Stromberg Family Foundation

The Stromberg Family Foundation is not a conventional grantmaker and grant seekers should calibrate expectations accordingly. IRS data flags it `preselected_only: true` with `application_instructions: __none__` — it makes contributions only to organizations the family already knows and has no public LOI, portal, or proposal process. It is a genuinely small, closed operation: President William J. Stromberg and VP/Treasurer Lisa L. Stromberg run it directly, both drawing $0 compensation, with no program staff or outside board listed. The foundation was only ruled tax-exempt in January 2023, meaning its entire public giving history is a single filed year.

The most telling data point is where its money actually goes: in its most recent filing (FY2024), the foundation's sole recorded grant was $1.0 million to T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc, a Baltimore-area national donor-advised-fund sponsor — not to an operating charity. That is effectively 100% of the foundation's disbursed capital for the year. This pattern — a small, family-run private foundation whose only 'grantee' is a DAF sponsor — indicates the Stromberg Family Foundation functions primarily as a pass-through vehicle: it satisfies its IRS minimum-distribution requirement by feeding a donor-advised fund, from which the family then privately recommends grants to specific charities. Those downstream grants are not required to appear on this foundation's 990-PF, which is why no grantee list, program description, or mission statement exists in any public record, including the foundation's own site.

For first-time applicants, the practical implication is that cold outreach — mailed proposals, emailed LOIs, or calls to the Towson office (410-244-7444) — has essentially no realistic path to funding. The only credible way in is a personal or professional relationship with the Stromberg family, or with intermediaries at T. Rowe Price Charitable who may be aware of the family's giving interests. Organizations with existing ties to Baltimore/Towson civic life, or to T. Rowe Price's broader corporate philanthropy network, are best positioned to eventually surface on the family's radar — but this is relationship cultivation over a period of years, not an application to submit.

The numbers here are unusually sparse, and that sparsity is itself the finding. Total assets stand at $10.34 million as of FY2024, up from an initial funding event around the foundation's January 2023 IRS ruling. FY2024 revenue was $3.6 million, with net investment income accounting for roughly $2.6 million of that — meaning the foundation is now primarily running off portfolio returns rather than new family contributions, typical of a foundation past its initial funding stage.

Under the standard 5% private-foundation minimum-distribution rule, a $10.34 million corpus obligates roughly $477,000 in qualifying distributions per year. Actual FY2024 giving was $1.0 million — more than double the mandatory floor — all of it in a single grant to T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc in Owings Mills, MD. That means: median grant size = $1.0 million, range = $1.0 million to $1.0 million (n=1), and 100% of disbursed capital in the only filed giving year went to one DAF-sponsoring intermediary rather than to any operating nonprofit. FY2022, the year of formation, recorded $0 in grants, consistent with a foundation still being capitalized rather than actively giving.

Because every disbursed dollar the public record shows went to a donor-advised-fund sponsor, there is no visible breakdown by program area, cause, or geography — no education/health/human-services split can be computed because no direct-to-charity grants exist in the filings. Any downstream giving from the T. Rowe Price Charitable account (the actual destination for beneficiary nonprofits) is confidential and does not appear on this foundation's 990-PF or on any public grants database. Grant seekers should treat this foundation's own filings as structurally incapable of showing a 'typical grant size' for direct applicants, because direct applicant grants may not exist at all under the current structure.

The database surfaced five other small, single-state 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' (NTEE T-category) foundations sized within roughly $3,000 of the Stromberg Family Foundation's $10.34 million in assets — an asset-matched cohort rather than a strategically similar one, since none of these peers have public program descriptions either.

All six entities sit in the same narrow asset band and the same broad NTEE bucket used for private family foundations that don't publish a specific cause area, which is itself the pattern: small, single-family, minimally staffed vehicles that exist primarily to house a family's charitable assets rather than to run a public grants program. None of the five peers has a website, grantee list, or application process on file either, reinforcing that Stromberg's closed posture is standard for this size and type of vehicle, not an outlier. Grant seekers scanning this exact asset tier should expect the same preselected-only pattern across most of these peers rather than assuming any of them runs an open RFP.

There is very little to report because the foundation is very young: it was ruled tax-exempt in January 2023, and its full public giving history consists of two filed fiscal years. FY2022 (its formation year) shows $0 in grants paid — consistent with initial funding and setup. FY2024, its most recent filed year, shows total assets of $10.34 million, total revenue of $3.6 million, and a single $1.0 million grant to T Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving Inc in Owings Mills, MD.

No leadership changes have been reported beyond the founding officers — William J. Stromberg (President) and Lisa L. Stromberg (VP/Treasurer) — who appear to be the foundation's only officers in every filing. No new program announcements, press coverage, or philanthropy-trade mentions from 2025 or 2026 turned up in four separate targeted web searches, and the foundation's own website (stromberg.org) returned no retrievable content on repeated fetch attempts, suggesting either a placeholder site or one that requires JavaScript rendering not accessible to automated tools.

The single most consequential 'recent activity' is structural rather than programmatic: the shift from zero grants in the formation year to a seven-figure transfer into a T. Rowe Price donor-advised fund the following filed year. That is the clearest signal available about how this foundation intends to operate going forward — as a funding source for a family-directed DAF rather than as a foundation that will build out its own public grantee list, board, or open program.

Because this foundation is explicitly preselected-only with no published LOI process, form, or portal, standard grant-writing tactics (cold LOIs, proposal narratives, budget templates) will not reach a reviewer — there is no reviewer role to reach. The realistic tips here are about positioning, not proposal craft:

• Do not lead with a mailed or emailed unsolicited proposal to the Towson office (1 W Pennsylvania Ave Ste 800, Towson, MD 21204; (410) 244-7444). IRS filings and every third-party aggregator (Grantable, CauseIQ, Grantmakers.io) independently confirm the foundation does not accept unsolicited requests.
• Look for an existing personal or institutional connection to William J. Stromberg or Lisa L. Stromberg before investing any outreach time — board memberships, alumni networks, or Baltimore/Towson civic and cultural institutions are the most plausible entry points for a family-run foundation at this stage of its life.
• Recognize that this foundation's actual charitable decisions likely happen inside a T. Rowe Price Program for Charitable Giving donor-advised-fund account, not inside the foundation itself. If your organization already has a relationship with T. Rowe Price's community/corporate-giving team in Baltimore, that relationship is more likely to surface your organization to the family than any direct approach to the foundation.
• Because the foundation is only two filed years old, its giving pattern is still forming. Revisit its public 990-PF filings annually (via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer) to see whether it begins naming direct operating-charity grantees — that would be the signal that it has moved from a DAF-funding structure toward one that might entertain outside proposals.
• Given zero public application infrastructure, organizations should not prioritize this foundation in an active fundraising pipeline; treat any prospecting effort here as long-horizon relationship cultivation, not a near-term ask.