Truth Project

Truth Project is not a conventional public grantmaking foundation — it is a small, closed family foundation run by Thad J. Davis (President) and Dr. Cheryl J. Davis (Treasurer/Vice President), a married couple based in Lumberton, NC. Thad Davis is the pastor of Faith Assembly of God in St. Pauls, NC, and that same church is the foundation's single largest recipient, having received $210,000 across two gifts — 68.5% of the $306,750 in total giving recorded across all 18 known grants. The remaining giving flows almost entirely to individual ministers and small ministries (The Remnant, Jimmy Jones Ministries, Keith Oxendine Ministries, Jonathan Zeigler Ministries, Parm Missions) rather than institutional nonprofits, and every recorded grant is coded simply 'OFFERING.' The platform's own data flags this foundation as preselected_only, with no application form, no deadline, and application_instructions recorded as none — all consistent with what the grant history shows: this is a relationship-driven vehicle for supporting the Davis family's own church and personal ministry network, not a funder soliciting or reviewing outside proposals. For a first-time, unaffiliated applicant, the realistic odds of a cold proposal succeeding are very low. The workable path in is relational: a shared connection through Assemblies of God or broader Pentecostal/charismatic ministry circles, a personal introduction via Faith Assembly of God's congregation, or engagement with Dr. Cheryl Davis's 'Truth Matters' radio and podcast teaching ministry (run under the same projecttruthmatters.com umbrella). Organizations should not expect a formal review process, a program officer, or a multi-stage LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline — decisions appear to be made directly and informally by Thad and Cheryl Davis based on personal knowledge of the requesting minister or ministry. First-time applicants should treat any outreach as a ministry-partnership conversation, not a grant application, and should be prepared for a modest ask: outside of the anchor gift to Faith Assembly of God, individual gifts have ranged from $100 to roughly $30,000.

Across all years captured, Truth Project has made 18 recorded grants totaling $306,750, averaging $17,042 per recipient. That figure is heavily skewed by one relationship: Faith Assembly of God, pastored by the foundation's president, received $210,000 across two gifts (68.5% of all giving). Excluding that anchor gift, the remaining nine recipients split roughly $96,750, with individual totals ranging from $100 (Pathway To Victory) and $250 (North Star Initiative) up to $30,000 (The Remnant) and $24,000 (Jimmy Jones Ministries) — a pattern of small symbolic offerings layered around a handful of core commitments. The platform's typical_grant_size field (max $100,000, min $5,700, median $7,000, average $29,925, n=4) appears to reflect a single fiscal year's grant list — the four figures sum to $119,700, which matches FY2021's grants_paid exactly, implying one roughly $100,000 gift plus three smaller gifts clustered near $6,000-$8,000 in that year alone. Geographically, giving is concentrated in North Carolina (11 of 18 grants), followed by Tennessee (3), Georgia (2), Pennsylvania (1), and Texas (1) — consistent with the platform's tagged geographic_focus of NC and GA and with the Davis family's home-state ministry base. On the balance-sheet side, total assets grew from $316,666 (FY2019) to $756,372 (FY2020) to $2,056,956 (FY2021) to $2,878,932 (FY2022), and stand at $7,606,837 as of the most recent verification — driven almost entirely by large contributions received ($200,000 in 2019, $915,800 in 2020, $1,500,000 in 2021, $1,000,000 in 2022) rather than investment returns, since net_investment_income was $0 in every reported year. Grants paid, however, ran $104,780 (2019), $152,450 (2020), $119,700 (2021), then dropped sharply to just $17,300 (2022) even as assets nearly tripled that year — a payout rate under 1% of assets, well below what's typical for an actively distributing private foundation, and a signal the foundation may be building toward a larger future disbursement rather than maintaining steady annual giving.

Truth Project's $7.6M in assets places it squarely among a cluster of similarly sized Religion-category foundations, none of which have a website on file in this dataset — a pattern consistent with small, closed, often single-family religious foundations rather than institutionally staffed grantmakers.

All five peers sit within a tight $7.48M-$7.67M asset band, and Truth Project's $7,606,837 falls almost exactly in the middle of that range — this looks less like an outlier and more like a common asset tier for small family or church-affiliated religious foundations. None of the peers publish a website in the platform's records, reinforcing that Truth Project's relational, non-public application model (preselected_only, no LOI portal, no published deadline) is likely the norm for this peer set rather than an exception worth working around.

No dated news articles, press releases, or grant-cycle announcements specific to Truth Project were found for 2025 or 2026 across four targeted searches. The organization's public-facing activity centers on Dr. Cheryl Davis's 'Truth Matters' biblical teaching radio and podcast ministry and Thad Davis's pastoral role at Faith Assembly of God in St. Pauls, NC — both consistent with a family ministry operation rather than an institutional funder issuing public communications about grantmaking. The direct Truth Network show page for 'Truth Matters with Dr. Cheryl Davis' returned a 404 at the time of this research, so current broadcast status could not be confirmed. The most concrete recent signal is financial rather than editorial: total assets climbed from $2,878,932 at the end of FY2022 to a current $7,606,837, implying a substantial contribution or asset event occurred in a filing period not captured in the year-by-year financials provided here (which stop at FY2022). Given that grants_paid dropped to just $17,300 in FY2022 while assets were building, it is worth checking whether a larger distribution followed once assets crossed the $7M mark — the platform's own last_verified_at timestamp (2026-07-25) postdates the available financial detail, so a more recent 990 filing likely exists that would clarify current giving levels and any newly funded initiatives.

Because Truth Project is flagged preselected_only with no published application form, deadline, or instructions, the standard grant-writing playbook does not apply here — there is no LOI portal to fill out and no program officer to pitch. The single most important step is establishing a real-world connection before any written outreach: a shared tie to Faith Assembly of God's congregation in St. Pauls, NC, to the broader Assemblies of God or Pentecostal/charismatic ministry network, or to Dr. Cheryl Davis's radio and podcast teaching ministry is far more likely to open a conversation than a cold proposal ever would. Every one of the 18 grants on record is coded as a general 'OFFERING' rather than a project-restricted grant, so any request should be framed as ministry partnership and general operating support — not a program-specific proposal with logic models and outcome metrics, which is not the language this funder's giving history speaks. Contact through the listed channels — (910) 865-3500 or PO Box 159, Saint Pauls, NC 28384 — and via projecttruthmatters.com, not truth-project.org, which belongs to an unrelated organization and will not reach the Davis family. Keep any ask proportionate to what the record shows: outside of the $210,000 anchor relationship with Thad Davis's own church, individual gifts have run from $100 to about $30,000, with a likely single-year median near $7,000 — a modest, relationship-first ask is far more realistic than a large one from an unknown organization. A common mistake would be treating this as a 'Community Development' funder because of the platform's focus_areas tag; the actual 18-for-18 grant history is exclusively Christian ministry and church support, so community-development framing is likely to miss the mark entirely. Given the steep asset growth and the sharp FY2022 dip in grants paid, it may also be worth timing outreach around whatever recent filing drove assets from $2.9M to $7.6M, since a foundation building reserves may be more open to a larger disbursement once that capital is deployed — though this is inference from the financial pattern, not a confirmed giving cycle.