The Shepherd Foundation

The Shepherd Foundation is a closely held St. Louis, Missouri family foundation governed by five directors — Susanne Shepherd, Charles T. Shepherd II, Susan Ittner, Sally Haimbaugh, and James Medart — descendants and associates of founder Charles M.M. Shepherd, who led the foundation for over 20 years until his death in 2019. The single most important structural fact for applicants: per the foundation's own IRS filing, "every approved grant must be funded from the annual allocation of a director's funds." This is not a pooled-committee model — each director effectively runs a personal giving budget, and a grant only happens if one director champions it. The filing explicitly advises that "before seeking funding, it is advised that all grant applicants secure the sponsorship of at least one director" — treat this as a hard prerequisite, not a nicety.

There is no application form, portal, or stated deadline ("NONE SPECIFIED" per the 990). A written letter of solicitation is preferred, must name the recipient organization and address, describe the intended use of funds, and state the applicant's tax status and purpose. Telephone solicitations are explicitly not accepted. Grants are "evaluated on an individual basis and compared to the purposes of our family foundation," language that signals a subjective, relationship-driven review rather than a scored rubric.

All dollar-tagged grant activity in available data is Missouri-based, and "Community Development" is the only publicly tagged focus area, so first-time applicants should lead with local, tangible community impact rather than national or issue-advocacy framing. With total known annual giving capacity around $360K-$500K spread across an undisclosed but apparently small, stable set of recipients (aggregator filings list recipients only as "Schedule Attached" or "Various"), this reads as a legacy-relationship funder that renews existing commitments more than it opens new ones — cold, unsponsored proposals face long odds regardless of proposal quality.

Total assets have held in a narrow band — $6.07M-$7.04M — across every fiscal year in the record from 2011 through the FY2025 filing ($6,341,890 most recent), aside from a single $3.08M contribution received in FY2012 that effectively re-capitalized the foundation; no contributions have been received in any other year on file (2011, 2013-2023), meaning the foundation now runs entirely on investment income and asset sales rather than new donor gifts.

Annual giving (total_giving) has ranged from $120,357 (2011, before the 2012 capital infusion) up to a peak of $598,727 in 2019, with actual grants disbursed (grants_paid) ranging from $95,304 (2011) to $458,500 (2019); the ten-year median of grants_paid across 2011-2023 is approximately $350,700. FY2020 saw a pandemic-era dip to $313,785 disbursed, recovering to the $367,500-$367,900 range for 2021-2023. The most recent public filing (FY2025, via ProPublica) shows charitable disbursements of $492,010 against total revenue of only $438,265 — a $68,170 net asset decline for the year, funded in part by $215,478 in realized asset sales (49.2% of revenue), versus $117,404 in dividends (26.8%) and $105,383 in interest (24.0%). Third-party aggregators separately peg total giving at $367,600 for 2024 and $362,100 for 2025, suggesting a plateau near $360K-$370K annually, below the 2019 peak.

Because the underlying 990-PF grant schedules are reported to aggregators only as "Schedule Attached" or "Various" rather than itemized by recipient, individual grant sizes and program-area or true grantee-count breakdowns cannot be verified from public data — the dataset shows just 3 recorded grant-summary rows totaling $1,103,016 (average $367,672 per row, likely each row itself an aggregate of multiple sub-grants), 100% attributed to Missouri. Officer compensation to the five directors totaled $50,000/year ($10,000 each) for 2019-2023 but was reported as $0 in the FY2025 filing.

No named peer foundations were available in the source data (the foundation's peers list was empty), and public aggregators do not surface directly comparable named St. Louis family foundations with verifiable financials at this scale. The table below instead benchmarks The Shepherd Foundation against standard size-class categories drawn from the same filing sources used above, to size expectations realistically.

At $6.3M in assets, The Shepherd Foundation sits at the small end of the family-foundation spectrum, and its giving-to-assets ratio (roughly 6-8% in recent years) runs above the ~5.5% national median for family foundations — consistent with the FY2025 filing showing disbursements exceeding revenue. Unlike mid-size Missouri foundations that run open LOI or grant-cycle processes, Shepherd's fully closed, director-sponsorship model places it firmly in the invitation-only tier, making warm introductions far more decisive here than proposal polish.

No independent news coverage, press releases, leadership announcements, or new program launches turned up for this foundation in searches — consistent with a small, closely held family foundation with no dedicated communications presence. The most concrete recent signal is the FY2025 Form 990-PF (fiscal year ended December 2025, per ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer): total revenue of $438,265, total expenses of $506,435, and charitable disbursements of $492,010, producing a net asset decline of $68,170 for the year — the first year in the available filing history (back to 2011) where disbursements clearly outpaced revenue. Total assets stood at $6,341,890, down modestly from $6,444,238 at the end of FY2023. Board composition — Susanne Shepherd, Charles T. Shepherd II, Susan Ittner, Sally Haimbaugh, and James Medart — appears unchanged across the most recent filings. One notable governance shift: director/officer compensation, a steady $50,000/year ($10,000 per director) from 2019-2023 in the underlying data, was reported as $0 in the FY2025 aggregator summary.

Important data-quality caveat for applicants: the website recorded against this foundation in most databases, theshepherdfoundation.org, was directly verified during this research and belongs to an unrelated Catholic-school tuition-assistance charity based in Potomac, Maryland (also doing business as "The Shepherd Foundation") — its "how to apply" content, scholarships, and news have nothing to do with this Saint Louis, Missouri organization (EIN 91-1979191). No verified website or online application channel exists for the correct foundation; all outreach should go through mail or a director contact.

This is a relationship-gated, not a competitive-proposal, funder — the single highest-leverage action is securing sponsorship from one of the five sitting directors (Susanne Shepherd, Charles T. Shepherd II, Susan Ittner, Sally Haimbaugh, James Medart) before submitting anything, since the foundation's own filing states grants are funded from an individual director's personal annual allocation. Without a director champion, a technically complete written solicitation is unlikely to advance regardless of quality.

Format: send a written letter (no form exists, no online portal is verified). Include, at minimum: the recipient organization's legal name and address, a specific description of the intended use of funds, and a statement of the organization's tax status (501(c)(3) determination) and purpose. Do not call — telephone solicitations are explicitly rejected in the foundation's filing. Do not attempt a generic form-letter or mass-solicitation approach; the foundation states grants are "evaluated on an individual basis and compared to the purposes of our family foundation," implying each director reads requests personally rather than routing them through staff.

Timing: no deadline is specified ("NONE SPECIFIED" per the 990), and the process is effectively rolling, but because funding draws on each director's annual allocation, requests submitted early in the calendar year (the foundation's fiscal year) are more likely to land before a sponsoring director's allocation is otherwise committed.

Scale the ask realistically: total known annual giving capacity is roughly $360K-$500K spread — based on available filing detail — across a small, largely stable set of relationships rather than a broad open pool; do not request a sum that would represent a large share of that total unless the relationship clearly warrants it. Keep the geographic and mission framing tight to Missouri/St. Louis community development, the only focus area publicly associated with the foundation and the location of all dollar-tagged grants in the record. Finally, do not rely on theshepherdfoundation.org for guidance — that domain belongs to an unrelated Maryland charity of the same name, and using its scholarship/tuition-assistance framing in an approach to this foundation would misread the funder entirely.