Tiscornia Foundation Incorporated

Tiscornia Foundation Incorporated is a tightly-held, family-governed private foundation with zero paid staff and a governance roster limited entirely to Tiscornia family members: Edward C. Tiscornia (President, $25,000 compensation), James W. Tiscornia (VP & Treasurer) and J. Winston Tiscornia (Secretary, $10,000-$15,000 each), plus three unpaid trustees — Courtney Tiscornia Mehan, Kristin Tiscornia Thomas, and Christopher Tiscornia. There is no program officer, no online portal, and the enrichment record lists both application_form_url and grants_page_url as blank, with application_instructions recorded simply as "__none__". That combination — technically "accepting applications" but with no published process — is the clearest available signal: this is a relationship-driven funder, not a competitive-RFP funder. The 89-grant history in the database bears this out. A small core of organizations receives repeat, multi-year support: First Tee of the Low Country (5 grants, $89,544), Shorter University in Rome, Georgia (5 grants, $61,100, including a named theatre gift confirmed by a January 2026 news item), Juvenile Diabetes Foundation (5 grants, $61,000), Abingdon Presbyterian Church in Virginia (4 grants, $53,000), Denison University (5 grants, $37,000), Cru/Campus Crusade for Christ (5 grants, $30,900), and Christar (5 grants, $26,000). One-off recipients, by contrast, typically receive a single grant of $500-$12,000 and do not reappear in later years. The geographic spread of grantees (Michigan 35, Virginia 10, Ohio 7, Florida 6, Georgia/South Carolina/Texas 5 each, Wisconsin 5, Indiana 4, New York 2) tracks where individual trustees appear to live, worship, and hold alumni ties, rather than a defined program service area — the one hard exception is the scholarship fund, explicitly restricted to Northern Berrien County, Michigan high school students. First-time, cold applicants with no personal connection to the family should expect this to be a long-odds funder; the strongest path in is a warm introduction through a shared church, alumni network, or Southwest Michigan civic tie. Absent that, apply formally against the published deadlines with a short, plain-language letter of inquiry — there is no evidence a lengthy formal proposal format is expected or reviewed, and the foundation's own filings give no indication of a multi-stage LOI-to-full-proposal process.

The DB grantee ledger totals $574,500 across 89 recorded grants (average $6,455 per grant), while the foundation's own "typical grant size" statistic — likely a single-year sample — shows a median of $5,000, an average of $5,905, and a range of $1,000 to $20,000 across 22 grants. Across the top 30+ recipients, sizes cluster tightly: most first-time or one-off gifts land between $500 and $12,000, while the largest cumulative relationships (First Tee of the Low Country at $89,544 and Shorter University at $61,100) are built from five consecutive annual grants of roughly $10,000-$20,000 rather than one large check. By purpose, community welfare and faith-based organizations dominate the recipient count (First Tee, Abingdon Presbyterian Church, Ecumenical Faith in Action, Christar, Cru, several pregnancy-resource centers), while education/scholarship recipients (Shorter University, Denison University, Lake Michigan College, Michigan State's Spartan Fund, and five named individual scholarship recipients such as Lauren Cook at $26,000 and Alena Louie at $25,000) account for a comparable share of dollars. On the balance sheet, total assets have grown from $2.97M (2011) to $4.36M (most recent), almost entirely on investment returns — net investment income spiked to $829,502 in 2021 (a bull-market outlier that pushed total revenue to $875,841 that year) versus a more typical $29,000-$40,000 in flat years. Annual total_giving has held in a narrow $222,000-$231,000 band from 2019-2023, actually down slightly from a $224,082-$231,329 run in 2019-2020, while grants_paid (the cash actually disbursed in-year, as distinct from multi-year pledges captured in total_giving) has fluctuated between $105,000 and $130,000 over the same span — both figures are far below the $165,000-$173,000 giving level seen a decade earlier relative to today's larger asset base, suggesting the foundation is not scaling its payout in step with asset growth. Officer compensation has been flat at $50,000/year combined since 2019 (up from $42,000-$46,000 in 2011-2015), and contributions_received has been $0 in every year on file back to 2011 — this is a closed, self-funding endowment with no active fundraising arm.

