Springhouse Foundation

Springhouse Foundation is a small, family-run private foundation in Austin, Texas, formed in 2019 as an offshoot of the Chaparral Foundation, which Harriet and Harvey Herd started in 1997 after settling in Midland in 1940. It is governed entirely by six family directors — Daniel W., Paula T., Jason D., and Anna B. Herd, plus Valerie H. Parker and James "Chico" Parker — none of whom draw compensation, and there is no professional program staff. That structure defines how the foundation operates: it is relationship-driven and locally rooted, not a large bureaucratic grantmaker with open RFP cycles.

The foundation openly states it does not accept unsolicited grant requests, yet its own website instructs prospective grantees to send a one-page letter of introduction covering the organization's mission and funding ask via email or mail — a soft door, not a closed one. In practice, its grantee list (62 grants totaling $1,282,832 across recent years) is dominated by repeat relationships: Dell Children's Medical Center Foundation ($285,000 across 5 grants), Explore Austin ($155,000 across 5 grants), Helping Hand Home for Children ($153,332 across 4 grants), and Mobile Loaves & Fishes ($92,500 across 4 grants) each received multiple awards over time rather than a single gift. First-time applicants should read this as a foundation that tests a relationship with a modest initial grant, then scales support in subsequent years once trust is established.

Geographically the foundation is almost exclusively Austin-focused: 60 of 62 tracked grants went to Texas organizations, with only two isolated grants outside the state (Colorado, New York) — likely tied to national or international causes a director cared about personally (e.g., Save The Rhino International). Organizations outside Greater Austin should not expect to be competitive. Nearly every recorded grant purpose is "general operations," so applicants should lead with organizational stability and mission fit rather than a narrow restricted-project pitch. Given the all-volunteer board and small asset base (~$6.4M), expect a slow, informal, and personal review process rather than a portal-driven one — patience and a genuine local presence matter more than a polished grant application.

Springhouse's giving is modest and consistent: total giving ran $305,190 (FY2021), $297,651 (FY2022), and $257,592 (FY2023), with grants actually paid of $283,333, $269,333, and $240,000 respectively — a gentle downward trend that tracks a decline in total assets from $6.2M (2021) to $5.53M (2023), most likely reflecting investment performance rather than a deliberate pullback. FY2019, the foundation's founding year, shows an outlier $4.9M in contributions received (the initial endowment transfer from the Chaparral Foundation lineage) against $252,500 in that year's grants paid.

At the individual-grant level, the foundation's own reporting puts the most recent typical grant size at a median of $10,000 and an average of $15,774, with a range of $2,500 to $50,000 across 14 grants in the latest filed year. Third-party 990 aggregation shows a slightly wider recent band of $2,500-$65,000 and 15 awards totaling roughly $266,000 in 2024, consistent with the historical pattern. At the grantee-relationship level (multi-year cumulative totals), the top recipient — Dell Children's Medical Center Foundation — has received $285,000 across 5 separate grants, while smaller one-time gifts run as low as $5,000 (KFMA, Cupid's Charity).

Geographically, 60 of 62 tracked grants (97%) went to Texas nonprofits, almost entirely in the Austin metro, against one grant each to Colorado and New York recipients. By purpose, essentially 100% of tracked grants are coded "general operations" — Springhouse does not appear to fund capital campaigns, endowments, or restricted single-project grants based on available data. By focus area, the foundation's stated priorities span children's services, education, healthcare, human needs, and arts; grantees map cleanest to children/human-services (Helping Hand Home for Children, Friends of the Children Austin, Safe/Safe Alliance, Magdalene House), education (KIPP Texas, Texas Book Festival, St. Andrew's Episcopal School), and healthcare (Dell Children's, People's Community Clinic), with human needs (Mobile Loaves & Fishes, Central Texas Food Bank, Meals on Wheels) and arts (Texas Book Festival) rounding out the portfolio. With income of $720,241 against $6,430,736 in assets, expect total annual giving in the $240,000-$300,000 range to persist absent a major new contribution.

