Saxena Family Foundation

Saxena Family Foundation (EIN 27-4196021) is a small, closely held family foundation administered through Foundation Source in Wilmington, DE, run by two officers: Jitendra Saxena (President/Director/Secretary, unpaid across all filed years) and Sapna Saxena (Director/Treasurer, compensation ranging $0-$25,000/year). With $7.27M in total assets and no program staff, this is a personal giving vehicle, not an institutional grantmaker with a published RFP. Granted's own record flags the foundation as 'preselected_only' — its public 'accepting applications' status does not match the observed pattern of who actually gets funded. Of the 43 grants totaling $772,956 in the foundation's tracked history, the single largest commitment — $280,000 across two grants to Partners Healthcare System (Brigham & Women's) for the 'Saxena Kidney & Pancreas Transplantation Fund' — is a named, endowed fund almost certainly tied to a personal family health connection rather than a competitive award. The next-largest gifts went to Hindu community and Indian-American cultural/civic organizations (Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America's OM Hindu Community Center in Billerica, MA, at $100,000; Indian American Impact Project at $75,000; Akshaya Patra Foundation USA at $100,000 across four gifts tied to 'Charitable Event' and 'Florida Chapter' purposes), reinforcing that identity, community, and personal ties — not a published thematic program — drive selection. For organizations without an existing relationship to the Saxena family, the realistic path in is a warm introduction, most plausibly through Massachusetts nonprofit and Indian-American community circles (Jitendra Saxena is a longtime figure on the TiE-Boston board) or health institutions in the Mass General Brigham orbit, rather than a cold letter of inquiry. First-time applicants should not expect a portal, a published deadline, or a review committee; expect instead a relationship that develops over one to two years, typically starting with a modest 'General & Unrestricted' gift in the $500-$5,000 range — the modal size across the grantee list — before any larger commitment follows. Note that some third-party aggregator sites describe a same-EIN 'Saxena Family Foundation' as an Austin, TX STEM-education and women's-empowerment funder; that description conflicts sharply with verified 990-PF grant history and should be treated with caution rather than used to craft a proposal.

Total assets grew from $2.5M in FY2012 to $7.29M in FY2021 and have held roughly flat ($6.67M-$7.29M) since, with FY2024 assets at $7,275,162 and total revenue of $901,140 (grants-paid/total-giving for FY2024 not yet reflected in available filings). In the three most recent fully filed years, total giving was $314,194 (2021), $445,378 (2022), and $379,110 (2023) — grants paid in those years were $183,000, $271,978, and $229,000 respectively, with the gap reflecting officer compensation ($10,417-$25,000/year) and administrative costs. FY2019 was an outlier at $1,076,050 in total giving against only $3.65M in assets that year, suggesting a one-time large distribution. The foundation's own typical-grant-size field (most recent 7 grants on record) shows a median of $25,000, average of $26,143, and range of $1,500-$60,000 — but the fuller 43-grant history skews smaller, with an average of $17,976 and total giving of $772,956. Geographically, Massachusetts dominates with 18 of 43 grants (42%), followed by New York (7), California and Pennsylvania (4 each), Washington DC (3), Texas and New Jersey (2 each), and single grants to Illinois, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — consistent with a Boston-area family funding both home-state causes and a handful of national/Indian-diaspora organizations. By cause, health and medical research accounts for roughly $300,000 (39%) of tracked giving — the $280,000 Brigham & Women's transplant fund plus smaller gifts to Massachusetts General Hospital's Alzheimer's research lab ($10,000) and Boston Cardiac Foundation ($10,000). Indian-American community, cultural, and civic organizations account for a comparable $335,000+ (43%) — Akshaya Patra Foundation USA ($100,000), Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America's OM Hindu Community Center ($100,000), Indian American Impact Project ($75,000), and International Foundation for Social Impact ($60,000). The remainder is a long tail of small ($250-$6,000) gifts to arts, disability services, cancer-ride fundraising (Pan-Mass Challenge), mental health, and gun-safety advocacy — mostly tagged 'General & Unrestricted' or 'Charitable Event,' indicating event-driven, relationship-based giving rather than a competitive grant cycle.

