Shinemaker Foundation

ShineMaker Foundation is a small, founder-directed family foundation (~$3.7-3.8M in assets) established in 2015 by filmmaker/musician Tiffanie DeBartolo, her husband and CFO Scott Schumaker, and musician Race Solimine (legal name Richard Solimine, listed as Executive Director on Form 990), built around the belief that "music can change the world." Governance is tight and lean: three founder-directors plus assistant secretary David Mallitz and director Kira Siebert, with officer compensation dropping to $0 in FY2023 after running $71,000-$72,556/year from 2019-2022 — a near-all-volunteer structure that keeps overhead low and channels most revenue toward grants.

The foundation explicitly favors relationship-driven, invitation-based partnership over open competitive review. Of 88 tracked grants spread across roughly 35 distinct recipients, most top recipients — Every Mother Counts, EB Research Partnership, VETPAW, Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, Road Recovery Foundation, Wild Tomorrow Fund — received exactly 4 or 5 separate grants apiece, indicating a small, stable roster of repeat "partners" funded annually rather than one-off grants to new applicants. The foundation's own site names six operating values: Inclusiveness, Trust + Transparency, Tangible Collaboration, Bold Risk-Taking, Adaptability, and Impact Beyond Numbers — signaling a preference for organizations that lead with narrative and creative risk-taking over metrics-heavy compliance documents.

For first-time or unsolicited applicants, the critical fact is that the foundation's current website states it is "not accepting unsolicited proposals at this time" and directs prospects to join a mailing list rather than apply — a stricter posture than the "accepting applications" / "no specific deadlines" status still on file in third-party grant databases (this review found the associated Submittable portal, shinemakerfoundation.submittable.com, returns a 404). The realistic path in is a warm personal or professional connection to DeBartolo, Schumaker, or Solimine, or an introduction via one of their 14 current partner organizations. Given a median grant of roughly $20,000 and total annual giving under $700,000, this is a boutique funder best suited as a supplemental relationship for small/mid-size nonprofits already aligned with music-, arts-, human rights-, environmental-, or animal welfare-adjacent missions — not a foundation to build a core funding strategy around.

In FY2023 (the most recent year in this foundation's financial record), total assets stood at $3,811,444, total giving was $604,029, and actual grants paid out totaled $409,130, against total revenue of $1,191,289 — a figure boosted by a $1,000,000 contribution received that year, versus just $75,000 in FY2022. Net investment income was $151,860.

The five-year giving trend shows relative stability followed by a jump: total giving of $544,163 (2019), $479,303 (2020), $491,209 (2021), and $485,416 (2022), then a roughly 24.5% increase to $604,029 in 2023. Grants paid rose even faster year-over-year (2022 to 2023: +29.7%), suggesting the 2023 capital infusion is beginning to flow through to grantees, and future years may see higher payout capacity.

Across the tracked grant history (88 grants, $1,718,788 total, average $19,532 per grant), typical grant size skews small: the foundation's own computed typical-grant-size metrics show a median of $20,000, an average of $18,549, and a range from $267 to $75,000 (based on a 17-grant recent-year sample). Grantmaking concentrates heavily: the top 9 recipients account for roughly $1.46M of the $1.72M in tracked dollars (about 85%). Every Mother Counts ($405,463 across 5 grants) and EB Research Partnership ($350,041 across 5 grants) alone represent 44% of all tracked giving — maternal health and rare-disease research function as the two largest de facto funding lines, despite the mission's broader six-area framing spanning education, social outreach, human rights, gender equality, animal welfare, and environmental preservation.

Geographically, grantee-state distribution is led by New York (30 grants) and California (28), reflecting the founders' Mill Valley, CA base and music/entertainment-industry ties concentrated in NY/LA. Wyoming (6, tied to Jackson Hole-area partners like Jackson Hole Writers), Florida (5), and North Carolina (5) form the next tier, with DC, Colorado, New Jersey, Utah, and Vermont each registering 1-4 grants. A long tail of 15+ grantees receives under $10,000 (down to a $50 gift to Inside Circle Foundation), pointing to occasional small, exploratory gifts alongside the anchor multi-year partnerships.

