Van Elslander Family Foundation

The Van Elslander Family Foundation was created by Art and Mary Ann Van Elslander explicitly to pull the next generations of the family into shared giving, and its 990 and site content both frame it around two narrow interests: helping Michigan families in crisis reach stability, and empowering vulnerable youth toward future success, anchored in stated values of Family, Faith, Gratitude and Responsibility. There is no evidence of an open online RFP or self-serve application portal — the foundation is administered through Neithercut Philanthropy Advisors (Traverse City, MI) rather than in-house program staff, and its 11 board members (all family members or advisors, all uncompensated, ~1 hour/week each per grantmakers.io) function more like a family governance committee than a professional grantmaking shop. That structure means the realistic path in is a phone call or email to the foundation's contact line before any written ask, not a cold portal submission. First-time applicants should also recognize the foundation's giving pool is small: only 6 grants totaling $350,000 were disbursed in its most recent active fiscal year (FY2023), all to organizations already well known in the Detroit-metro human-services landscape — Starfish Family Services, Detroit Institute For Children, Gianna House, Say Detroit, Little Traverse Conservancy, and (as the single out-of-state exception) Experience Camps. Every one of those recipients is an established, name-recognized nonprofit, which suggests the foundation currently grants to organizations the family already has a relationship with or awareness of, rather than sourcing new applicants at scale. For an organization without an existing tie to the family or its advisors, the strongest opening move is a warm introduction through a shared board member, the Council of Michigan Foundations network, or another Van Elslander grantee — not a direct written inquiry. Because 5 of 6 known grants were coded OPERATIONS rather than a specific program or capital purpose, proposals should emphasize organizational stability and sustainability (mission fit with 'helping families achieve stability') over a narrowly restricted project ask. Given the tiny, all-volunteer board and outsourced administration, expect a slow, low-volume, relationship-driven cycle — this is not a foundation built for rapid-turnaround, high-volume applicant pools.

FY2023 (the most recent year with a completed grants list) shows 6 grants totaling $350,000, for a mean of $58,333 and a striking concentration at $65,000 — five of the six grants (Detroit Institute For Children, Experience Camps, Gianna House, Little Traverse Conservancy, Starfish Family Services) were each exactly $65,000, with a single smaller $25,000 grant to Say Detroit. That uniform sizing suggests the board sets one standard operating-support amount per approved organization rather than negotiating bespoke project budgets. Geographically, 5 of 6 grants (83% of dollars, $325,000) went to Michigan organizations, with the sole exception being Experience Camps in Connecticut, a grief/illness camp serving youth nationally. All 6 known grants were purpose-coded OPERATIONS — no capital, capacity-building, or restricted-program grants appear in the sample. The longer financial arc is uneven: the foundation gave roughly $1.2M/year from 2012-2015 (total giving $1.2M-$1.5M annually against contributions received of similar size, indicating a pass-through pattern in its early years), then giving collapsed to near zero from 2016-2022 (grants paid: $2,000 in 2019, $0 in 2020-2022) while assets slowly rebuilt from $612,009 (2019) to $2.66M (2021) to $3.74M (2022). FY2023 marks a clear reactivation: a $2.9M contribution infusion (against $904K-$1.09M in prior years) pushed total assets to $6.35M, net investment income was $60,921, and total giving jumped to $435,187 (of which $350,000 was disbursed as grants). FY2024 data (per the foundation's own 990, not yet reflected in per-grant detail) shows total assets of $6.88M and total revenue of $1.04M, with grants-paid not yet broken out; a third-party 990 aggregator (grantmakers.io) separately cites FY2024 assets of $8.1M and distributions of $395K, suggesting continued modest growth in giving. Given the small, uniform grant sizes and concentrated recipient pool, organizations should calibrate asks in the $25,000-$65,000 range rather than requesting six or seven figures — that scale belongs to the much larger sister entity, A.A. Van Elslander Foundation.

