The Arthur M Blank Family Foundation

The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is one of Atlanta's most powerful and least accessible philanthropies — a relationship-driven, invitation-only institution shaped entirely by the personal values and civic identity of its founder, Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of The Home Depot and owner of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United FC. With $466 million in assets as of 2024 and more than $1 billion distributed since its 1995 founding, the foundation operates as a deeply intentional grantmaking body, not a responsive one.

The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals and will not respond to letters of inquiry. This is not bureaucratic gatekeeping — it reflects a philosophy of earned, long-term partnerships. The 10 largest grantee relationships in the database each span multiple years and multiple grant cycles, often culminating in named facilities: the Arthur M. Blank Hospital at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta ($60.2M), the Arthur M. Blank School of Entrepreneurial Leadership at Babson College ($21.4M), and the Arthur M. Blank Center for Stuttering Education and Research at UT Austin ($12.2M).

The practical entry strategy begins with mapping your connection to the foundation's ecosystem. President Fay Twersky (compensation: $775,808) leads a professional staff including Senior VP Frank Fernandez and VP of Finance Sylia Obagi. Board directors include family members Nancy Blank, Kenny Blank, Dena Kimball, and Josh Kimball, all serving without compensation, alongside founder and Chairman Arthur M. Blank. Warm introductions through any of these individuals — or through established grantees like the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, Westside Future Fund, or Camp Twin Lakes — represent the most viable pathway.

First-time grantees typically begin with smaller pilot grants in the $25,000–$100,000 range before progressing to larger program grants of $500,000 and above. Organizations serving Atlanta's Westside neighborhoods (English Avenue, Vine City) or rural Montana communities carry a structural advantage regardless of program area. Demonstrating institutional credibility — existing funders, measurable outcomes, and community trust — is essential before any introduction is made.

The Blank Foundation's grant data reveals a classic bimodal structure: a very large number of small grants anchors the median, while a handful of transformative mega-grants dominate total dollars.

Scale and Distribution: Across 1,734 recorded grants totaling $354.8 million, the median grant is $25,000 and the average is $252,978 — a gap that signals extreme right-skew. In practice, the active bandwidth for program-level partnerships runs $100,000 to $750,000 per grant cycle. The foundation's own grant database records a minimum of $1,000 and maximum of approximately $20 million.

Tier 1 — Transformative Partnerships ($1M+): The top 10 grantees collectively represent the majority of all dollars distributed. Children's Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation leads at $60.2M across 8 grants, followed by Babson College at $21.4M (6 grants), Atlanta Beltline Partnership at $16.3M (2 grants), Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta at $15.7M (11 grants), and Shepherd Center Foundation at $13M (5 grants). These relationships typically involve naming rights and evolve over 5–10+ year timelines.

Tier 2 — Program Grants ($100K–$750K): This is where most active relationships live. Examples include $2.97M to HealthMPowers (middle school girls' health, 3 grants), $2.5M to New Georgia Project (civic engagement, 4 grants), $2.1M to Chris 180 (trauma-informed mental health on the Westside, 8 grants), and $2M to CE Buyers Institute (clean energy grid, 2 grants).

Annual Giving Trends: FY2022 total giving was $85.2M ($75.3M grants paid); FY2021 was $94.9M ($87.3M); FY2020 spiked to $274.5M due to COVID emergency donor-advised fund distributions; FY2019 was $150M. The foundation's 2024 revenue of $331M (not yet accompanied by disbursement filings) suggests assets and incoming contributions are growing substantially.

Geographic Split: Georgia accounts for 822 of 1,734 recorded grants (47%), with Montana at 219 (13%). Florida, Texas, New York, California, Massachusetts, and DC each host 40–88 grants — largely due to national organizations headquartered outside Atlanta. Program areas with highest individual grant sizes include clean energy, veterans' mental health, and signature Atlanta institution endowments.

Ranked by asset size, the Blank Foundation's closest peers are similarly scaled family or private foundations in the $462–467M asset range. However, Blank's giving volume and payout rate distinguish it sharply from most peers.

