Sarma Charitable Foundation

Sarma Charitable Foundation (SCF) is the corporate philanthropic arm of Sarma, a San Antonio financial-services and collections company operating since 1907, and it behaves like a corporate foundation rather than an open-application grantmaker. Its own IRS filing data flags it as preselected_only, and the foundation's website confirms it "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations" with no unsolicited-proposal channel. Grant seekers should not expect an LOI-to-proposal pipeline; instead, SCF runs three named programs — the Partnership Award (multi-year sponsorships with a chosen charity, e.g., a two-year San Antonio Food Bank grocery-rescue partnership), the Crisis Award (rapid-response funding, seen in $20K-$25K grants to Feeding South Florida and University Health), and the Employee Award (small $500-$2,000 grants directed by individual Sarma staff to causes of their choice, from the Alzheimer's Association to Cystic Fibrosis Foundation). A fourth, genuinely public-facing program is the Sarma Charitable Foundation Scholarship, which took 161 applications in 2024 and funded 10 students at $5,000 each. First-time applicants with no existing Sarma relationship have the best odds through the scholarship track; organizational funding is overwhelmingly relationship-driven, concentrated on repeat multi-year partners (San Antonio Food Bank received 3 grants totaling $157,750 — over a third of all tracked giving — and Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio received $83,000 for its 6th home sponsorship as of 2026). The board is entirely uncompensated (all 8 listed directors and officers show $0 compensation), consistent with a lean, founder-adjacent operating structure led by President/CEO Bob Benavides. Organizations serving San Antonio's Bexar County — especially in food security, affordable housing, and financial literacy — that can secure an introduction through Sarma's business network stand the best chance of entering the preselected pipeline.

Across the 43 tracked grants (total $458,690), the average grant is $10,667, but the distribution is heavily bimodal: a small number of large, multi-year sponsorships (San Antonio Food Bank $157,750 across 3 grants; Habitat for Humanity $83,000; Feeding South Florida $50,000 across 2 Crisis Awards) sit alongside a long tail of $1,000-$2,000 Employee Award micro-grants to 15+ different local nonprofits (Alzheimer's Association of San Antonio, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Literacy San Antonio, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and others). Grant sizes documented in the data range from $740 (The Ferrari Kid, golf sponsorship) up to $157,750 in cumulative Food Bank funding, with single-grant awards ranging $1,000-$90,000. Geographically, giving is 86% concentrated in Texas (37 of 43 grants) with the remainder in Florida (6 grants, largely South Florida crisis/hunger relief), reflecting SCF's San Antonio headquarters and Sarma's regional footprint. By program area, food security and hunger relief is the single largest category by dollars (San Antonio Food Bank + South Texas Food Bank + Feeding South Florida together exceed $230,000, roughly half of tracked giving), followed by affordable housing (Habitat for Humanity, $83,000+), health/human services (University Health, blood/tissue services, cancer and Alzheimer's causes), and education (scholarships, now over $200,000 cumulative as of May 2026, plus UIW basketball program sponsorships). Financials show total assets of $2.65M (FY2022) down from $3.12M (FY2020), with total giving swinging year to year — $577,850 in FY2022 vs. $264,558 in FY2021 vs. $287,559 in FY2020 — driven by a large $3.7M contribution influx in FY2020 that inflated that year's revenue base. Officer compensation is $0 across all years, meaning essentially all disbursed funds reach grantees and program costs rather than administrative overhead.

Sarma Charitable Foundation sits in a cluster of similarly small, ~$2M-asset private foundations under the Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category. Unlike most of its listed peers, SCF has an active public program (the scholarship) and a real operating website, giving it more visibility than typical small family foundations of this size.

All five peer foundations cluster tightly around $2.0-$2.01M in assets — likely a data artifact of how this NTEE cohort was sampled rather than a true market pattern — and none have public website or grants data available, making SCF unusually transparent by comparison. SCF's distinguishing feature among this peer set is that it is corporately affiliated (tied to an operating financial-services business), which explains both its above-average payout activity relative to asset size and its heavy geographic concentration in the company's home market of San Antonio.

The most concrete recent milestone is SCF's 4th Annual Flagship Event on May 14, 2026, at which the foundation announced it had crossed $200,000 in cumulative scholarship funding to local students — roughly double the ~$100,000 scholarship mark it had reported as of its 2024 event. At the same 2026 event, SCF announced its 6th Habitat for Humanity of San Antonio home sponsorship, funded by a $90,000 donation, continuing an established multi-year affordable-housing partnership pattern (the DB grantee data shows an $83,000 Habitat grant tied to a prior "Complete Home Sponsorship" cycle). As of the 2024 flagship event, SCF reported having awarded over $1.2 million cumulatively since its 2020 founding to nonprofits, schools, universities, and communities across Texas and Florida — a figure that has grown further with the 2026 milestones. No leadership changes were identified in web research; Bob Benavides continues as President/CEO, with George Karutz as Board Chairman. No 2025-specific announcements surfaced independently in search results, suggesting SCF's public communications cluster around its annual May flagship event rather than a steady news cadence — grant seekers should watch for the next flagship event announcement (likely May 2027) as the foundation's primary public disclosure moment. IRS filing data lags: the most recent financials in the underlying database run through FY2022, so 2023-2026 grant-level detail is not yet independently verifiable beyond the foundation's own press announcements.

SCF does not run a general open RFP process, so the standard cold-LOI approach will not work here. Its own application_instructions field is blank and web research confirms the foundation states it "only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations" — treat this as a relationship- and nomination-driven funder, not a form-based one. Three concrete angles for engagement: (1) The scholarship track is genuinely open. If your organization serves or can refer graduating high school seniors or college students pursuing finance, business, economics, or management degrees, direct them to apply for the annual Sarma Charitable Foundation Scholarship (10 awards of $5,000 each in the most recent cycle, from a pool of 161 applicants) — this is the only documented channel with a real applicant pool rather than board discretion. (2) Build a Sarma business relationship first. Because SCF is Sarma's corporate giving arm, San Antonio nonprofits with existing ties to Sarma as a client, vendor, employer of volunteers, or community partner are far more likely to surface as Partnership Award candidates than organizations approaching cold. (3) Position for Crisis Award timing. The Crisis Award track ($20K-$25K grants seen to Feeding South Florida and University Health) responds to acute community needs (natural disasters, public health emergencies) rather than standing deadlines — organizations documenting an active crisis and a track record of direct service delivery are best positioned here. A common mistake would be treating this like a typical private foundation with a grants portal; there is none, and the foundation's own site (sarmacharitablefoundation.org) is only a frameset redirect to sarma.com, so seekers should go directly to sarma.com/sarma-charitable-foundation/ for current program descriptions. Given the food-security and housing concentration in actual grants data, organizations in those two verticals — especially ones already visible in the San Antonio nonprofit ecosystem (San Antonio Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity affiliates) — have the clearest precedent for future funding. Employee Award nominations ($500-$2,000) are directed by individual Sarma staff, so building visibility with Sarma's broader employee base (volunteer events, sponsorship visibility, local media coverage) may indirectly surface your organization for consideration.