Sowing Circle

Sowing Circle is not a conventional open-call grantmaker — it is the founding private foundation behind Blue Letter Bible (BLB), the free online Bible-study platform, established in 1995 by co-founders Jim Milligan and Frank Rabinovitch. Independent aggregator profiles (Grantmakers.io, Instrumentl) and the foundation's own record — which lists no application form URL, deadline, or published process despite an "accepting applications" flag — agree on one point: Sowing Circle funds preselected organizations and does not field unsolicited requests. This is a relationship-first funder, not a proposal-first one.

The grantee list confirms the pattern. Its single largest cumulative recipient is Blue Letter Bible itself ($1,830,000 across 3 grants) — the foundation continuing to backstop the ministry it incubated even after BLB became operationally independent in November 2015. The next tier — Reverence Bible Church ($238,000/5 grants), Run 2 Rescue ($200,000/2 grants), and Kings Cross Church ($120,000/3 grants) — reflects sustained, multi-year relationships rather than one-off awards; grant counts of 3-5 per organization suggest renewal cycles once trust is established. Several mid-tier grantees (Enduring Word/David Guzik, According To Prophecy, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa) share roots in the Calvary Chapel evangelical network, signaling doctrinal and relational alignment matters as much as program design.

For a first-time, cold applicant, realistic entry points are narrow: a warm introduction through a board member (Chairman James P Milligan, Secretary Stephen M Greenberg, or board members Kenneth Buckley and Frank B Rabinovitch), a shared connection to the Calvary Chapel/expository-teaching missions network, or a small initial ask ($2,500-$10,000, matching the lowest end of the foundation's typical grant range) that can graduate into a repeat relationship the way Reverence Bible Church's did. Organizations focused on short-term missions, theological/pastoral training, and frontline evangelism (Pioneers, Frontiers, Training Leaders International) are already inside the giving pattern; organizations outside religion-related missions work should not expect to break in without a direct relationship.

Sowing Circle's total giving has ranged widely across the years in the record: $789,500 (2020) to $2,839,853 (2015) in grants paid, against total assets that have declined from $24.4M (2012) to $10.1M (2024) as the foundation shifted resources toward — and eventually spun off — Blue Letter Bible. FY2023 (most recent complete year in the data) shows $848,960 in grants paid against $1,872,375 in total giving and $9.9M in assets; FY2022 shows a $4.27M total giving spike against only $983,758 grants paid, an unusual gap suggesting a large non-grant program expenditure or in-kind transfer that year.

Across the cumulative grantee dataset (52 grants, $2,816,476 total, $54,163 average), giving is heavily concentrated: Blue Letter Bible alone accounts for roughly 65% of all cumulative dollars ($1.83M of $2.82M). Excluding BLB, the median-sized recipient relationship sits in the $10,000-$75,000 cumulative range. The foundation's own typical-grant-size metadata (13 recent awards) shows a median single grant of $20,000, average of $72,337, and range of $2,500 to $622,360 — a wide spread driven by a small number of large, concentrated awards against a broader base of modest four- and five-figure gifts.

By purpose, "Missions" dominates the portfolio (roughly 30 of 52 grants), followed by "Theological Education" (Enduring Word, According To Prophecy) and "Ministry"/"Pastoral Support" (Kings Cross Church, Reverence Bible Church). Geographically, California receives the largest share of grant count (29 of 52, unsurprising given the foundation's Mission Viejo, CA base and BLB's California origins), followed by Minnesota (8 — home to LCC International Christian University-linked missions work) and South Carolina (5, near BLB's current operating base in Greenville). Smaller grant counts reach Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Officer compensation ($465,205 in FY2023, split primarily between Chairman James P Milligan at up to $209,164 and CFO/COO Andrew J Guastaferro) runs proportionally high relative to grants paid, consistent with an operating foundation that funds internal programs (Blue Letter Bible Institute, ministry assistance, evangelism — $1.8M combined program expense in the latest Form 990 program breakdown) alongside its external grantmaking.

