The Fontaine Family Foundation Inc.

The Fontaine Family Foundation Inc (EIN 59-3157131) is a small, closely-held private foundation run by two uncompensated family directors — President Peter J. Fontaine and Secretary Theodore Gillette — with no paid staff, no discoverable dedicated website, and no public grants portal. This is a 'kitchen table' family foundation, not a professionally staffed grantmaking institution, and decisions are made informally rather than through a competitive review committee. The IRS Business Master File records a formal application cadence — a 'GRANT REQUEST APPLICATION' due November 1 for a January 1 award date, or May 1 for a July 1 award date — and restricts eligibility strictly to 501(c)(3) public charities qualifying under IRC 509(a)(1)-(3); fiscal sponsors, individuals, and non-509(a) entities should not apply. No online application form or published RFP could be located, so applicants should expect to request the application directly by phone or mail (32 Orange St, Asheville, NC 28801; (828) 505-4550 per the IRS filing — verify the number, since secondary directories list a slightly different one). Given the foundation's very small and declining recent giving level (roughly $2,000 in qualifying distributions in the most recent filed year), this is not a funder to anchor a program budget around; treat any award as a modest, relationship-driven supplement rather than headline funding. A same-address, same-principal entity — The Peter J. Fontaine Foundation, Inc. — purchased roughly 300 acres near Asheville in December 2006 to reopen a Christian summer camp (Camp Cedar Cliff, successor to the family's Cove Camp for their own children), and secondary sources describe broader Fontaine family giving touching a hospital, a private school, a church, and a women's shelter. Together this points to a faith-adjacent, hyper-local Asheville/Western North Carolina service orientation rather than a single named issue area. First-time applicants should lead with concrete WNC ties, a youth-, faith-, or community-service angle, and a modest ask ($5,000-$25,000 is more realistic than a six-figure request), and should expect a slow, personal, non-transactional process built on warm introduction rather than cold online submission.

Financial data compiled from Form 990-PF filings (2012-2024) shows a foundation with declining assets and highly irregular grantmaking. Total assets fell from $7.18M (2012) to a peak of $9.2M (2014, following a one-time $2.96M contribution) and then steadily down to $5.93M by 2024 — a 36% decline from the 2014 peak and 17% below the 2012 starting point, with almost no new contributions in any other year (annual contributions received ranged from just $61 to $3,561 outside 2014). Grantmaking itself is extremely lumpy: in nine of the last eleven filed years (2012, 2013, and 2019-2023), the itemized 'grants paid' line reports $0, even though the foundation's broader 'total giving' figure (likely inclusive of Part XV program and operating disbursements) ran a fairly steady $108,608-$134,866 per year in those same years. Real, itemized grant activity is concentrated in just two outlier years: 2014 ($747,868 paid against $855,629 in total giving) and 2015 ($2,239,803 paid against $2,351,060 in total giving) — together roughly $3 million deployed in a single two-year window, more than 25 times a typical year's level, apparently tied to drawing down the 2014 contribution. The most recently filed year, FY2024, shows the lowest activity on record: total revenue of only $1,760 and, per third-party 990-PF parsing, roughly $2,000 in qualifying distributions. Net investment income has stayed minimal throughout ($8-$38,798 a year) and officer compensation has been $0 in every year on file, confirming an all-volunteer, no-overhead operation. No grantee-level detail — names, individual amounts, states, or program areas — is available either in the Granted AI database (the grantee list for this foundation is empty) or in the public aggregators reviewed; the foundation does not appear to itemize recipients in any machine-readable source. Secondary, unverified directory listings describe support touching a hospital, a private school, a children's camp, a church, and a women's shelter, consistent with a broad local/community-services mix rather than a single funding vertical. Net takeaway for applicants: budget for typical-year awards in the low-to-mid four or five figures at most, and do not expect a repeat of the 2014-2015 spike given the foundation's shrinking asset base and near-zero most-recent-year distributions.

