William G Gilmore Foundation

The William G. Gilmore Foundation is a legacy family foundation — created by Gilmore Steel Corporation founder William G. Gilmore (San Francisco and Portland, OR) — that operates almost entirely as a closed, relationship-based renewal funder. Its own site states plainly that it "prioritizes support for existing grantees in an effort to develop long-term funding relationships" and instructs prospects: "Do not send letters of inquiry or any other materials to the foundation." There is no open LOI or cold-application pathway. Bay Area organizations become eligible for a renewal invitation only if they received Gilmore funding within the trailing 12 months; Oregon organizations are invited directly by individual board trustees, with no public portal for outsiders.

The grantee data confirms this is a stewardship-first funder, not a project-by-project grantmaker. Of 368 tracked grants, most repeat top recipients show three or more separate awards: Portland Art Museum received 8 grants totaling $750,000, Catlin Gabel School 5 grants totaling $295,000, Swords to Plowshares 5 grants totaling $230,000, and dozens of $60,000-$80,000 relationships recur across 4 grant cycles each. The purposes field is dominated by "GENERAL SUPPORT" rather than restricted project grants, signaling a preference for funding organizational operations and continuity over discrete initiatives.

Geography is a hard gate: 262 of 368 tracked grants (71%) went to California recipients — concentrated in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, and San Mateo counties — and 98 (27%) to Oregon, with only 8 outliers in Kentucky and New York (almost certainly legacy, founder-era relationships). Organizations outside this footprint have essentially no realistic path to funding regardless of mission alignment.

For organizations that already hold or can build a genuine relationship with Pacific Foundation Services staff (Eunice Valentine, Senior Program Officer; Aja Walter, Grants Manager) or a Gilmore trustee, the strategy is straightforward: maintain strong stewardship between cycles, respond promptly and completely when invited, and treat the renewal narrative as the only chance to make the case — staff explicitly will not give feedback on applications or explain declines, so there is no iterative back-and-forth once submitted.

Gilmore's typical grant size (per foundation-reported data) runs from $1,500 to $500,000 with a median of $15,000 and an average of $30,108 across a 93-grant sample; the broader 368-grant historical dataset shows a lower average of $22,283 on $8.2 million in total tracked giving. Annual disbursements have been remarkably stable in nominal terms: $1,953,214 in 2019, a COVID-driven spike to $2,940,543 in 2020 (93 grants, many labeled emergency general support), then $1,950,241 (2021), $1,951,330 (2022), $1,975,222 (2023, on $1.8M grants-paid), and an estimated $2,270,000 across roughly 80 grants in 2024.

Giving is highly concentrated: the top 50 recipients (13.6% of all tracked grantees) account for roughly $6.33 million of the $8.2 million total — about 77% of all dollars — meaning the bulk of Gilmore's capital flows to a small, stable set of repeat organizations rather than being spread broadly across new grantees each cycle.

By program area, the largest identifiable clusters are: basic needs/food security (Oregon Food Bank $700,000 across 2 grants plus a separate $260,000 registration, Alameda County Community Food Bank $190,000, Meals on Wheels of San Francisco $115,000); arts and culture (Portland Art Museum $750,000, Oregon Symphony $80,000, Stern Grove Festival $80,000, Japanese Garden Society of Oregon $80,000); education (Catlin Gabel School $295,000, Marin Catholic High School $200,000, Willamette University $130,000, Pacific Northwest College of Art $100,000); and homelessness/disability/veterans services (Swords to Plowshares $230,000, Larkin Street Youth Services $100,000, plus a dense tail of $60,000-$95,000 multi-year commitments to organizations like Project Avary, Huckleberry Youth Programs, and Legal Aid at Work).

The most consequential trend is on the asset side, not the giving side: total assets have fallen from roughly $23.0 million (2013) to $9,290,559 (2024) — a decline of about 60% over a decade — even as annual giving held near $1.8-2.9 million. That spending pace relative to a shrinking corpus suggests the foundation is drawing down principal faster than investment returns replace it, a pattern grantees should watch for signs of future grant-size or grantee-count contraction.