ShineMaker stands out among this near-identical asset-size peer group ($3.685M-$3.81M) as the only foundation with a public website, active social media presence, and a named partner roster — a transparency level the median small family foundation in this tier does not offer, since none of the five peers above have a listed website at all. That transparency is a double-edged signal for grant seekers: it makes ShineMaker far easier to research and pitch to (mission statement, values, and current partners are all public), but it does not translate into an open door, since the foundation has moved toward the same closed, relationship-based model its unnamed-website peers likely already operate under. At this ~$3.5-4M asset scale with lean, largely unpaid boards, functionally invitation-only grantmaking appears to be the norm across the entire peer set, not an exception unique to ShineMaker.

The most recent confirmed Form 990 data in this foundation's record is FY2023 (filed reporting total giving of $604,029 and assets of $3,811,444); third-party aggregators (impala.digital, grantable.co) separately cite a 2024 filing year total of $340.3K distributed among 55 grantees, but that figure is not yet reflected in the foundation's own available financial history and should be treated as pending confirmation via the FY2024 Form 990.

Two notable partnership announcements surfaced in web research. First, ShineMaker Foundation partnered with The Etheridge Foundation (Melissa Etheridge's foundation) to fund a psilocybin research study at the University of British Columbia — the first documented move by ShineMaker into psychedelic-assisted therapy research, a departure from its historically social-service and environmental-conservation-heavy grant history. Second, the foundation formalized its recurring support of EB Research Partnership — which has separately received 5 tracked grants totaling $350,041 — into a named "Innovation Award" program for epidermolysis bullosa research.

No leadership changes surfaced: the founding trio of Tiffanie DeBartolo, Scott Schumaker, and Race (Richard) Solimine remains in place as of the most recent 990, joined by director Kira Siebert and assistant secretary David Mallitz. Officer compensation, which ran $71,000-$72,556 annually from 2019-2022, dropped to $0 in FY2023.

The most consequential recent change for prospective applicants is procedural rather than programmatic: the foundation's current website states it is "not accepting unsolicited proposals at this time," a stricter posture than the "no specific deadlines," "no form required" language still on file with third-party grant databases — and the previously listed Submittable application portal (shinemakerfoundation.submittable.com) returned a 404 error during this review, confirming the portal has been taken down or was never fully activated.

The single most important, actionable fact for any grant seeker: ShineMaker Foundation is currently closed to unsolicited proposals. Do not submit a cold application — the foundation's own site says so explicitly, and the Submittable portal listed in older directories (shinemakerfoundation.submittable.com) 404s. The correct first step is signing up for the mailing list via shinemaker.org and watching for any future reopening announcement.

Historical grant sizes cluster tightly: median $20,000, with awards typically ranging from $267 to $75,000. This is not a foundation to approach for six- or seven-figure asks; if a channel opens, frame any request around a specific $5,000-$50,000 project rather than large-scale general operating support.

The foundation's stated values reward organizations that lead with narrative and risk-tolerant, unconventional approaches over conventional metrics-heavy proposals — "Bold Risk-Taking" and "Impact Beyond Numbers" are explicit, named criteria on their site. A compliance-heavy, KPI-dense proposal is a weaker cultural fit here than a compelling founder or beneficiary story.

Warm introductions matter more than forms. Nearly every top recipient — Every Mother Counts, VETPAW, Road Recovery, The Etheridge Foundation, Believe Ranch & Rescue, Jackson Hole Writers — sits inside the entertainment/music/arts-adjacent and Marin County/Jackson Hole social network of the three founders. Organizations without a personal or professional tie to DeBartolo, Schumaker, or Solimine face a structurally harder path in.

Multi-year commitment is the norm, not the exception: 6 of the top 9 recipients received exactly 4 or 5 separate grants over time, implying that once accepted as a partner, an organization can expect recurring annual support rather than a single grant. Make the case for an ongoing relationship, not a one-time ask, if you ever reach the conversation stage.

A common mistake to avoid: treating this as a standard open-RFP foundation because third-party databases still list it as accepting unsolicited proposals with an active Submittable link. That listing is stale — always verify against the foundation's own current site language before investing time in an application. Given the all-volunteer, zero-compensation governance structure, expect a slower, personal review process rather than a staffed program-officer pipeline.