Wexner Foundation

The single most important fact for any grant seeker: The Wexner Foundation is a private operating foundation, not a grantmaking philanthropy. Its own website states plainly that "with rare exception, The Wexner Foundation is not a grant-making philanthropy and has no process through which agencies and organizations might apply for funding." It does not issue RFPs, does not accept unsolicited LOIs, and has no general-operating-support program for outside nonprofits. Instead, nearly all of its ~$8.3M in Schedule I payments (125 grants captured in this dataset, averaging $66,552) are direct payments tied to its own cohort-based fellowship programs — tuition/enrollment fees paid to the graduate schools and seminaries where its Davidson, Field, Heritage, and Israel Fellows study or are credentialed (Harvard $4,502,295 across 5 payments, Yeshiva University $645,000, Hebrew Union College $525,000, Jewish Theological Seminary $390,000, and a dozen more rabbinical/graduate institutions at $75K-$225K each). A second, much smaller tail of 30+ "community resource funding" and "community support" grants ($100-$4,000 apiece) goes to Columbus, Ohio nonprofits the Wexner family has long supported directly — Mid-Ohio Food Bank, United Way, Habitat for Humanity-Mid Ohio, KIPP Columbus, Furniture Bank of Central Ohio, Wexner Heritage Village — reflecting hometown relationship giving, not a competitive program. For organizations, the realistic path to Wexner support is indirect: encourage a promising staff member to apply as an individual Fellow. A Field or Davidson Fellow's employer gains visibility, an implicit training investment, and (per program rules) must formally co-sign the application via an Executive Director and Board President letter of support — effectively making the employer a silent partner in the fellowship rather than a grant recipient. First-time contacts should not approach the Foundation with a program grant pitch; that inquiry will be redirected. Leadership is close-knit and family-driven: Leslie H. Wexner and Abigail S. Wexner sit as unpaid trustees, while President Rabbi B. Elka (Barbara) Abrahamson (~$707K-$750K annual compensation across recent years) and VPs Jay Moses and Gordon "Or" Mars run day-to-day operations — the latter two are now stepping up to lead the newly spun-off leadership-programs nonprofit.

Total giving (which for an operating foundation includes program operating costs, not just Schedule I grants) has been volatile: $9.18M (FY2011) rising to $15.29M (FY2015), dipping to $9.38M during the pandemic (FY2021), and rebounding to $16.36M in the most recent filing (FY2023) — a 74% jump from FY2021. Reported grants_paid (the narrower Schedule I figure) swung even more sharply: $3.93M (2019) → $2.99M (2020) → $1.69M (2021) → $1.82M (2022) → $4.47M (2023), suggesting lumpy multi-year fellowship-tuition payments rather than smooth annual disbursement. Total assets are small and shrinking for an organization of this giving scale — $6.44M (2021) down to $3.69M (2023) — because the Foundation is not endowed; it runs on annual contributions from its chairmen and partners (contributions_received tracked total_revenue almost exactly each year, e.g., $14.89M contributed vs. $14.92M revenue in 2023), meaning next year's program scale depends on that year's fundraising, not investment drawdown. Officer/staff compensation is a fixed, material cost regardless of giving swings: consistently $1.13M-$1.48M/year across the decade, run through a small executive team. At the grantee level: median grant $15,000, average $54,467, range $100-$666,925 (typical_grant_size, count 31), while the fuller 125-grant Schedule I sample shows avg $66,552 on $8,319,008 total. Roughly 90%+ of dollar volume concentrates in ~12 university/seminary fellowship-tuition recipients (Harvard alone is 54% of total dollars captured), while the community-giving tail (30+ recipients) totals well under $50,000 combined — a two-tier pattern of large institutional fellowship payments plus token hometown grants. Geographically, Schedule I grantees cluster where partner institutions sit, not where community need is: NY (45 grants, 36%), OH (29, 23%), PA (15), MA (14), CA (11), with NJ, CT, MI, and IN in single digits.

