Sun Pacific Foundation

Sun Pacific Foundation (EIN 83-2991118) is a lean, trustee-governed private foundation trust based in Jackson, Wyoming, with no dedicated grants staff, no online application portal, and no published program guidelines. Its IRS filing states plainly that only a letter is required to apply, with other materials requested only if the Foundation wants to move forward — a strong signal that this is a relationship-driven vehicle, not a competitively reviewed grants program. The two recorded grantees in available data — St Bede the Venerable Catholic Church and Saint Andrew's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Valyermo, CA — are both Catholic institutions in California, and the Foundation's own mission statement in its 990 filing is literally written as "CHARITABLE CONTRIBUTION - ST BEDE THE VENERABLE CATHOLIC CHURCH." That is a strong indicator the Foundation exists primarily to serve a small, closed circle of faith-based institutions connected to the founding family rather than to solicit or fund unaffiliated nonprofits broadly. Trustee Berne H. Evans III is also the Foundation's listed IRS contact ("% Berne Evans III"), and alongside co-trustee David J. Lyon serves without compensation; Executive Director Celine Benedict is paid $75,000/year (cut from $150,000/year in prior filings) for a part-time administrative role. There is no program officer, no grants committee described, and no site-visit or multi-stage review process evident from the two-grant giving history on file. First-time, unaffiliated applicants should treat the Foundation's "accepting applications" status with real caution: the letter-only process is procedurally easy to attempt, but the observed funding pattern shows zero diversification away from Catholic/Benedictine institutions. Organizations with a genuine tie to the Catholic Church, a Southern California Catholic parish community, or Benedictine monastic life have by far the clearest path in; organizations without such a connection should treat this as a long-shot cold outreach and prioritize other funders in this asset class with published program areas instead. Given the Foundation's rapid 2023 capitalization (a single $4.76M gift), grant seekers should also watch for the Foundation to formalize a grants process or publish guidelines in future years as the corpus stabilizes.

Recorded grant data shows only two grants, totaling $50,000: $30,000 to St Bede the Venerable Catholic Church and $20,000 to Saint Andrew's Abbey, both in California, for an average grant of $25,000. Both recipients are religious institutions, and both awards fell under a single "Charitable Contribution" purpose code — there is no evidence in available data of funding for education, health, human services, or general community nonprofits. The Foundation's Form 990-PF program-expense lines corroborate the same two-recipient pattern in another fiscal year, listing $49,563 to the St Bede program and $33,042 to the St Andrew's Abbey program ($82,605 combined) — the exact dollar splits shift year to year, but the two-institution concentration is consistent across filings. Total giving (all qualifying distributions, including any grants plus overhead) has grown from $216,899 (FY2019) to $180,072 (FY2021) to $311,662 (FY2022) to $340,178 (FY2023); cash grants paid specifically were far more volatile — $54,117 (2019), $16,098 (2021), $50,000 (2022), and a sharp jump to $255,403 (2023) that lines up with the Foundation's asset base quadrupling that same year. Total assets moved from $1.41M (2019) to $1.28M (2021) to $1.60M (2022) to $6.12M (2023) to $5.76M (2024), driven almost entirely by a single $4,762,259 contribution received in 2023; FY2024 shows no new contributions, only $130,236 of investment-style revenue, suggesting the Foundation now operates as a passively managed endowed trust rather than one still being actively funded by its donors. Officer compensation ran a flat $150,000/year from 2019-2022 before dropping to $75,000/year in 2023 — a meaningful cut in overhead (roughly 22% of that year's total giving) even as the asset base expanded. No typical grant size, geographic focus, or funding cycle is published by the Foundation; based on filings, expect single grants clustering in the $20,000-$50,000 range to a very small number of recipients, with aggregate annual outbound giving likely to settle near the IRS 5% minimum distribution requirement (roughly $280,000-$300,000/year) on the current ~$5.76M asset base.