Sowing Circle sits squarely in a cluster of small, single-faith-tradition foundations with $9.9M-$10.8M in assets — a tier where staffed, formal grant programs are rare and personal-relationship gatekeeping is the norm. What differentiates Sowing Circle from most of this peer set is transparency: it operates a substantive public website (via its Blue Letter Bible arm) and has documented history, unlike peers with no listed website (Swanson, Hinz, Waqf, Gilliand). Sikh Spirit Foundation is the closest analog in terms of public accessibility, making it a useful comparison for how a similarly sized religious foundation can still maintain outward-facing content without necessarily opening a formal application process.

The most visible recent milestone is the June 17, 2026 YouTube premiere of "The Blue Letter Bible Story," a 20-minute documentary featuring Sowing Circle/BLB co-founders Jim Milligan and Frank Rabinovitch alongside board members Steve Greenberg and Alan Pearson — a rare moment of public storytelling from a foundation that otherwise keeps a low profile. Around the same period, Blue Letter Bible added Sandy Adams, Senior Pastor of Calvary Chapel Stone Mountain, to its content-provider roster to record audio commentary on every book of Scripture, continuing the pattern of drawing teaching talent from the Calvary Chapel network that also shows up in Sowing Circle's grantee list (Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, Enduring Word).

Earlier in 2025, BLB's newsletter marked a leadership transition with a February 2025 farewell feature for Alan Pearson — though his continued appearance in the June 2026 documentary as a board member suggests a shift in role rather than a full exit. A September 2025 newsletter item referenced on the theme "A New Calling and a New Tool" points to a personnel change paired with a new ministry resource, though full details require newsletter subscriber access.

No new large single grant announcements, RFPs, or funding-priority changes were found in public search results for 2025-2026 — consistent with a foundation that does not publicize its grantmaking. The most recent Form 990 data on file (FY2024) shows $463,542 in total revenue and $10,075,852 in assets, roughly flat versus FY2023's $9,908,427 in assets, indicating financial stability rather than a growth or contraction event.

Do not treat Sowing Circle as an open-call funder. Every third-party grant database that tracks this foundation (Grantmakers.io, Instrumentl, Grantable) states plainly that it funds preselected organizations and does not accept unsolicited proposals — and the foundation's own record has no published application form, deadline, or process despite technically flagging as "accepting applications." Spending time on a cold, generic LOI to a general inbox is unlikely to convert.

The highest-value move is finding a genuine point of connection to the foundation's network: its board (Chairman James P Milligan, Secretary Stephen M Greenberg, Board Members Kenneth Buckley and Frank B Rabinovitch, CFO/COO Andrew J Guastaferro), its founding ministry Blue Letter Bible, or the Calvary Chapel/expository-teaching missions community that dominates its grantee list (Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, Enduring Word/David Guzik, According To Prophecy, Understand The Times). Organizations already in adjacent networks — short-term missions sending agencies (Pioneers, Frontiers, LCC International, Training Leaders International), anti-trafficking/rescue work (Run 2 Rescue), and local church ministry support (Reverence Bible Church, Kings Cross Church) — most closely match the existing portfolio and represent the realistic comparison set for a new applicant's positioning, not a template to copy verbatim.

When an introduction is possible, calibrate the ask: the foundation's typical grant sizes run from $2,500 to $622,360 with a median of $20,000, so a modest first ask in the $2,500-$20,000 range is more consistent with how new relationships appear to start (compare Two Trees Church's single $5,000 grant or Urban Refuge Church's $2,116 cumulative total) than a large first-time request. Growth into a larger, renewed relationship — as seen with Reverence Bible Church's climb to $238,000 across 5 grants — appears to be earned over multiple grant cycles, not requested upfront. Frame any outreach around shared theological commitments (non-denominational, conservative evangelical, expository Bible teaching) and concrete field outcomes (missionaries deployed, pastors trained, converts discipled) rather than generic capacity-building language, since every named purpose in the grantee data is Missions, Theological Education, Pastoral Support/Ministry, or Ministry — nothing outside direct religious/ministry activity.