The@Kt Foundation

The@Kt Foundation is a small, professionally managed family legacy foundation, not an open grantmaker. Its own website states plainly that it "does not accept unsolicited proposals," and Granted AI's data field for application_instructions is literally empty ("__none__") with no application form URL — confirming this is a preselected-only funder. The foundation was created to honor three individuals — Grace Kase, Alice Kase, and Harry Tsujimoto — and to extend their personal legacy of supporting the Japanese-American community in the San Francisco Bay Area, alongside three other personal-passion areas: Asian American civil-rights advocacy, Bay Area nature and bird conservation, and wild horse rescue. Day-to-day administration runs through Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies, a third-party foundation-management firm, rather than through in-house program staff, which is typical of foundations at this asset scale ($7.9M) that lack a standing grants office. There is effectively no LOI-to-full-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline available to outside organizations: of 29 recorded grants totaling $12.6M, 27 went to California organizations and the list reads as a closely curated set of institutions with personal ties to the founders — Bay Area Nikkei community centers (Eden Township Japanese Community Center, Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California, Japanese Community Youth Council, Kimochi Inc.), major Bay Area museums (Asian Art Museum, Oakland Museum), and national animal-welfare organizations (Muttville, Canine Companions). First-time applicants should not treat this as a prospect to court directly. The realistic path in is indirect: build genuine program or board relationships with organizations already in the grantee list, since co-funding, shared board members, or community visibility within the Bay Area Japanese-American nonprofit ecosystem appears to be how new organizations enter consideration. Given the foundation's sharp pullback in giving after 2022, expectations for a large new capital commitment should be modest in the near term; smaller, mission-aligned relationship-building is more realistic than pursuing a flagship gift.

Across its full recorded grant history, The@Kt Foundation has made 29 grants totaling $12.6M, averaging $434,483 per grant, with 27 of 29 grants (93%) going to California organizations and just 2 to New York. Distribution is extremely top-heavy: Muttville alone received $6.0M across 3 grants for a capital campaign — 48% of all historical dollars — followed by the Asian Art Museum at $3.1M across 2 grants (25%) and Canine Companions at $1.34M across 2 grants for PTSD dog training and veteran matching (11%). Together, just three grantees account for 84% of all giving. Below that top tier, grants drop steeply in size: Oakland Museum ($500,000, 1 grant), Eden Township Japanese Community Center ($400,000, 2 grants), EAEF scholarship endowment ($210,000, 2 grants), Rett Syndrome Research Trust ($200,000, 1 grant), and TACMC ($200,000, 2 grants for a memorial). The remaining grantees — Senior Services of Northern California, Kimochi Inc., JCCCNC, Japanese Cultural & Community Center (Kase Internship), Aldersgate United Methodist Church, Japanese Community Youth Council, Art With Elders, Poston Community Alliance, and Operation Dignity — each received between $25,000 and $150,000. The foundation's own reported typical_grant_size data (n=9) shows a median of $150,000, average of $778,333, and range of $25,000 to $3,000,000. Annual giving has been highly volatile: FY2019 total giving was $861,254 (grants paid $815,000); FY2020 dropped to $739,573 despite a one-time $15,000,000 contribution received that year (revenue spiked to $15,006,016); FY2021 giving jumped to $7,059,608 (grants paid $7,005,000) as the foundation deployed that windfall into its largest-ever gifts; FY2022 giving was $2,559,955 (grants paid $2,430,000, alongside a further $1,000,000 contribution received); and FY2023 collapsed to just $199,718 in total giving (grants paid only $55,000). FY2024 data shows no reported grants_paid or total_giving figure, but total assets grew from $6,245,276 (FY2023) to $7,931,304 (FY2024) on revenue of $2,141,578, suggesting a rebuilding/asset-accumulation phase rather than active large-scale distribution. By program area, giving skews heavily toward Japanese-American/Nikkei community services and Bay Area arts and culture institutions, with a secondary, very large-dollar allocation to national animal-welfare organizations.

These five peers were matched almost entirely by asset size — all cluster within roughly $7,927,000 to $7,936,000, essentially identical to The@Kt Foundation's $7,931,304 — rather than by mission, geography, or grantmaking style; they are scattered across Michigan, New Jersey, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Florida versus this foundation's California focus. Four of the five peers have no public website at all, and only Helidoni Foundation does; this mirrors The@Kt Foundation's own low public-transparency posture (a single legacy-page website with no grants portal) and underscores that closed, invitation-only operation is the norm, not the exception, for family foundations at this roughly $7.9M asset tier.

No dedicated press coverage or grant-announcement activity for The@Kt Foundation surfaced in web search for 2025-2026; visibility is limited to nonprofit-database listings (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, CharityNavigator, CauseIQ, Instrumentl, Grantmakers.io, Zeffy) and the foundation's own sparse legacy website. The most concrete recent data point is filing activity: a primary Form 990-PF return was filed November 5, 2025 (covering FY2024), following a prior filing on October 22, 2024. Financially, the last known major activity remains the 2021-2022 deployment of a $15,000,000 contribution received in FY2020 — this funded the foundation's largest-ever gifts, including a $6.0M capital campaign commitment to Muttville and a $3.1M campaign/staffing gift to the Asian Art Museum, both concentrated in FY2021-2022. Giving then contracted sharply to $199,718 in FY2023 (grants paid just $55,000), and FY2024 shows no reported new grant distribution, with assets instead growing to $7,931,304 on $2,141,578 of revenue — consistent with a quiet, asset-rebuilding period rather than active new grantmaking. On governance, the foundation lists Mark Tsujimoto as President across all recent filing years (compensation rising from $24,000 to $48,000), with turnover visible in the Secretary role (Franklin Tsao and Dick Yamamoto both appear across different years) and Treasurer role (Pauline Nagata and Iris Ng both appear), alongside Dion Griffin as CFO and Whitney Caruso as Assistant Secretary — none of whom draw compensation beyond the President.

There is no open application process for The@Kt Foundation, and grant seekers should not treat the absence of a portal as an oversight — the foundation's website explicitly states it does not accept unsolicited proposals, and Granted AI's own record shows application_instructions as empty and no application form URL on file. Cold LOIs, generic inquiry emails, and mailed proposals to the Berkeley address are very unlikely to receive a response; the only identified point of contact is the foundation's administrator, Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies (amanda@thirdplateau.com), and even that channel should be used for a brief, relationship-oriented introduction rather than a formal ask. The strongest signal for genuine fit is mission and community overlap with the founders' four stated personal-passion areas — Asian American/AAPI advocacy, Bay Area nature and bird conservation, AAPI mental health research and destigmatization, and wild horse rescue — combined with the realized grant history, which skews toward Bay Area Japanese-American/Nikkei community organizations (Eden Township Japanese Community Center, JCCCNC, Japanese Community Youth Council, Kimochi Inc.), major Bay Area museums, and national animal-welfare groups. Organizations working in those specific niches, especially ones serving or connected to the Bay Area Nikkei community, are the closest analog to what this funder has actually funded. A key reality check: concentration is extreme — Muttville and the Asian Art Museum alone account for 72% of all-time dollars — so even a well-matched organization faces long odds absent a personal connection to the trustees. The most realistic strategy is patient, indirect relationship-building: seek board or program overlap with existing grantees, participate visibly in the Bay Area Japanese-American nonprofit and cultural community, and avoid framing any outreach as a formal grant request. Given the sharp drop in giving from $7.06M (FY2021) to roughly $200K (FY2023) and no confirmed FY2024 distributions, expectations for a large new commitment should be modest until asset and revenue trends signal renewed capacity for major gifts.