Sun Pacific Foundation sits in a tight asset cluster with several other small private foundations nationally, all classified under the same "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE category and none carrying a discoverable, working public website (the domain on file for Sun Pacific, sunpacific.org, in fact belongs to an unrelated credit union, not this Foundation). None of the peers publish annual giving figures, application portals, or program guidelines in available data, which is itself a defining trait of this asset tier — these are unstaffed or lightly staffed family/trust foundations, not institutional grantmakers.

All six foundations sit within roughly $3,000 of each other in total assets (~$5.76M), which is almost certainly coincidental clustering from the data source rather than a meaningful peer set — these are independently governed family/trust foundations with no evident coordination. Sun Pacific stands out only in that its actual giving pattern (two Catholic institutions, letter-based application) is documented in filings, while peer giving patterns are not visible in this data; grant seekers should not assume the peers share Sun Pacific's religious funding focus.

No news coverage, press releases, or announcements about Sun Pacific Foundation were found in web searches — this Foundation has no discernible public relations or communications presence, consistent with an unstaffed family trust. The most significant recent activity visible in filings is financial rather than programmatic: total assets jumped from $1,599,257 (FY2022) to $6,121,787 (FY2023) on a single $4,762,259 contribution received that year, after which grants paid also rose sharply to $255,403 (FY2023) from $50,000 the year before. In FY2024, assets eased slightly to $5,760,372 on $130,236 of investment-only revenue, with no new contributions reported and grants-paid data not yet available in filings. The same fiscal year (2023) also saw Executive Director Celine Benedict's compensation cut from $150,000/year to $75,000/year, even as the Foundation's asset base grew roughly fourfold — worth noting for applicants as a possible signal of administrative restructuring. Trustees Berne H. Evans III and David J. Lyon appear consistently across all available filing years with no compensation and no evidence of turnover. One data-quality note for grant seekers: the website on file for this Foundation (sunpacific.org) actually resolves to Sun Pacific Federal Credit Union, an unrelated financial institution serving Social Security Administration employees in Richmond, CA — it is not a real source of information about this Foundation, and applicants should not attempt to apply or search there.

Because Sun Pacific Foundation's own IRS filing states that "only a letter is required to submit an application," the single highest-value move is to keep that first letter tight — one to two pages covering who you are, the specific dollar amount requested, how the funds would be used, and why it fits the Foundation's stated charitable purposes (religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational activities; public-safety testing; amateur sports competition without providing athletic facilities/equipment; or prevention of cruelty to children or animals). Do not front-load a full grant proposal, multi-year budget, or attachments — the Foundation explicitly says it will request additional materials "as necessary upon review," so an over-built initial packet is wasted effort and may signal a misread of how this funder operates. The strongest evidence in available filings is that both known grants went to Catholic institutions in California (St Bede the Venerable Catholic Church and Saint Andrew's Abbey, a Benedictine monastery), so applicants without any Catholic, parish, or Benedictine connection should treat this as a long-shot cold approach rather than a core prospect — consider leading with any faith-community tie explicitly in the letter rather than assuming a secular pitch will land. Address the letter to Trustee Berne H. Evans III (the Foundation's listed IRS contact) at 505 E Zenith Dr, Jackson, WY 83001-9376, rather than to a generic "grants office" — none appears to exist. A phone number is on file, (801) 209-2230 (a Utah area code despite the Wyoming mailing address), which may be worth a courtesy call to confirm the letter is being routed correctly before committing to a mailed submission. There is no published deadline, funding cycle, or online portal, so submissions can likely be made at any time, but with historical grant counts this small (two recorded grants totaling $50,000 in the available sample), capacity for new, unrelated relationships in any given year is probably very limited. The most common mistake an applicant could make here is treating Sun Pacific like a larger institutional funder with defined program areas and a competitive RFP cycle — none of that infrastructure exists; this reads as a personal, trustee-directed giving vehicle, and outreach should be pitched accordingly, ideally through a warm introduction from someone already connected to the Foundation's known grantee network.