The Van Elslander Family Foundation sits at the small end of Michigan family philanthropy — smaller than its own sister foundation by roughly 20x on annual giving, and larger but less transparent than nearby Birmingham peer Fieldman Family Foundation. Unlike the Flinn Foundation, which runs defined RFP cycles for a specific issue (children's mental health), Van Elslander Family Foundation's process is undocumented publicly and appears to run on direct relationships rather than a structured call for proposals. Applicants who strike out with the Family Foundation's small, insider-favoring grant pool may find the same family's much larger A.A. Van Elslander Foundation — with its published online inquiry process and far bigger checks — a more accessible entry point into this family's giving.

No news coverage or press release specifically naming the Van Elslander Family Foundation (as opposed to its larger sister, A.A. Van Elslander Foundation) was found for 2025 or 2026. The most recent confirmed activity is the FY2023 IRS filing: 6 grants totaling $350,000 disbursed to Detroit Institute For Children, Experience Camps, Gianna House, Little Traverse Conservancy, Starfish Family Services (each $65,000), and Say Detroit ($25,000), alongside a $2.9M contribution received that year that roughly doubled the foundation's asset base from $3.74M (FY2022) to $6.35M (FY2023) and $6.88M (FY2024). That contribution spike, following several years of near-zero giving (2016-2022), is the clearest recent signal: the family appears to be actively re-funding this vehicle, likely in preparation for a larger or more regular giving program in FY2024-2026 filings not yet public. Leadership has been stable — Gary Van Elslander (President/Treasurer) and a board of ten family members and advisors (Douglas Van Elslander, Katherine Cali Van Elslander, Lia Mansfield, Grace Scarfone, Heather Greenwald, Jennifer Goodman, Stephen Campau, Cydney Webb, Beth Wood, and Secretary Brianne Allen, with a prior secretary, Diane Wells, appearing in an earlier filing) — with no compensation reported for any officer or director across all filing years reviewed. In the same window, the family's much larger and more actively publicized A.A. Van Elslander Foundation made headline gifts of $2.5M (New Day Foundation for Families, December 2024), $1.5M (Beyond Basics literacy, October 2025) and $150,000 (North Star Reach, December 2025) — useful context on the family's philanthropic priorities and capacity, but not grants from the entity covered in this report.

Because no online application portal or published RFP was located for vanelslanderfamilyfoundation.org, treat this as a relationship-first funder: call (248) 590-2700 or email info@vanelslanderfamilyfoundation.org before drafting anything, and expect the actual point of contact to be staff at Neithercut Philanthropy Advisors (Traverse City) rather than a Van Elslander family member directly. Multiple third-party sources reference a defined annual inquiry window in the summer months for this family's foundations, but the exact open/close dates varied across sources checked (reports ranged from a June-August window to a May-July window) — confirm the current year's dates directly with the foundation rather than relying on any single secondary source. Size the ask to what the data supports: five of six known FY2023 grants were exactly $65,000 in general operating support, with one smaller $25,000 grant — proposals in the $25,000-$65,000 range for operating stability, not a large capital or multi-year program budget, match the foundation's actual behavior. Frame the narrative around the mission's own language — 'helping families in crisis achieve stability' and 'empowering vulnerable youth for future success' — since every confirmed grantee (Detroit Institute For Children, Gianna House, Starfish Family Services, Say Detroit, Little Traverse Conservancy, Experience Camps) maps cleanly onto one of those two buckets. A common mistake to avoid: confusing this foundation with the much larger, separately administered A.A. Van Elslander Foundation (EIN 81-3973354), which gave $8.01M in 2024 and runs its own online inquiry process at vanelslanderfoundation.org — sending a seven-figure capital ask to the Family Foundation, or a small operating request to the sister foundation, both misread the respective funders. Because the board is small, all-volunteer, and family-dominated, prioritize warm introductions (a shared board connection, a Michigan human-services network referral, or an existing Van Elslander-family grantee's endorsement) over a cold written inquiry — the current grantee list reads as organizations the family already knew, not a competitively sourced cohort. Given the FY2023 contribution spike, it is also worth periodically re-checking whether the foundation has published new guidelines or an expanded process, since a re-capitalized foundation with a growing asset base may formalize its intake in the next filing cycle or two.