Gilmore is the smallest and least accessible of this Bay Area/Oregon peer set by a wide margin — Zellerbach's asset base is roughly 18 times larger and Kimball's about 7 times larger, yet Gilmore's $15,000 median grant is comparable to or smaller than typical awards at both. Unlike Templeton, which runs a transparent, dated application cycle open to any eligible 501(c)(3), Gilmore and Kimball both restrict access to invited or existing relationships, meaning cold applicants have materially better odds pursuing Templeton or Zellerbach (which InsidePhilanthropy reports has been actively working to open up and streamline its grantee relationships) than trying to break into Gilmore's closed renewal cohort.

No dedicated news coverage, press releases, or leadership announcements specific to the William G. Gilmore Foundation were found for 2025-2026 in web search results. (A similarly named site, gilmorefndn.org, does publish recent press releases, but it belongs to a different, unrelated Gilmore family foundation and was excluded from this research.)

The most current verifiable activity is the foundation's FY2024 Form 990-PF financial data: total assets of $9,290,559, down from $10,624,206 in FY2023 (a 12.5% one-year decline), on total revenue of $2,501,361. Instrumentl's grant-level tracking shows roughly 80 grants totaling $2,270,000 disbursed in 2024, up modestly from 85 grants totaling $1,800,000 (grants paid) in 2023 and 90 grants totaling $1,800,000 in 2022 — consistent with the foundation's typical $1.8-2.3 million annual giving band outside the 2020 COVID-response year.

No trustee or executive leadership changes were identified. IRS filings across recent years show officer titles rotating among the same small group of individuals — Jim Titus (Director), Elizabeth Jubb and Robert Borton (alternating CFO/Secretary), Mary Lee Boklund (President/Secretary), and Dancy Jubb (Director) — a pattern typical of small, family-controlled private foundations with informal officer succession rather than substantive governance change. Day-to-day program administration continues to run through Pacific Foundation Services, LLC, with Eunice Valentine as Senior Program Officer, Aja Walter as Grants Manager, and Amy Lin as Senior Accountant, all based at the foundation's San Francisco office at 1660 Bush Street.

This is not a funder to cold-pitch: the foundation's application page states directly that unsolicited letters of inquiry or materials will not be reviewed and staff cannot respond to them. The only two entry points are (1) Bay Area organizations that received Gilmore funding within the past 12 months, who receive a renewal invitation with a submission window that opens in late August and closes in mid-September, tied to the foundation's December board meeting cycle; and (2) Oregon organizations, who are invited directly and personally by individual board trustees with no public portal or fixed timeline disclosed.

When invited, use the SmartSimple portal at pfs.smartsimple.us/welcome/WilliamGilmore for both submission and reviewing your own funding history. The foundation explicitly recommends drafting your narrative answers in a Word document first — especially useful if several staff members are contributing sections — then copying the consolidated answers into the online form rather than composing directly in the browser. Download the Renewal Application Overview as soon as you're invited so you can see every question in advance and assign sections with time to spare.

No prior-year grant reports are required to reapply, which lowers the administrative burden, but it also means the renewal narrative itself is the only chance to demonstrate impact since the last award — make outcomes data, not just budget updates, central to the write-up. Because purposes across the grantee list are overwhelmingly "GENERAL SUPPORT" rather than project-restricted, frame the ask around organizational sustainability and continuity of mission rather than a discrete new initiative.

Staff (Aja Walter, Grants Manager, awalter@pfs-llc.net, (650) 897-0273 ext. 286) explicitly will not provide feedback on applications or explain declines, so treat every submission as final — have a board member or second staffer proofread before the portal closes. Given the foundation's declining asset base (down roughly 60% since 2013), do not assume renewal amounts will hold flat or grow; budget conservatively and avoid treating Gilmore as an expanding revenue line. Finally, respect the geographic gate: 71% of tracked grants go to five named Bay Area counties and 27% to Oregon — organizations outside these areas are not realistic prospects no matter how strong the mission fit.