(Peer figures are approximate, drawn from public reporting rather than this platform's database, since no matched peer records were returned for Wexner.) Wexner is structurally distinct from every peer above: it is the only one that runs its *own* fellowship curriculum in-house rather than funding third-party grantee organizations, and it is the only one operating without an endowment — its giving capacity resets each year based on Wexner-family contributions rather than a permanent investment corpus. Where Jim Joseph and Schusterman fund external Jewish-education and engagement organizations at scale, Wexner's dollars flow almost entirely to individual leaders' tuition and training, with only incidental payments reaching outside institutions as a byproduct.

The dominant recent story is structural: in May 2026, the Foundation announced it will spin off its North American leadership programs (Wexner Davidson Fellowship, Wexner Field Fellowship, Wexner Heritage Program, Wexner Service Corps, and Wexner Summits) into a new, independent 501(c)(3), backed by a $40 million gift from Leslie and Abigail Wexner. Jay Moses — a longtime VP compensated $194,698-$267,967 in the years captured in this dataset — will serve as President of the new organization, and Gordon "Or" Mars, previously VP at $232,938-$258,743, becomes Executive Vice President; a new board is being formed and the transition begins in 2027. Foundation President Rabbi B. Elka (Barbara) Abrahamson framed it as a long-planned evolution ("we have long imagined a time when our leadership programs would operate on their own"), though the announcement follows alumni listening sessions that raised concerns about Leslie Wexner's past association with Jeffrey Epstein — the Foundation maintains the spin-off predates that scrutiny. Post-spin-off, the legacy Wexner Foundation will narrow its focus to Columbus, Ohio Jewish community programming and its Israel-based programs (Wexner Israel Fellowship, Wexner Senior Leaders). On the program-cycle side, the Foundation announced its second Wexner Davidson Fellowship cohort in August 2025 (ages 26-36), with a third cohort's applications opening spring 2026, and selected its 10th Field Fellowship class (15 fellows, ages 37-50) in late 2025 under newly revised, narrower eligibility criteria. Class 11 of the Field Fellowship is open now, with a full-application deadline of September 23, 2026.

Because Wexner does not accept organizational grant proposals, "applying" here means nominating or self-nominating an individual for one of its named fellowships — timing and mechanics differ by program, and missing the strict eligibility window is the single most common failure mode. For the Field Fellowship (Class 11, deadline September 23, 2026, 2:00 PM ET): confirm the applicant is age 37-50 as of the stated cutoff, has 5+ years of full-time work experience, has been at their current North American 501(c)(3)/registered-charity Jewish employer for at least one year, and has not applied to Field or Davidson in the same calendar year — there are explicitly "no exceptions" to these criteria. Start the internal approval process early: the full application requires a letter of organizational support plus sign-off from both the Executive Director and Board President, which can take weeks to secure inside a small nonprofit. Budget real time for the qualitative components — two essays, short-answer questions, and a 60-second video response — and for two letters of recommendation, the first of which must come from the applicant's direct supervisor (making supervisor buy-in a prerequisite, not an afterthought). Submit the pre-application as early as possible; it gates access to the full application and the Foundation explicitly recommends not waiting. For the Davidson Fellowship (ages 26-36), watch for the Class 3 application window opening in spring 2026. Prior rejection is not disqualifying — the Foundation states re-applications with a fresh application are welcomed and evaluated independently of past cycles. The most common mistake by far is a nonprofit organization approaching Wexner directly for a program or operating grant; that inquiry will be redirected, since the Foundation has no such mechanism. The more productive strategy for an organization is cultural, not transactional: identify a high-potential staff member matching the age/tenure profile, actively encourage and support their fellowship application, and treat resulting Foundation contact as a leadership-pipeline investment in that person rather than institutional funding. Columbus, Ohio-area nonprofits with an existing relationship to the Wexner family are the only entities realistically receiving small direct "community resource" or "community support" grants, and those appear to be relationship-driven rather than open to new applicants.