Simpson Family Foundation

The Simpson Family Foundation is a small, closely-held family vehicle, not a public grants program, and applicants should calibrate expectations accordingly. It was IRS-recognized in March 2022, holds $2.45 million in assets, and is run entirely by two unpaid directors, Alex Simpson and Martha Simpson, with no staff, program officer, or published mission beyond the foundation's own one-line description: 'Supporting the charitable goals of the Simpson Family.' Its About Us page frames its role as connecting community members in need with service providers — language typical of a personal or legacy giving vehicle rather than a competitive grantmaker.

The grantee history bears this out. Of 31 tracked grants totaling $119,342, every recipient is a Nashville/Brentwood-area nonprofit, a disability-inclusion organization, or a cause tied to the country-music and golf-event community (TinCup Charity Group, the Brett Boyer Foundation, the Troy Gentry Foundation). There is no visible cycle of unsolicited LOIs progressing to full proposals or site visits — the pattern instead is repeat, multi-year support to the same handful of organizations (Brentwood Baptist Church, GiGi's Playhouse Nashville under three name variants, Best Buddies, DSAMT), which points to relationships that predate and outlast any formal review process.

First-time applicants with no personal connection to the Simpson family, Brentwood Baptist Church, or Nashville's Down-syndrome and developmental-disability service network should treat this as a long-shot, relationship-first prospect rather than a submit-and-wait opportunity. The platform record marks the foundation as 'preselected_only,' consistent with everything found in this research: funding decisions appear to originate from the directors' personal and community ties rather than from an open call. The most realistic path in is indirect — building visibility with one of the foundation's existing grantees (especially GiGi's Playhouse Nashville, Best Buddies, or DSAMT) or with Brentwood Baptist Church's charitable network, since warm introductions through those channels are far more plausible than a cold LOI reaching Alex or Martha Simpson directly. Organizations far outside Middle Tennessee, or unrelated to disability inclusion, faith-based service, or the country-music charity circuit, are not a fit based on every grant on record.

Across the 31 grants on record ($119,342 total, FY2022-FY2025 filings), the average award is $3,850 and the per-recipient total ranges from $500 (Greyfriars Classical Academy) up to $20,000 (Brentwood Baptist Church, over two gifts). Two line items — $171 to 'TAX990' and $115 to 'IRS USATAXPYMT' — are administrative tax payments misclassified as grantees in the underlying data, not charitable awards; excluding them, the smallest genuine grant is $500. A separately tracked 'typical grant size' figure from matched public-grant records (n=4) shows a $2,573-$5,000 range with a $5,000 median, roughly in line with the broader pattern of four-figure awards.

By theme, disability-inclusion organizations are the largest cluster: GiGi's Playhouse Nashville (recorded under three name variants — 'Donate to GiGi's,' 'GIGI S NASHVILLE,' and 'GiGis Playhouse Nashv') received a combined $22,750; Best Buddies (also under two name variants) received $16,806; and the Down Syndrome Association of Middle Tennessee (DSAMT) received $8,000, plus $3,000 to Brightstone, a Nashville residential community for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Combined, disability-focused causes account for roughly $50,556, or 42% of all tracked giving. Faith-based giving is the second-largest theme: $20,000 to Brentwood Baptist Church, $2,500 to In His Grip Ministries, and $1,000 to Graceworks Ministries total $23,500 (20%). The remainder is spread across country-music/entertainment-adjacent charities (Brett Boyer Foundation $12,500, Troy Gentry Foundation $10,000, TinCup Charity Group $11,000) and smaller local causes (Farm 127 $5,000, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital $2,000, Nashville Urban Debate $1,000, Limestone Title Golf Tournament $3,000).

Geographically, giving is concentrated in Tennessee (23 of 31 grants), with a smaller Florida presence (6 grants) and North Carolina (2 grants) — plausibly reflecting family or grantee-organization ties outside the core Brentwood base. Total annual giving has grown from $0 in FY2021 (a pure asset-building year, with $1.6 million contributed and none disbursed) to $17,573 (FY2022), $65,273 (FY2023), and a record $84,196 (FY2025), tracking a $350,000 fresh contribution that year.

