Skai Foundation

Skai Foundation (EIN 20-8655454, The Woodlands, TX) is not a conventional grantmaking target for outside nonprofits, and grant seekers should calibrate expectations accordingly before investing time here. IRS filings and the foundation's own affiliate materials (greaterhoustonrathyatra.org) identify it as a 501(c)(3) private operating foundation — a structural category that, by definition, primarily runs its own charitable programs rather than distributing grants to third-party organizations. This is confirmed by the financial data: across every fiscal year on record (2011-2023), the foundation's "grants_paid" field is $0, even though total annual giving/program spend ranged from roughly $32,000 to $509,000. That spending appears to fund the foundation's own activities — Rath Yatra festival organizing and, per its stated long-range plan, construction of the Char Dham Hindu Temple in The Woodlands — rather than third-party grant awards. The foundation was founded in 2007 by Dr. Surya Sahoo and Kabita Sahoo (the name SKAI stands for Surya-Kabita-Amlan-Ishan, the family's names), and the two of them remain the sole listed directors, each reportedly contributing volunteer hours with zero officer compensation. There is no professional program staff, no grants committee, and no public-facing grant guidelines page that this research could locate. Our database shows zero recorded grantee organizations (top_50 grantee list is empty) and zero matched open public grant opportunities tied to this funder. For an organization actively seeking funding, Skai Foundation should be treated as low-priority relative to peer foundations of similar asset size that show an active, documented grants program. The only realistic path to engagement is relational: through the Houston-area Hindu/ISKCON community, the Greater Houston Rath Yatra committee, or a direct, low-pressure inquiry by phone to establish whether the foundation's stated (but seemingly not yet funded) scholarship and food-bank plans have moved from aspiration to an active program with capacity to support outside organizations.

Skai Foundation's IRS Form 990-PF data shows a foundation that has grown steadily in asset size but has not converted that growth into third-party grantmaking. Total assets rose from $1,791,793 in FY2011 to $11,508,504 in FY2023 — a roughly 6.4x increase over 12 years, driven primarily by contributions received (the Sahoo family funding the foundation directly: $1,824,256 in FY2011 contributions, $2,131,018 in FY2019, $782,558 in FY2023) plus net investment income (as high as $833,906 in FY2019 and $707,559 in FY2021). Annual "total giving" (program/charitable spend) has fluctuated without a clear growth trend: $32,463 (FY2011), $150,400 (FY2012), $147,483 (FY2013), $428,649 (FY2014), $178,593 (FY2015), then jumping to $379,072 (FY2019), $442,546 (FY2020), $508,665 (FY2021, the highest on record), $304,893 (FY2022), and $350,869 (FY2023). Critically, grants_paid is recorded as $0 in every single fiscal year in the data set — meaning none of that giving total represents grants awarded to outside nonprofit organizations; it is consistent with direct program expenditure by the foundation itself (temple planning/construction costs, festival organizing, and related religious/cultural activities). There is no program-area breakdown to analyze (education vs. health vs. other) because the foundation does not report grantee-level data, and our matched-grantee database returns zero records. Geographically, all identifiable activity is concentrated in The Woodlands/greater Houston, TX metro area, tied to the Char Dham Hindu Temple project and ISKCON Houston's Rath Yatra events. There is no evidence of geographic diversification. In short: this is a single-family, self-funding operating foundation with roughly $350K/year in internal program spend and no documented history of external grant distribution — the funding pattern data that would normally drive a median-grant-size or program-mix analysis simply does not exist for this funder.

Skai Foundation sits in a peer set of small, single-purpose private foundations with nearly identical asset bases (roughly $11.7M), a size band that in this platform's data appears to cluster foundations regardless of grantmaking activity level. The comparison below uses each peer's most recent reported asset figure; annual giving and application posture are drawn from available profile data (most of these peers, like Skai, provide limited public disclosure).

What stands out is that four of the five peer foundations, like Skai, have no public website in our records — a strong signal that this entire asset-size cohort skews toward closed, founder/family-directed vehicles rather than open competitive grantmakers. Logan Healthcare Foundation is the exception with a live website and is the better next-step research target for grant seekers who want a foundation of comparable size but with a documented public presence and, potentially, an actual application path. Grant seekers should not expect this size class ($10-12M in assets) to reliably predict openness to unsolicited proposals — it does not here.

No 2025 or 2026 news coverage, press releases, or grant announcements specific to Skai Foundation (EIN 20-8655454) surfaced in this research; general web searches for "Skai Foundation" are dominated by an unrelated adtech company (Skai, skai.io, which announced an 'agent-native operating system for marketing' on May 13, 2026) and the NSF/Simons-funded SkAI Institute — neither is connected to this funder. The most substantive activity on record remains historical: the foundation's affiliate site (greaterhoustonrathyatra.org) documents annual Rath Yatra festival celebrations from 2012 through 2016, and the foundation's long-stated (but not confirmed as currently active) plan to construct, operate, and maintain the Char Dham Hindu Temple in The Woodlands, TX, including priest quarters and a multi-use cultural/yoga center. Leadership has been stable and unchanged since founding in 2007: Dr. Surya Sahoo and Kabita Sahoo remain the only two listed directors as of the most recent filings, with no compensation reported for either. The foundation's own website (skaifoundation.org) could not be crawled for current content during this research, which is itself notable — it suggests either a very lightweight/static site or limited public-facing maintenance. Grant seekers should treat the absence of recent news as a meaningful data point: this does not appear to be an actively growing or newly-expanding grants program.

Standard grant-writing playbooks do not apply well to Skai Foundation, and applicants should adjust expectations before investing effort. First, there is no evidence of a formal application process anywhere in this research — no LOI form, no online portal, no published RFP, and no grants guidelines page, either on the foundation's own site or in third-party funder databases (Candid, Grantable, ImpalaDigital). Second, the $0-grants-paid figure across every filed year (2011-2023) is the single most important data point: this foundation has not demonstrated a track record of funding outside organizations, so a cold proposal — however well-written — has no precedent of success to point to. Third, given the foundation's religious/cultural mission (Hindu temple construction, Rath Yatra festival organizing, ISKCON Houston affiliation) and its all-family, two-director governance structure (Dr. Surya Sahoo and Kabita Sahoo, both unpaid), any realistic path to engagement runs through personal or community relationship-building rather than a written application. Organizations with genuine, credible alignment — Hindu/Vedic cultural programs, ISKCON-affiliated charitable work, or Houston-area interfaith food-bank partnerships that match the foundation's stated (if not yet demonstrably funded) intent to support food banks and student scholarships — have the only plausible fit. For those organizations: (1) do not send an unsolicited written grant proposal as a first move; (2) instead, attempt a low-key phone introduction to (832) 541-4807 or a mailed letter to 6 Glenshead Way, The Woodlands, TX 77382, framed as relationship-building rather than a funding ask; (3) attend or connect through the Greater Houston Rath Yatra event/committee, which functions as this foundation's public community touchpoint; (4) if scholarship or food-bank support is the goal, ask directly whether those long-stated program plans have moved from aspiration to active funding capacity, since public records do not confirm they are currently operating. Organizations without a genuine religious/cultural-community connection to this network should redirect their effort toward peer foundations with documented, open grant programs instead.