Schlecht Family Foundation Inc.

The Schlecht Family Foundation is a small, hands-on family foundation run by Steve and Marianne Schlecht (founders of GEMPLER'S and Duluth Trading Company) with daughter Stephanie Schlecht as the day-to-day gatekeeper (listed as Secretary/Director on the Form 990-PF, described publicly as executive director). This is a relationship-first funder, not a portal-and-form funder: there is no formal online application system, and the platform record flags the foundation's contributions as effectively preselected — meaning the safest read is that most awarded dollars go to organizations the family already knows, with genuine but limited room for new relationships that fit tightly. The published process (an introductory email to stephanie@schlechtfamilyfoundation.org, followed by a call if there's mission alignment, followed by board consideration) confirms cold outreach is possible but must be tightly targeted. First-time applicants should not lead with a large capital ask: the foundation explicitly says it prefers not to fund capital campaigns or endowments, positioning itself instead as funding 'instigators' — organizations with fresh ideas addressing community challenges inside five specific Wisconsin counties (Dane, Green, Grant, Iowa, Lafayette). The grantee list bears this out: 67 of 74 recorded grants (90.5%) went to Wisconsin organizations, with the remainder scattered across CO, DC, NY, and PA — likely reflecting personal or advisory-network ties rather than an open national program. Grant sizes cluster around operating support and capacity building rather than one-time capital gifts: the two most common purpose codes across the sample are 'TO SUPPORT OPERATING ACTIVITIES' and 'TO SUPPORT CAPACITY BUILDING,' with several grantees (Operation Fresh Start, Clean Lakes Alliance, Latino Chamber of Commerce of Dane County, Lighthouse Church Madison, Kids Forward Foundation) receiving 2-3 sequential grants — evidence of multi-year renewal relationships rather than one-off gifts. First-time applicants should expect the relationship to start small (seed or capacity-building grant in the $3,750-$25,000 range) before graduating to larger, renewed general-operating support in the $50,000-$150,000+ tier that established relationships like Black Men Coalition Foundation ($230,000/2 grants) and Rebalanced Life Wellness Association ($150,000/1 grant) now receive.

Total recorded giving in the platform's grantee sample is $2,975,902 across 74 grants to 50 unique organizations, for an average grant of $40,215 — though the distribution is wide and right-skewed. The single largest cumulative relationship is Black Men Coalition Foundation at $230,000 across 2 grants, followed by Operation Fresh Start ($210,000/3 grants), Urban League of Greater Madison ($200,000/2 grants), Clean Lakes Alliance ($192,000/3 grants), Aldo Leopold Nature Center ($166,333/2 grants), and Ceos of Tomorrow ($165,000/3 grants). The largest single-instance grant on record is $150,000 to Rebalanced Life Wellness Association for capacity building. At the small end, grants run down to $495 (Wizehive, likely a software/administrative line item), $500, $1,200, and $1,775 — suggesting the foundation will also fund modest, targeted needs alongside its larger relationships. Separately, the foundation's own Form 990-PF-derived 'typical grant size' field (a narrower, more recent 17-grant sample) shows a median of $15,000 and average of $29,265, ranging $7,500-$65,000 — a useful proxy for what a *new* applicant should realistically expect, versus the larger cumulative totals reflecting years of renewed support to legacy partners. Annual grants paid have grown steadily: $497,500 (FY2020, likely COVID-depressed), $971,033 (FY2021), $991,661 (FY2022), $1,013,208 (FY2023), and roughly $1,130,917 per third-party aggregation of the most recent filing (2024). Total assets have actually declined over the same window — from $7.73M (2019) to $6.64M (2023) to $5.3M in the platform's current record — consistent with a foundation paying out faster than its investment income replaces, after a one-time $9.84M contribution in FY2022 (net investment income that year was only $134,192, so the giving increase was funded by that inflow, not returns). Geographically, 90.5% of sampled grant dollars (67 of 74 grants) stayed in Wisconsin, tightly clustered in the five named counties; program focus by purpose code splits roughly evenly between general operating support and capacity building, with no capital or endowment grants appearing in the sample — consistent with the foundation's stated preference.