Granted grouped Saxena Family Foundation with five peer foundations that sit within roughly $3,000 of its $7.27M asset base — all classified under the generic 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category, with no public program data available for any of them in this dataset.

All six cluster within a $9,000 asset band, which reads as an artifact of Granted's asset-based peer matching rather than mission alignment — none of the five peers has published program guidelines distinguishing a focus area from the generic private-foundation classification. This is itself informative: at the $5M-$10M asset tier, single-family foundations like Saxena overwhelmingly operate as personal, relationship-driven giving vehicles with no dedicated program staff or public grantmaking infrastructure, rather than as programmatic funders comparable in process to a mid-size community or corporate foundation.

The most recent activity on record is a Form 990-PF filing dated November 4, 2025 (covering the FY2024 period, in which total assets stood at $7,275,162 and total revenue was $901,140); grants paid and total giving for that fiscal year were not yet reflected in available data as of this report (2026-08-06). No press releases, leadership changes, or named new grants were found for 2025-2026 — consistent with a two-person family foundation with no communications function. The foundation's Granted record shows web enrichment as of 2026-02-22 and last verification on 2026-08-03, with the foundation currently marked 'accepting_applications: true' despite no discoverable application form, portal, or deadline. A notable open question for grant seekers: multiple grant-aggregator sites (Instrumentl, STEMgrants.com, and a site at saxenafoundation.com) describe a same-EIN 'Saxena Family Foundation' as an Austin, TX-headquartered funder supporting STEM education and women's empowerment, citing specific grants (an Austin ISD STEM award, a $1M Michigan State professorship, a Girls Who Code scholarship, a Boys & Girls Clubs of Houston program) — none of which appear in the 43-grant history verified against the foundation's actual 990-PF filings, and a $1M single grant is inconsistent with a foundation whose total assets are $7.27M and whose highest-ever recorded annual giving is roughly $1.08M (FY2019, an outlier). Grant seekers should treat those aggregator listings as unverified or possibly describing a different organization until confirmed directly with the foundation.

There is no functioning public application process to target. The foundation's own Granted record lists no application form URL, no stated deadline, and 'application_instructions: none,' and saxena.org's About and Contact pages return no substantive content when crawled — only tracking-pixel infrastructure. Do not submit a cold LOI expecting a response; with two unpaid-to-lightly-compensated family officers and no program staff, the foundation has no capacity to process or track an open pipeline. Instead: (1) Verify identity first — confirm any contact you make is with EIN 27-4196021 at 501 Silverside Rd Ste 123, Wilmington, DE 19809 (phone (800) 839-1754, a Foundation Source line serving many client foundations), not the similarly named but seemingly distinct Austin, TX 'Saxena Foundation' that appears in SEO-driven grant-aggregator listings. (2) Build a warm path in — the most productive channels observed in the grant history are Massachusetts nonprofit and philanthropy networks, the Boston Indian-American community, TiE-Boston (Jitendra Saxena is a longtime board figure there), and institutions connected to Mass General Brigham, since the foundation's single largest gift is a named fund at Brigham & Women's. (3) Lead with alignment to demonstrated priorities, not generic mission language: health and medical research (especially organ transplant/donation, cardiac care, or Alzheimer's research), Indian-American cultural and civic institutions (temples, community centers, hunger-relief and civic-empowerment organizations serving the India-connected diaspora), or event-based fundraising the family might attend. (4) Start small — the modal recorded gift is $500-$5,000 tagged 'General & Unrestricted' or 'Charitable Event'; a first ask in that range, ideally tied to a specific event or project, is far more realistic than pitching a large multi-year program in a first contact. (5) Avoid the single biggest mistake grant seekers are likely to make with this funder: treating the STEM-education/women's-empowerment description from third-party aggregator sites as this foundation's actual program — none of the 43 verified grants went to a STEM-education or women's-empowerment-focused organization, so a proposal built around that framing will misfire. (6) Expect single-year awards with renewal tied to the relationship staying active, not to a formal reapplication or reporting cycle.