Tiscornia sits at the small end of the Southwest Michigan funder landscape — roughly 1/25th the assets and 1/30th the annual giving of the region's dominant funder, Berrien Community Foundation, which runs multiple named, publicly-advertised grant programs with real application windows. Where Berrien Community Foundation and even the corporate Whirlpool Foundation scholarship program publish clear eligibility rules and cycles, Tiscornia's giving pattern (repeat gifts to the same dozen-plus organizations, a scholarship pool restricted to Northern Berrien County teens, and no online application system) is much closer to the median small U.S. family foundation, where the founding family's personal and institutional loyalties — not a published RFP — drive the bulk of the payout.

Confirmed activity is limited but consistent with the foundation's decades-long pattern rather than any new direction. The most concrete, dated item found is a January 2026 gift of $10,000 to Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, specifically supporting the J.W. Tiscornia Theatre — the named-gift naming convention (J.W. Tiscornia, matching the current Secretary's name) confirms this is a long-standing, personal family relationship rather than a new grant. Third-party 990-derived data (Cause IQ) additionally lists Ecumenical Faith in Action and Pathways Pregnancy Resource Center as recent ~$10,000 recipients, both of which also appear as multi-year repeat grantees in the foundation's own database history (Ecumenical Faith in Action: 4 grants, $12,000 cumulative; Pathways Pregnancy Center: 1 grant, $5,000). No leadership transitions were found — the same three Tiscornia officers (Edward C., James W., and J. Winston Tiscornia) and three trustees (Courtney Tiscornia Mehan, Kristin Tiscornia Thomas, Christopher Tiscornia) who appear across multiple years of filings remain in place, and there is no evidence of a new program, geographic expansion, or public statement of revised funding priorities. On the balance-sheet side, the most recent financial snapshot (FY2025, per Cause IQ) shows total assets of $4,360,560, total revenue of $284,997, and total expenses of $290,869 — a modest net drawdown consistent with a foundation quietly maintaining rather than growing its giving. Grant seekers should not expect a public RFP, program announcement, or staff hire in the near term; this remains a low-visibility, low-news funder whose activity is best tracked through annual Form 990-PF filings rather than press coverage.

Because Tiscornia publishes no application form, no online portal, and no formal instructions (the enrichment record's application_instructions field literally reads "__none__"), the safest approach is a concise, mailed letter of inquiry rather than a lengthy grant proposal — there is no evidence the trustees review anything more elaborate. Respect the two hard deadlines on file: general grant requests by February 1, and scholarship applications by April 1. The scholarship program has a strict eligibility filter — applicants must be high school students from Northern Berrien County, Michigan; general operating/program grants carry no stated geographic or mission restriction, which is consistent with the wide out-of-state grantee spread (Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Indiana, New York) seen in the award history. Given the heavy repeat-funding pattern — the same ~15-20 organizations receiving grants in most years — a cold, first-time application competes against established multi-year relationships; where possible, identify a shared connection to the Tiscornia family (Southwest Michigan civic ties, a Presbyterian or evangelical church affiliation, or a Shorter University/Denison University/Michigan State alumni link have all produced repeat grants) and reference it directly in the opening line. Common mistakes to avoid: sending an application to tiscornia.org — that domain belongs to an unrelated bird-count nonprofit and any inquiry sent there will go nowhere; assuming a large ask will be considered — the observed range tops out at $20,000 per grant even for the most favored, decade-long relationships, so requests should be scaled to $1,000-$15,000 for a first ask; and treating this as a competitive RFP process requiring a full narrative, budget, and logic model — the lack of any published guidelines suggests a one- to two-page letter covering organizational mission, specific use of funds, and amount requested is the appropriate format. Mail correspondence to 505 Pleasant St, Suite 301, St. Joseph, MI 49085, and confirm a live phone/contact number independently before applying, since public directories list conflicting numbers for the foundation.