All five peer entities were matched to Schlecht on asset size alone (each holds approximately $5.3M in assets, per IRS BMF data) and share the same generic 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE classification, which typically indicates a small, closely-held family foundation or trust without a public web presence, dedicated staff, or published giving guidelines — none of the five has a listed website in this dataset. That makes Schlecht a notable outlier among its own asset-tier peer group: it is one of the few foundations at this scale with a public website, named program pillars, published grant guidelines, and a documented (if selective) inquiry process, which meaningfully lowers the research burden for grant seekers compared to its peers, most of which would require a direct-mail or personal-network approach rather than any documented pathway in.

No dedicated 2025-2026 press release or news item specific to the foundation was locatable via web search; the foundation does not appear to maintain a news or blog section, which is consistent with its small, family-run structure. The most substantive documented activity remains the Driftless Historium — a $1.8M history museum and research center in Mt Horeb, Wisconsin, built near the original GEMPLER'S catalog 'garage start-up' site, and described as the foundation's first major charitable project. Third-party 990 aggregators (not independently verified against the primary filing) report approximately $1,130,917 in total giving for 2024 and roughly 35-36 grants awarded across the 2024-2025 tax years, naming Aldo Leopold Nature Center, Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, and United Way of Dane County among recent grantees — all consistent with the foundation's Dane County-centric giving pattern seen in the platform's own grantee data. The most notable balance-sheet event visible in the financial history is a $9,839,823 contribution received in FY2022, a sharp jump from near-zero contributions in adjacent years (2019-2021, 2023); this inflow appears to have funded the subsequent rise in annual grants paid (from $971K in 2021 to over $1.13M by 2024) even as total assets declined, since net investment income that year was comparatively modest ($134,192). No leadership changes were identified beyond the four family directors already on file (Stephen L. Schlecht/President, Marianne M. Schlecht/Vice President, Richard W. Schlecht/Treasurer, Stephanie Schlecht/Secretary), with Stephanie Schlecht's compensation rising from $51,132 to $136,859 across the filing years sampled — consistent with her taking on an increasingly active, described-as-executive-director role running day-to-day grantmaking.

Contact Stephanie Schlecht directly by email (stephanie@schlechtfamilyfoundation.org) rather than searching for an online portal — the foundation does not run a standard LOI/full-proposal web system. Your first email should be short and should explicitly answer three things the foundation says it screens on: (1) 501(c)(3) status or a named fiscal sponsor, (2) confirmation that your program serves people specifically in Dane, Green, Grant, Iowa, or Lafayette County, Wisconsin, and (3) which of the three funding pillars — Meaningful Work, Forging Character (youth ages 12-24), or Connections to Nature — your program fits, with measurable impact data attached. Do not lead with a capital campaign or endowment ask; the foundation states a preference against both, favoring general operating and capacity-building support instead — frame any facilities or equipment need as embedded within an operating or capacity-building request rather than as a standalone capital ask. Time your outreach around the board's three annual meetings (April/May, August/September, December) — email at least 4-6 weeks ahead of a cycle so there's time for the qualifying call, since the foundation reports funding decisions and check disbursement both follow within five business days of board approval, implying the real bottleneck is getting on the agenda, not the disbursement itself. Expect the relationship to start modestly: the foundation's own reported 'typical' new grant is a median of $15,000 (average $29,265, range $7,500-$65,000) — pitching a first ask at that scale is more realistic than benchmarking off the $150,000-$230,000 totals seen among renewed, multi-year partners like Black Men Coalition Foundation or Rebalanced Life Wellness Association. Because the platform data flags this foundation's giving as largely preselected, warm introductions matter — if you have any connection to a current grantee (Aldo Leopold Nature Center, Operation Fresh Start, Urban League of Greater Madison, Clean Lakes Alliance, United Way of Dane County) or to Duluth Trading Company / GEMPLER'S alumni networks, use it. Avoid any language suggesting lobbying or election-related activity — the guidelines list this as a disqualifying criterion, not just a preference.