Sandis Foundation

Sandis Foundation is a small, family-directed private foundation based in Creswell, Oregon (Lane County), organized under IRS subsection 03 with a stated mission to "support and assist churches, schools and educational organizations" and to help people who are "living in poverty, are hungry and are homeless." Filing history shows control has passed through at least two family groups — Douglas, Colby, and Wiley Henton (President/Treasurer/Secretary in earlier years) and, more recently, Norman N. McDougal (President) and Sharon Ann McDougal (Secretary), with Julie Dee Hayden appearing as a director — none of whom draw compensation, a strong signal this is an unpaid, closely held family vehicle rather than a staffed institution. The two identifiable grantees in our matched data, Outpost Centers International ($6,000 across two grants) and Girl Scouts of Oregon & SW Washington ($410 across two grants), both fit the faith/education/youth-service profile described in the mission statement and both have Pacific Northwest or camp/retreat-adjacent identities, consistent with a founder-network-driven giving pattern rather than open competitive review. There is no evidence anywhere online — not on 990 aggregators, not in press, not on a dedicated grants page — of a formal LOI/application/site-visit progression; the database's website field (sandis.org) in fact resolves to an unrelated civil-engineering software company, not this foundation, meaning there is no confirmed public web presence to research further. First-time applicants should treat Sandis Foundation as a closed, relationship-based funder: cold applications are unlikely to be reviewed absent an existing connection to the Henton or McDougal families, to Creswell/Lane County institutions, or to the specific churches and schools the family already supports. The recent jump in disbursements (from under $20,000/year through 2023 to $255,000-$602,810 in 2024-2025) suggests the foundation is actively deploying a larger asset base following a $2.69M contribution in 2023, which may mean more grants are being made even though the recipient list and process remain undisclosed. Organizations with genuine ties to the founding families' faith, education, or anti-poverty causes in Oregon should pursue warm introductions rather than a written proposal.

Financial data is sparse and volatile, consistent with a small family foundation moving between near-dormancy and episodic activity. Total assets: $1 (2019, effectively a shell filing) → $3,376,576 (2020, 2021) → $3,368,886 (2022) → $6,042,783 (2023) → $5,593,297 (2024, per external filing data) → $5,796,396 (2025, per ProPublica/Instrumentl). The 2023 asset jump followed $2,691,974 in contributions received that year against total revenue of $2,692,596 — a single large infusion, not investment growth (net investment income was just $622 in 2023). Total giving in the years captured in our matched grant data was minimal: $0 (2019), $484 (2020), $0 (2021), $7,690 (2022, of which $3,205 was recorded as grants paid), and $18,699 (2023). Our matched grantee data captures only 4 total grants worth $6,410 combined — average $1,603, range $205-$3,000 per the aggregate figures, split $6,000 to Outpost Centers International and $410 to Girl Scouts of Oregon & SW Washington, both in the OR/TN geography. This is a small sample and does not reconcile with the far larger disbursements ProPublica/Instrumentl report for FY2024 ($602,810 in grants paid) and FY2025 ($287,983 in charitable disbursements) — meaning the foundation's full, current grantee list is not captured in our database and its recent giving is an order of magnitude larger than its historical pattern. Program breakdown cannot be quantified precisely, but the two identifiable grantees plus the stated mission point to a rough split between education/faith-based organizations (schools, churches, youth/camp programs like Outpost Centers International) and human-services/anti-poverty causes (hunger, homelessness), with Girl Scouts of Oregon & SW Washington indicating some youth-development giving as well. Officer compensation is $0 across every filing year, and grants-paid figures fluctuate year to year with no visible multi-year commitment pattern to any single grantee in the available data.

Sandis Foundation was matched against peer private foundations of nearly identical asset size (all clustered at ~$5.8M), each also classified under the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE category — a category that typically signals an undifferentiated family foundation rather than a foundation with a public program focus.

None of the five peers have a listed website in our data, and none surfaced in web searches, reinforcing that this entire peer set consists of small, closely held family foundations with no public grantmaking infrastructure. Sandis Foundation is distinguished from its peers only by having a stated (if generic) mission and a partial public grant history via IRS filings — most of this peer cohort has neither, making Sandis relatively more transparent than the group average even though it still offers no formal application path.

The clearest recent signal is financial, not narrative: Sandis Foundation's grantmaking scaled up sharply starting in fiscal year 2024, with grants paid reported at $602,810 (ProPublica, filed 2025-05-15) versus $18,699 or less in every prior year on record back to 2019. FY2025 (filed 2026-05-15) shows continued elevated activity at $287,983 in charitable disbursements against $523,719 in revenue and $320,620 in total expenses. This follows a 2023 capital event — $2,691,974 in contributions received, nearly doubling total assets from $3.37M to $6.04M — which likely funded the subsequent increase in giving capacity. No leadership announcements, press coverage, award announcements, or program launches were found in web searches; the foundation has no detectable media presence, no listed grants page, and its nominal website domain (sandis.org) actually belongs to an unrelated civil-engineering software company, not this foundation. Officer records show a possible multi-generational or multi-family transition in control — earlier Form 990-PF filings list Douglas, Colby, and Wiley Henton in the top three officer roles, while more recent filings list Norman N. and Sharon Ann McDougal as President and Secretary alongside director Julie Dee Hayden — but the timing and reason for this change are not disclosed anywhere public. Grantseekers should treat the FY2024-2025 disbursement increase as the single most important recent development: it suggests meaningfully more grant capacity than the foundation's historical pattern implied, even though the specific new grantees behind those larger totals are not identified in any source available to this research.

Because Sandis Foundation publishes no grants page, no LOI process, no deadlines, and no contact person for grant inquiries anywhere online, standard cold-application tactics (portal submissions, generic LOIs, cold email to a listed program officer) have no clear channel to land — there is no confirmed public inbox or form to target. The only listed contact points are the foundation's registered phone number, (541) 525-5938, and its mailing address, PO Box 518, Creswell, OR 97426 — both drawn from IRS filings rather than a grants office, so any outreach should be treated as a first, exploratory contact rather than a submission channel. Given the mission language ("support and assist churches, schools and educational organizations" and helping those who are "living in poverty, are hungry and are homeless") and the two identifiable grantees (a youth camp/retreat network and a Girl Scouts council), organizations most likely to gain traction are Oregon-based churches, K-12 or faith-affiliated schools, youth-development nonprofits, and food/shelter-focused human-services organizations — ideally with an existing tie to Creswell or Lane County, or to the Henton or McDougal families directly. Common mistakes to avoid: assuming this is a competitive, portal-based funder and investing in a formal grant proposal before establishing any relationship; treating the stale sandis.org domain as the foundation's real site (it is not — that domain belongs to an unrelated software company); and expecting a response to unsolicited mail given the all-volunteer, zero-compensation officer structure, which suggests very limited administrative bandwidth to process inbound requests. The best available strategy is relationship-building through mutual local contacts — churches, schools, or human-services agencies in the Creswell/Lane County, Oregon area that may already have a connection to the founding families — rather than any written-proposal strategy. Given the recent, unexplained jump in disbursements to $255,000-$602,810 in 2024-2025, it may also be worth a low-effort direct inquiry (phone or mail) simply asking whether the foundation is currently accepting introductions, since our data flags "accepting_applications" as true in the source record even though no instructions are published.