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.

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.