The Blank Foundation's annual giving of $75–95M on a ~$466M asset base represents a payout rate of roughly 16–20% — two to four times the typical private foundation rate of 5–7%. This unusually high payout reflects Arthur Blank's active giving philosophy and the foundation's practice of disbursing contributed capital, not purely investment returns. The 2020 anomaly ($274.5M distributed) was driven by emergency donor-advised fund pass-throughs during COVID-19 and should not be modeled as a baseline.

Among peers, the Blank Foundation is also distinctive in tying a substantial portion of major gifts to physical naming rights and endowed programs — a practice more common among university fundraising than private foundations, and one that reflects Arthur Blank's personal brand-building approach to philanthropy. All five peer foundations are invitation-only, which is typical at this asset level.

2025 and early 2026 represent one of the Blank Foundation's most active and publicly visible grantmaking periods on record.

In January 2026, the foundation committed $20 million to launch the TGR Learning Lab in partnership with Tiger Woods' TGR Foundation — a STEAM-education initiative that extends the foundation's youth development strategy into innovation and experiential learning. Simultaneously, the foundation announced that all Georgia high schools would be eligible for girls flag football grants in 2026, expanding a 2025 pilot that reached 305 schools (45 of which launched new programs for the first time).

December 2025 brought a $6.3 million sports access grant to six Metro Atlanta school districts — a three-year commitment co-funded with Atlanta United FC and the Atlanta Falcons — targeting middle and high school athletics including soccer, flag football, and field infrastructure.

In 2025, the foundation announced two landmark commitments: a $50 million, 10-year scholarship initiative at Atlanta's four HBCUs (Clark Atlanta, Morehouse, Morris Brown, Spelman), and a $25 million grant to the Fund for a Safer Future, a national gun violence prevention donor collaborative. The $2.5 million Atlanta Humane Society grant and $1.39 million in Montana nonprofit distributions (August 2025) reflect continuation of ongoing portfolios. No leadership changes have been publicly announced since Fay Twersky assumed the presidency in February 2021.

Because the Blank Foundation is strictly invitation-only, the most effective 'application tips' are relationship and positioning strategies — not form-filling advice.

1. Identify your entry point before doing anything else. The foundation's board is composed of Blank family members who do not engage with cold outreach. Program staff, however, attend Atlanta civic events and are accessible through shared institutional relationships. The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, which received $15.7M from Blank across 11 grants, frequently collaborates with Blank Foundation on grantee support — a relationship with CFGA staff is often the most direct legitimate pathway.

2. Use Atlanta's Westside geography as an anchor if you can. The Westside (English Avenue, Vine City, and adjacent neighborhoods) is the foundation's single most concentrated investment area. Organizations genuinely embedded in that geography — not parachuting in — receive structural preference. Use specific Westside neighborhood names and block-level impact language, not metro-Atlanta generalities.

3. Match the language of the five focus areas precisely. The foundation uses specific framing: 'economic inclusion,' 'civic engagement,' 'clean electricity,' 'healthy soils,' 'trauma-informed care,' 'youth economic mobility.' Review the foundation's website and press releases before any relationship conversation and mirror this vocabulary authentically.

4. Build a track record with CFGA and United Way first. Multiple Blank Foundation grantees (United Way of Greater Atlanta, YMCA of Metro Atlanta, CFGA) have received grants that funded collaborative infrastructure work. A grant from CFGA or United Way signals community credibility and creates a natural bridge.

5. Avoid the common mistake of treating this like an open RFP. Sending unsolicited concept papers, emails, or phone calls to the foundation without a relationship in place will not result in funding and may close doors permanently. Patience and relationship-building over 12–24 months is the only reliable approach.

6. For Montana organizations: Contact the AMB West Community Fund, which coordinates Montana grantmaking. In 2025, the fund conducted site visits to 40+ organizations. Demonstrate alignment with the 2025 pillars — thriving youth, nurturing childhoods, and infrastructure — using specific community data from your region.