No peer foundation list was pre-matched in the platform database for this foundation, so the comparison below uses three verified, similarly small, no-staff family foundations also based in Asheville, NC, pulled from public 990-PF data during this research.

Among this cluster of small, no-staff Asheville family foundations, Fontaine is mid-pack on asset size — larger than Woodson and Richie, roughly comparable to Marcotte — but is currently the least active grantmaker in dollar terms, with FY2024 distributions rounding to essentially zero while Marcotte's giving grew 25% over the same stretch and Woodson still supports two dozen organizations a year. All four share the same structural profile: no professional staff, no formal online application, $0 officer compensation, and decisions driven entirely by family/board relationships rather than open competition, meaning cold outreach has a low success probability across this entire peer set and warm introduction matters more than proposal polish.

No foundation-specific news coverage, press releases, social media activity, or program announcements for EIN 59-3157131 turned up in this research window (2025-2026). Search results for 'Fontaine Family Foundation' are frequently contaminated by unrelated, similarly named organizations — including a Chattanooga, TN foundation (EIN 81-3526363) tied to youth substance-abuse-prevention programming, a Massachusetts-based Raymond E & Marie V Fontaine Family Foundation, and a construction-company-affiliated 'Fontaine Community Foundation' funding school buildings in Massachusetts — none of which are this Asheville, NC entity; readers should discount any coverage of those organizations as unrelated. The most concrete recent data point is the foundation's own FY2024 Form 990-PF (its most recently filed return): total revenue collapsed to $1,760, total assets fell to $5,933,100, and qualifying distributions dropped to roughly $2,000 — the lowest giving level in the eleven years of filings reviewed (2012-2024). Leadership has been stable and unchanged across every filing examined: Peter J. Fontaine as President/Director and Theodore Gillette as Secretary/Director, both uncompensated in every year on record. No new program announcements, staff hires, website launch, or grant-cycle changes were found. Given the sharp FY2024 pullback, applicants should treat this as a period of reduced or paused active grantmaking rather than assume the historical $108K-$135K/year 'total giving' band from 2019-2023 is currently available, and should confirm current capacity directly with the foundation before investing significant proposal-writing time.

Because this foundation publishes no website, no online portal, and no sample application, treat every step as relationship-first. Start with a short introductory phone call or letter to Peter J. Fontaine (President/Director) at 32 Orange St, Asheville, NC 28801, (828) 505-4550, rather than mailing an unsolicited full proposal — ask what form the 'grant request application' currently takes, since IRS filings reference a paper process rather than a digital one. Respect the two-cycle calendar embedded in IRS records: request and submit materials well ahead of November 1 for a January 1 award decision, or well ahead of May 1 for a July 1 award decision; late submissions likely roll to the next six-month cycle given the informal, volunteer-run structure. Confirm 501(c)(3) public-charity status under IRC 509(a)(1)-(3) up front in your cover letter — the foundation's eligibility language is explicit and exclusive, so fiscal-sponsorship arrangements or non-509(a) nonprofits are likely to be screened out immediately. Given the shrinking asset base and a FY2024 distribution level of only about $2,000, calibrate the ask conservatively — a specific, modest request ($5,000-$25,000, or even smaller) reads as more credible than an open-ended or large capital ask, and is more consistent with the foundation's historical $108K-$135K total annual giving spread (presumably across several recipients) in a typical pre-2024 year. Lead with local Western North Carolina impact and, where genuinely applicable, a faith-based or youth-serving angle — the Fontaine family's documented history includes reopening a Christian summer camp near Asheville (Camp Cedar Cliff) and support for a hospital, private school, church, and women's shelter per secondary sources, suggesting personal, community-rooted causes resonate more than abstract national programs. The most common mistake to avoid is treating this like a staffed foundation with a competitive RFP cycle — there is no evidence of open, unsolicited review, so cold applications with no prior contact are unlikely to be read at all. Instead, seek a warm introduction through a shared Asheville-area board, church, school, or camp connection before submitting anything in writing, and keep any written request to one page: mission fit, specific dollar amount, and local outcome.