants email, program officer, or online form exists. Keep initial contact brief and specific about what collaboration (not funding) is being proposed, since a family-run, uncompensated four-person board of this kind (David Deram, Brooke Deram, Vicki Perry, Jason Zoch) is unlikely to have bandwidth to evaluate formal proposals. Common mistake to avoid: treating the NTEE 'Human Services' classification or the 'is_grantmaker' database flag as evidence of an active grants program — in this case the underlying 990 and website both indicate an operating foundation, and proposals submitted on that assumption will very likely go unanswered.