Theophilus Foundation

Theophilus Foundation is a tiny, all-volunteer family foundation (~$6.2-6.5M in assets) run by three unpaid trustees — Martha Weaver (President/Treasurer), Glenn Hovemann (Vice President), and Oren Hovemann (Treasurer) — with no staff, no grants portal, and no verifiable public website (the site on file, theophilus.org, is unrelated content, not the foundation's own page). The database's "accepting applications: true" flag is not backed by any actual instructions, deadline, or form — application_instructions is blank. This pattern, combined with a decade of grant history, points to a relationship-driven, trustee-directed giving model rather than an open-application funder. Of the 33 distinct organizations in the top-50 grantee list, giving clusters around three threads: (1) hyperlocal Nevada County/Yuba watershed conservation and community groups — Bear Yuba Land Trust ($125,000/6 grants), South Yuba River Citizens League ($85,000/5 grants), Sierra Harvest ($20,000/4 grants), and Nevada City School of the Arts ($5,000) — all near the foundation's own North San Juan, CA address; (2) national and global biodiversity/land conservation — Rainforest Trust ($75,000), Sea Turtle Conservancy ($75,000), Wild Foundation ($80,000), Geoversity ($115,000/4 grants), NRDC and Sierra Club Foundation ($40,000 each); and (3) contemplative spirituality, consciousness studies, and health-freedom/medical-skepticism causes — Foundation Un Curso De Amor ($150,000/3 grants, the single largest relationship on file), Center for Action and Contemplation ($20,000), Spirit Rock ($20,000), Children's Health Defense ($5,000), Informed Consent Action Network ($20,000), and Carnicom Institute ($10,000). Grant counts recur to the same names repeatedly (Un Curso De Amor 3x, Bear Yuba Land Trust 6x, Geoversity 4x, One Mind Foundation 4x), evidence of renewed multi-year commitments rather than one-off awards to new applicants. First-time applicants should treat this as a closed or semi-closed funder: the realistic path in is a warm introduction from an existing grantee, close alignment with the trustees' specific worldview, or geographic proximity to Nevada County. Absent a personal connection, expect the initial ask to be a brief mailed letter of inquiry rather than an online submission.

Giving has been remarkably stable for a decade, funded almost entirely off a ~$6-7M investment portfolio rather than new donor contributions (essentially zero new money in since 2014, apart from a one-time $616,100 infusion in FY2021). By fiscal year: FY2023 — $415,500 grants paid, $475,567 total giving, $6,382,119 assets; FY2022 — $521,840 grants paid (the peak year on file), $597,595 total giving, on unusually low revenue of just $64,886, meaning the foundation drew down principal to fund it; FY2021 — $325,100 grants paid, $404,244 giving, revenue spiked to $1,270,063 aided by the $616,100 contribution; FY2020 — $330,000 grants paid; FY2019 — $320,050. Web research adds FY2024 — 23 grants totaling roughly $392,000 (average $17,000, down 5.8% year-over-year), and FY2025 — revenue of $271,979 against $539,939 in expenses (a $267,960 net loss), with net assets settling at $6,227,453, matching the current database figure. The database's typical_grant_size snapshot (23 grants: minimum $100, median $10,000, average $14,348, maximum $60,000) shows a right-skewed distribution — half of all grants are $10,000 or smaller, but a handful of priority relationships reach $40,000-$60,000+ in a single year. The three-year grantee history (78 grants, $1,262,440 total, average $16,185) confirms this: the largest cumulative recipient, Foundation Un Curso De Amor, received $150,000 across 3 grants (averaging $50,000/grant), while very small gifts also appear (Integral Christian Network $1,500, Christ Community Center $1,340), showing the trustees fund modest, personally-meaningful requests alongside six-figure conservation commitments. Geographically, California dominates (34 of 78 grants, roughly 44%), with meaningful clusters in New York (7), Colorado and New Mexico (4 each), and single-digit counts spread across Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Tennessee, and Virginia — a national footprint organized around cause alignment more than geography, apart from the Nevada County hyperlocal cluster. Annual giving of $392,000-$597,595 against roughly $6.2-6.5M in assets works out to roughly 6-9% of assets distributed per year, above the IRS 5% minimum payout floor.