Springhouse sits among a cluster of small, single-family, general-purpose grantmaking foundations with near-identical asset bases in the $6.4-6.5M range — a size band where family foundations typically pay out around 4-5% of assets annually and operate with unpaid, all-family boards rather than professional staff.

All five peers are IRS-classified under the same "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE category as Springhouse and cluster within $1,400 of its asset total, suggesting they were selected as size-matched comparables rather than true focus-area peers — most lack public websites or disclosed giving data, which is itself a useful data point: family foundations at this asset scale rarely publish detailed program information, making direct outreach (a phone call or LOI) more productive than website research for any of them. Springhouse stands out among this peer set for actually publishing an application pathway (the one-page LOI) and a real, checkable grantee history; that transparency is not guaranteed at foundations of comparable size and should be treated as a relative advantage for applicants trying to build a first relationship.

Public news coverage of Springhouse Foundation is essentially nonexistent — there are no press releases, news articles, or announcements from 2025-2026 in general web search results, which is typical for an all-volunteer, family-run foundation of this size with no communications staff. The most substantive available datapoint is its own site history: the foundation was formed in 2019 (IRS ruling date May 2019) as a spinoff of the Chaparral Foundation, which Harriet and Harvey Herd established in 1997 after settling in Midland, Texas in 1940 — giving the current generation of Herds and Parkers (Daniel, Paula, Jason, and Anna Herd; Valerie and James "Chico" Parker) a multi-generational family-philanthropy tradition to draw on.

Financially, the most recent activity signal is a modest giving decline: grants paid fell from $283,333 (FY2021) to $240,000 (FY2023), tracking a roughly 11% drop in total assets over the same period ($6.2M to $5.53M), which is consistent with market conditions rather than any announced strategic retrenchment. Third-party 990 aggregation (Instrumentl) reports 15 grants totaling approximately $266,000 in calendar 2024, suggesting giving levels have stabilized or ticked back up slightly since the FY2023 low. No leadership changes, new program announcements, or public statements of shifted priorities were found — the board composition (six Herd/Parker family directors) has been stable across all available filings. Grant seekers should treat the absence of news as normal for this funder rather than a signal of dormancy or distress, and rely on direct outreach for the most current read on funding availability.

Springhouse Foundation does not run a formal RFP cycle, has no online application portal, and states plainly that it cannot accept unsolicited grant requests — but its own website simultaneously invites a one-page letter of introduction by email (contact@springhousefoundation.org) or mail (2630 Exposition Blvd, Suite G-10, Austin, TX 78703). Treat that letter as the real application: keep it to one page, lead with your mission in a sentence or two, state a specific funding amount, and close with why an Austin-based family foundation focused on children's services, education, healthcare, human needs, and arts should care. There is no stated deadline ("there is no deadline to submit requests"), which is both an opportunity and a trap — with no cycle forcing a decision, unsolicited letters can sit unanswered for months, so plan for a long runway and don't count on a fast yes/no.

Because every grant in the visible record funds "general operations," avoid pitching a narrow restricted project; ask for unrestricted support and frame it around organizational sustainability and impact, mirroring language used by funded peers like Explore Austin and Helping Hand Home for Children. Geography is a hard filter — the foundation funds Austin-area nonprofits almost exclusively (60 of 62 tracked grants), so out-of-market applicants should not spend time here regardless of mission fit.

The single biggest lever available to applicants is relationship, not paperwork: with a six-person, all-family, unpaid board and no program staff, decisions likely happen through personal familiarity and referral rather than a scored proposal review. If your organization has any existing connection to the Herd or Parker families, Austin's nonprofit philanthropic circles, or to already-funded grantees (Dell Children's Medical Center Foundation, KIPP Texas, Mobile Loaves & Fishes, Texas Book Festival, the Junior League of Austin), lead with it. A common mistake would be treating this like a large institutional funder with a competitive grants process; instead, expect a small, quiet foundation that renews relationships with a stable roster of ~20 organizations year after year, so a realistic first-year outcome is a modest gift (the current median is $10,000) that could grow into a recurring relationship if the fit proves out.