Granted AI's peer set for this foundation is asset-matched (all cluster near $2.44-2.45 million in assets under the Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category) rather than matched on program focus, and none of the five peers maintain a website or disclosed application process, underscoring how typical the Simpson Family Foundation's closed, informal structure is for its asset tier.

At this asset scale (roughly $2.4-2.5 million), private foundations are almost uniformly family-run, unstaffed, and closed to unsolicited applications — the Simpson Family Foundation is not an outlier within this peer group, it is representative of it. Its distinguishing feature versus these five peers is that it is the only one with any public-facing information at all (a live website and a documented, if thin, grantee history), which gives applicants slightly more to work with than the peer foundations offer.

No foundation-specific press coverage, award announcements, or leadership changes were found for the Brentwood, TN Simpson Family Foundation (EIN 87-3223848) in 2025-2026; web searches for 'Simpson Family Foundation' news surface only unrelated organizations of the same name (a Minneapolis, MN education-focused foundation, a Virginia/DC/North Carolina relationship-based funder, a Windermere, FL foundation, and the unrelated Andrew Simpson sailing/swimming charity in the UK) — none reference this EIN. That absence is itself informative: this is a private, low-visibility family vehicle with no communications program, not one that has gone quiet after prior public activity.

The most concrete recent activity is financial rather than programmatic. Form 990-PF data shows a $350,000 contribution landed in FY2025, pushing total revenue to $358,549 versus just $8,599 the prior year, and total giving climbed to a record $84,196 across 22 grants — both the largest dollar total and the largest grant count in the foundation's four-year filing history (FY2021 inception through FY2025). The foundation's website carries a 2024 copyright notice and consists of only two pages (Home and About Us), with no evidence of updates timed to the FY2025 funding increase. Directors Alex Simpson and Martha Simpson remain unchanged and uncompensated across all available filings.

There is no published application process, deadline, LOI form, or portal for the Simpson Family Foundation — this is the single most important thing for a prospective applicant to know before investing time here. The foundation's own site states its purpose in one sentence ('Supporting the charitable goals of the Simpson Family') and its grant history shows exclusively repeat, multi-year gifts to a small, stable set of organizations, which together strongly suggest a preselected, relationship-driven giving model rather than a competitive one.

Given that, the highest-value moves are indirect. Organizations already connected to Brentwood Baptist Church, GiGi's Playhouse Nashville, Best Buddies Tennessee, or the Down Syndrome Association of Middle Tennessee (DSAMT) sit inside the foundation's demonstrated network and are best positioned to make a warm introduction — cold outreach to a foundation with no listed contact email, phone number, or program staff is unlikely to be read, let alone acted on. Nashville-area disability-inclusion nonprofits and faith-based service organizations are the two clearest fits by dollar volume (a combined 62% of all tracked giving); organizations outside Middle Tennessee, or unrelated to disability services, faith-based ministry, or the country-music/golf charity-event circuit that produced gifts to the Brett Boyer Foundation and Troy Gentry Foundation, have no supporting precedent in the record.

A common and costly mistake would be to treat this as a generic solicitation target found through a grants database, since several unrelated 'Simpson Family Foundation' entities exist nationally (Minneapolis MN, Windermere FL, Virginia/DC/NC, Laguna Niguel CA) with completely different priorities, geographies, and — in at least one case — an explicit invitation-only policy; mixing up which Simpson Family Foundation you are addressing, or using another one's stated focus areas, will read as a lack of basic diligence. If direct contact is attempted, addressing correspondence specifically to 'Alex Simpson' or 'Martha Simpson' at the Brentwood, TN address (1421 Wilson Pike, Brentwood, TN 37027) at least demonstrates that the outreach is correctly targeted, even though no reply mechanism is documented. Timing any outreach is not meaningful here since no cycle or deadline exists; the more productive use of time is building a genuine, visible track record in one of the foundation's demonstrated focus areas and letting the relationship develop organically, consistent with how every current grantee appears to have been chosen.