Sita Foundation

Sita Foundation is a closed, family-directed giving vehicle, not an open grantmaker — grant seekers should calibrate expectations accordingly. It was established in 2001-2002 by the Ullal family of Saratoga, CA (Jayshree Ullal, Arista Networks CEO, serves as Secretary; Vijay Ullal as Treasurer; Adeeti Ullal as CEO; Tarini Ullal as Vice President — all uncompensated). The platform's own record flags `preselected_only: true` with no application form, portal, or instructions on file, and every independent database checked (Candid, Instrumentl, Grantmakers.io) confirms the foundation funds only preselected organizations and does not accept unsolicited requests. There is no relationship progression from LOI to full proposal to site visit here, because there is no public intake at all.

What the foundation does fund reveals the strategy that actually works: personal and institutional proximity to the family. Across 150 recorded grants totaling $7.08M, the largest single recipients are Mit Alumni Association ($480,000 across 4 grants), Santa Fe Institute ($225,000 across 5 grants), Second Harvest Food Bank ($180,000), Drexel University ($175,000), Stanford University ($150,000), and Csu Foundation ($149,000) — a mix of alma-mater ties, Bay Area community services, and complexity-science research. A second cluster reflects South Asian-American diaspora and India-focused giving: Akshaya Usa ($120,000, global hunger), Asha For Education ($80,000), Sankara Eye Foundation ($80,000), Chitrapur Heritage Foundation, Konkani Charitable Fund, and Indian Heritage Foundation. A third cluster is medical research, notably lung cancer (Go2 Foundation For Lung Cancer, $140,000 across 5 grants) and brain/behavior research.

First-time applicants should not treat this as a prospect for cold outreach. The realistic path in is an existing relationship with the family, a shared institutional affiliation (MIT, Santa Fe Institute, Stanford, Drexel, South Asian community organizations in the Bay Area), or a warm introduction through a current grantee — 90 of the 150 recorded grants (60%) went to California organizations, reinforcing that geographic and personal proximity to Saratoga drives selection more than a published mission statement (none is on file).

Sita Foundation's giving is small relative to its peer set and skewed heavily by one outlier transaction. The platform's typical-grant-size data (based on a 26-grant sample) shows a median of $13,750, an average of $25,977, and a range of $100 to $120,000 — this is the realistic size band for a standard grant. Across the full 150-grant history, however, total giving is $7,077,269 at an average of $47,182 per grant, a figure pulled far above the typical range by a single $4,302,697 grant to an entity called "Sita Fund" (likely a donor-advised consolidation vehicle, not a program grant).

Annual giving has been volatile. Form 990 data shows total giving of $537,003 (FY2019), $696,703 (FY2020), $737,113 (FY2021), $788,359 (FY2022), then a spike to $4,511,475 (FY2023, driven by the Sita Fund transfer plus 12 other grants), and $3,312,262 across 11 grants in FY2024 per Instrumentl's 990 extraction. Total assets fell from $17.49M (2019) to $9.50M (2024), a 46% decline, with the steepest drop occurring after the FY2023 lump transfer — worth flagging to any prospective grantee assessing the foundation's future capacity.

By program purpose, education dominates: Mit Alumni Association, Santa Fe Institute, Drexel University, Stanford University, Csu Foundation, Uc Berkeley Foundation, Uc Davis, and Codepathorg collectively account for well over $1.2M of the recorded $7.08M — roughly a sixth of all giving even before smaller education-tagged grants are counted. Medical research/care (Go2 Foundation, Cancer Research Institute, Sankara Eye Foundation, Brain Behavior Research, South Asian Heart Center) totals over $300,000, and community support/global hunger (Second Harvest Food Bank, Akshaya Usa, Global Giving) adds roughly $340,000. Geographically, California receives 90 of 150 grants (60%), followed by Colorado (11), New York (9), DC and Pennsylvania (7 each), New Mexico and Virginia (5 each).

Sita Foundation sits among a cluster of similarly sized (~$9.5M-asset) private family foundations classified under the same Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category. None of these peers, including Sita, publish an open application process — they are family-directed vehicles rather than institutional grantmakers, so the comparison is instructive mainly on scale and structure rather than on how to apply.

All five peers cluster within $6,000 of Sita's $9.50M asset base and share its NTEE classification, suggesting the platform grouped them by balance-sheet size rather than confirmed mission overlap — none has public grantmaking guidelines in the available data. The practical takeaway is that Sita Foundation is not an outlier for its class: sub-$10M family foundations at this scale routinely operate as closed, relationship-driven giving vehicles rather than publicly accessible grant programs, so seekers should expect the same closed posture from comparable-sized peers absent evidence otherwise.

No dedicated news coverage, press releases, or announcements about Sita Foundation grantmaking in 2025-2026 turned up in web search — the foundation does not appear to issue press releases, and no organization-specific news source (beyond IRS filing aggregators) covers it. Its listed website, sita.org, resolves to an unrelated Spanish regional tourism-data portal, confirming the foundation has no active public-facing web presence to monitor for updates.

The most current verifiable activity is the FY2024 Form 990-PF, reflected in ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer and Instrumentl's 990 database: 11 grants totaling approximately $3,312,262, down from 13 grants and $4,511,475 in FY2023. Total assets fell to $9,501,216 (from $12,854,686 in FY2023), a decline of roughly 26% in a single year, following net investment income of $586,786 against a much larger outflow. Leadership has remained unchanged across the filings reviewed: Adeeti Ullal (CEO), Jayshree Ullal (Secretary — also CEO of Arista Networks, the publicly traded networking company), Vijay Ullal (Treasurer), and Tarini Ullal (Vice President), all serving without compensation. No board or leadership transitions were identified. The dominant recent event remains the FY2023 lump-sum $4.3M transfer to "Sita Fund," which reshaped the giving trend and should be treated as the key context for interpreting the foundation's reduced but still-elevated FY2024 output.

There is no formal application process to optimize for — the single most important tip is to not submit one. The platform's own data (`application_instructions: "__none__"`, `preselected_only: true`, no `application_form_url` or `grants_page_url`) matches every third-party source checked: Candid, Instrumentl, and Grantmakers.io all describe Sita Foundation as funding only preselected organizations with no unsolicited-request pathway. Sending a cold LOI or proposal to the Saratoga address or the 408-867-0884 phone number is very unlikely to generate a response and will not be reviewed through any documented process.

The realistic strategy is relationship-based, not proposal-based. Three threads run through the current grantee list and are worth aligning with if genuine: (1) elite STEM/research education — MIT (via Mit Alumni Association), Santa Fe Institute, Stanford, Drexel, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and coding-access nonprofit Codepathorg; (2) South Asian-American and India-linked community organizations — Akshaya Usa (hunger relief), Asha For Education, Sankara Eye Foundation, Chitrapur Heritage Foundation, Konkani Charitable Fund, and Indian Heritage Foundation; and (3) medical research tied to specific conditions — lung cancer (Go2 Foundation, the largest single recurring grantee at $140,000 across 5 grants), cancer research broadly, and brain/behavior research. An organization whose mission and leadership genuinely intersect with one of these threads — through alumni networks, South Asian community organizations in the Bay Area, or the tech/venture community around Arista Networks — has a plausible path to a warm introduction; one that doesn't should not expect a response.

The biggest mistake to avoid is treating this like a normal foundation prospect: researching a mission statement (none is published), drafting a formal proposal, or expecting acknowledgment of an unsolicited inquiry. A second mistake is ignoring the funding trend — with assets down 46% since 2019 and a major one-time transfer already made in FY2023, this is not a foundation with growing unrestricted capacity for new relationships regardless of fit.