Surendra And Karen Gupta Arc Foundation

The Surendra and Karen Gupta Arc Foundation is a St. Louis-based family foundation run entirely by its two namesake founders — Karen Gupta (President) and Surendra Gupta (Treasurer) — who take no compensation and operate with no staff, no program officers, and no formal application portal. This is donor-directed giving, not institutional grantmaking: the 421 grants on record (averaging $5,703, totaling $2.4M since inception) trace a clear map of the Guptas' personal and professional network rather than a published funding thesis. The largest checks went to institutions with a direct personal tie — University of Missouri-St. Louis ($400,000 across two gifts, plus another $200,000+ in separate UMSL-titled grants), Ohio State University Foundation ($300,000), IIT Bombay Heritage Foundation ($110,000, Surendra Gupta's likely alma mater network), and Wayne State University Scholarship ($49,056 across four gifts). Below that tier, giving fans out into dozens of $5,000-$12,000 gifts to animal-welfare and rescue groups (Kindness Ranch, Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue, Gentle Giants Draft Horse Rescue, Noah's Lost Ark), children's causes (Sweet Celebrations, Shriners Hospital, St. Jude's), and St. Louis civic institutions (St. Louis Zoo — $251,000 in one gift plus recurring smaller amounts, Humane Society of Missouri, Hindu Temple of St. Louis). First-time applicants should understand there is no LOI-to-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline here; the foundation's own application_instructions field on file with the IRS is boilerplate ('name & address of organization, exempt status, information about activities'), and neither Instrumentl nor GrantExec — two grant databases that track application mechanics — could identify a live RFP or portal. Realistic paths in are a personal introduction to the Guptas, alignment with one of their known institutional loyalties (UMSL, Ohio State, IIT Bombay, Wayne State, St. Louis-area nonprofits), or a modest, low-friction ask (under $10,000) to an animal-welfare or children's-charity cause that mirrors their existing giving pattern. Cold applications to a generic environmental or conservation angle are unlikely to land, despite the IRS 'Environment' classification.

Lifetime giving across 421 recorded grants totals $2,400,903 at an average of $5,703 per grant — but the distribution is heavily skewed by a handful of five- and six-figure institutional gifts sitting on top of a long tail of small, personal checks. The typical_grant_size field on file (drawn from a 27-grant recent sample) puts the median at just $1,200, with an average of $2,517, a floor of $18, and a ceiling of $11,000 — meaning the median real-world ask is closer to four figures than five. Layer in the top-50 grant list and the range widens dramatically: $400,000 to the University of Missouri-St. Louis (2 grants) and $300,000 to Ohio State University Foundation at the top, down to $18 gifts at the bottom. By geography, Missouri dominates with 84 of the tracked grants, followed by Washington D.C. (45), New York (35), California (33), Florida (26) and Virginia (26) — consistent with the foundation's stated geographic_focus of MO, NY, and DC. Financially, the foundation is thinly capitalized for its giving ambitions: total assets were $3,436,244 at the end of FY2025 against $1,495,714 in grants paid that year — a payout rate above 40%, far above the 5% IRS minimum, funded by a $1,800,470 contribution inflow the Guptas made into the foundation that same year. That FY2025 giving level is an outlier: FY2023 giving was $207,965, FY2022 was $295,995, FY2021 was $40,505, and FY2020 was $68,057 — so the foundation has spent most of its history distributing well under $300,000 a year, and the FY2025 spike is best read as a one-time infusion of personal wealth rather than a new sustained payout floor. By program area, education (universities and scholarship funds) captures the largest single-grant dollars, while animal welfare/rescue and children's/human-services causes account for the largest number of individual grants.

On paper, the Gupta Arc Foundation sits in the middle of a tight asset band ($3.44M-$3.51M) among five other small foundations the IRS classifies under 'Environment' — none differ from it by more than $75,000 in total assets. In practice, however, the Gupta Arc Foundation is not a comparable peer for environmental grant seekers: its actual grant history shows almost no environmental or conservation funding (a handful of small gifts to World Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and The Nature Conservancy at $6,000-$9,000 each, dwarfed by education and animal-welfare giving). Environmental nonprofits benchmarking against this peer set should treat the Gupta Arc Foundation as a low-probability, opportunistic prospect rather than a core target, and should instead prioritize outreach to peers like Conservation Inc., whose name suggests a closer programmatic match — while verifying each peer's real funding pattern the same way, since 990 category codes are frequently a poor proxy for actual giving behavior at this asset scale.

No press releases, news coverage, or social-media activity could be found for this foundation in 2025 or 2026 — expected for an unstaffed, two-person family foundation with no communications function. The clearest signal of recent activity comes from the foundation's own IRS filings: FY2025 total revenue reached $2,144,821 (up from $1,031,981 in FY2023), driven by $1,800,470 in new contributions received — almost certainly a personal transfer from Surendra and/or Karen Gupta into the foundation's corpus — and grants paid jumped to $1,495,714, roughly seven times the $205,906 distributed in FY2023 and well above the $295,995 and $40,505 given in FY2022 and FY2021 respectively. Net investment income also rose to $344,292 in FY2025 from $78,372 in FY2023, consistent with a larger asset base ($3,436,244 vs. $2,097,006). No leadership changes are evident — Karen Gupta (President) and Surendra Gupta (Treasurer) have held their uncompensated roles across every filing year in the data. The one external reference found dates to January 21, 2026: a Delhi University notice tied to the foundation's scholarship program, referencing a geospatial-technology workshop — consistent with the foundation's established pattern of supporting Indian higher-education ties (IIT Bombay, Delhi University/Hindu College) alongside its U.S. university relationships. Grant seekers should not expect this FY2025 surge to repeat annually; absent another personal contribution of similar size, the foundation's historical run-rate of roughly $40,000-$300,000 in annual giving is the more realistic planning assumption.

There is no formal proposal process, portal, published deadline, or program officer at this foundation — Karen Gupta (President, 314-878-1220, 15 Muirfield Lane, St. Louis, MO 63141) and Surendra Gupta (Treasurer) personally direct every grant, and third-party trackers (Instrumentl, GrantExec, Grantable) all confirm no documented application mechanism exists. The foundation's own IRS filing lists only generic boilerplate under application instructions ('name & address of organization, exempt status, information about activities'), which in practice means: if you have no personal connection to the Guptas, a cold written inquiry by mail or phone — not a portal submission — is the only available channel, and response rates for unsolicited contact are likely to be low. The strongest alignment signals to lean on are the foundation's demonstrated loyalties: University of Missouri-St. Louis and its home city of St. Louis, Ohio State University, IIT Bombay (Surendra Gupta's likely educational background), Wayne State University, and a long list of small animal-rescue and children's-welfare charities. A proposal that name-checks one of these institutional ties, or that mirrors the foundation's typical $1,200-$5,000 median gift size rather than asking for a transformational sum, is far more realistic than an open-ended appeal to the 'Environment' NTEE label the IRS assigned it — actual environmental grants in the record (WWF, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy) were all modest ($6,000-$9,000) add-on gifts, not core programmatic funding. Common mistakes to avoid: treating this as an institutional foundation with a strategic giving thesis (it isn't one), requesting six-figure sums without an existing relationship (the few large gifts all went to schools with a direct personal tie), and citing the outdated WWW.GAEAFOUNDATION.ORG domain, which no longer resolves — the operative site is skgarc.weebly.com. Given the small, personal nature of this funder, a warm introduction through a shared St. Louis civic, university-alumni, or Indian-American community connection is worth far more than a polished cold proposal.