The five peers surfaced alongside Theophilus share its NTEE classification ("Philanthropy & Grantmaking") and near-identical asset size (~$6.2M), which suggests these are algorithmic matches on size and administrative category rather than confirmed program peers — none has a listed website, and this research pass found no public grant detail, giving totals, or application information for any of them.

Despite the shared NTEE code, this is an administrative classification, not a stated giving focus — Theophilus stands out among this peer set for actually revealing a de facto cause thesis through its grantee list even without a website, while the five peers show no discoverable programmatic footprint at all in public sources. Theophilus's payout rate (roughly 6-9% of assets annually) also runs above the 5% federal minimum, suggesting its trustees are somewhat more generous with the corpus than a foundation coasting at the payout floor.

No foundation-issued press releases, leadership announcements, or new program launches turned up for 2025-2026 — expected for a three-person, all-volunteer family foundation with no communications staff. What is documented: the FY2025 Form 990-PF (filed 2026-05-12 per ProPublica) shows revenue of $271,979 against expenses of $539,939, a net loss of $267,960, with net assets at $6,227,453 — down from the roughly $6.5M reported for FY2024 by Grantable, consistent with a lower-return year plus continued charitable drawdown. Grantable's FY2024 snapshot shows 23 grants totaling about $392,000 (average $17,000), a 5.8% decline in total giving and 4.2% fewer grants than the prior year, with top recipients Global Village Institute ($75,000), Geoversity ($40,000), and Foundation Un Curso De Amor ($40,000) — indicating these relationships remain active and renewed into the most recently filed year. No officer changes appear anywhere in the record: Martha Weaver, Glenn Hovemann, and Oren Hovemann are listed identically across the database, ProPublica, and Grantable. One important flag for any prospective applicant: the website on file for this foundation (theophilus.org) is not actually its site — as of this research (August 2026) that domain resolves to an unrelated "Philosophy and Religion" content/affiliate blog about custom stickers, with no foundation content whatsoever. The foundation appears to have no working public website, so it should not be used for research, contact, or verification purposes.

No online portal, LOI form, published deadline, or grants_page_url exists for this funder in any source checked — the database's application_instructions field is blank, and "accepting applications: true" is not corroborated by any real infrastructure. Plan accordingly: the best first move is a concise letter of inquiry mailed to the foundation's registered address (13315 Buttermilk Bend, North San Juan, CA 95960-9541), addressed to Martha Weaver, President/Treasurer, since no public email address is listed; phone contact is (530) 913-3659. Lead with mission alignment to one of the three demonstrated priority threads — Nevada County/Yuba watershed conservation, national or global biodiversity/land conservation, or contemplative spirituality and health-freedom/medical-autonomy advocacy — proposals outside these themes do not appear anywhere in the 78-grant, three-year history and are unlikely to land cold. Multi-year renewal is the norm rather than one-off funding: Bear Yuba Land Trust (6 grants), Geoversity (4), One Mind Foundation (4), and Foundation Un Curso De Amor (3) show the trustees favor deepening a small number of relationships over funding many new organizations each year — position an ask as the start of an ongoing relationship, not a single transactional grant. Right-size the request: grant sizes documented range from $100 to $60,000 in a single year (median $10,000), with cumulative multi-year commitments to a top partner reaching $150,000 — asks well above $60,000 in a single year have no precedent here. A warm introduction likely matters more for this funder than for a staffed institutional foundation: with only three unpaid trustees and no program officers, decisions are almost certainly made through personal familiarity with a cause or its leaders, so cite any existing connection to the trustees or to a current grantee explicitly and by name. The most common mistake to avoid is treating this as a generic environmental or wellness funder and sending a form letter — the specific, somewhat unusual pairing of watershed conservation, contemplative spirituality, and vaccine/medical-establishment skepticism is distinctive, and a generic proposal will read as obviously untargeted. On timing, no deadlines or cycles were found anywhere; given the trustees' limited bandwidth, expect a slow, informal review with no committed response window, and consider one polite follow-up by mail or phone after 60-90 days if there has been no reply. If your organization is based in or serves Nevada County, CA, lead with that fact — it is the strongest single alignment signal available in the data.