Wing 2 Wing Foundation

Wing 2 Wing Foundation is a founder-directed private trust run by Brad D. Smith (former Intuit CEO, now Marshall University president) and Alys Smith, ruled tax-exempt in July 2021 and headquartered at their home base of Huntington, WV. With $4.1M in assets and only $862K in FY2024 revenue, this is not an endowment-scale funder giving out of investment income alone — most years it has relied on fresh contributions from the Smiths (all $5.02M of FY2019 revenue was a founding contribution) layered on top of modest investment gains ($439,642 net investment income in FY2024). That means giving capacity tracks the founders' personal cash decisions more than a fixed payout policy, and the foundation explicitly tells prospective donors on its 'Support Our Mission' page to give to its vetted partners instead of the foundation itself — this is not a pass-through grantmaker soliciting broad public support. Of the two people listed on its filings, both are Trustees (Brad Duane Smith and Alys Michele Smith), with zero reported officer compensation, underscoring a hands-on, no-staff operating model. The grantee list confirms a relationship-driven approach: 9 of 16 recorded grants (2019-2024) went to West Virginia recipients, anchored by a $1,823,892 unrestricted gift to The Marshall University Foundation — by far the largest single grant on record. Other recipients (Coalfield Development, Huntington Museum of Art, Golden Girl Group Home, Marion County Chamber of Commerce) are all regional Appalachian organizations already known to the Smiths. National-brand grants (Worldreader $300,000, Bloomerang $250,000, Harvey Mudd College $25,000, Dollywood Foundation $10,000) appear to reflect personal or thematic interests (literacy, nonprofit infrastructure, Brad Smith's alma mater ties) rather than an open competitive process. First-time applicants should understand there is effectively no cold-call grant pathway for direct nonprofit funding — the only genuinely open door is the Ventures 'Apply for Investing & Advising' portal, built for Appalachian entrepreneurs and structured more like an accelerator application than a grant LOI, requiring evidence of real-world traction rather than a mission narrative.

Across the 16 grants disclosed in IRS filings (2019-2024), Wing 2 Wing Foundation gave a total of $3,881,042, averaging $242,565 per grant — but that average is skewed hard by two outsized gifts. The median grant is roughly $48,257, and the real distribution is bimodal: a cluster of small, local, unrestricted gifts ($500 to Marshall University Foundation, $2,000 to Marion County Chamber of Commerce, $5,000-$10,000 to High Q Foundation, Dollywood Foundation and Golden Girl Group Home) alongside a handful of transformational six- and seven-figure commitments ($1,823,892 to Marshall University Foundation; $875,393 to 'Miscellaneous Charities'; $300,000 to Worldreader; $250,000 each to Bloomerang and Coalfield Development). Annual total giving has been extremely volatile: $0 in FY2019 (a seeding year with $5,021,589 in contributions received and no grants yet paid), $31,518 in FY2020, $784,412 in FY2021, a peak of $3,112,499 in FY2022 (against grants actually paid of $1,869,892 — the gap reflects multi-year pledge accounting), and $1,281,150 in FY2024. There is no FY2023 figure in the data provided. Geographically, 9 of 16 grants (56%) stayed in West Virginia, with the remainder scattered across California (2), Florida (2), Indiana (1), Ohio (1) and Tennessee (1) — almost entirely single, one-off national gifts rather than an ongoing multi-state program. By purpose, 15 of 16 grants are coded 'UNRESTRICTED' general operating support, with only one (Golden Girl Group Home, $10,000) tied to a specific program description (education, birthday celebrations, school supplies, clothing). This heavy skew toward unrestricted giving signals a trust-based philanthropy style — the foundation is funding organizations and leaders it already believes in, not funding discrete project budgets. Applicants should not expect a published typical-grant-size figure (the DB record for this field is blank) or a formal RFP; realistic planning should assume anything from a $500 token gift up to seven figures depending entirely on the strength of the existing relationship and alignment with the Smiths' Appalachian education/entrepreneurship/environment thesis.

Wing 2 Wing sits in a tight asset cluster of five-figure-to-low-seven-figure family foundations all classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, each holding almost exactly $4.14-4.15M in assets. What separates Wing 2 Wing is visibility and structure: it is the only one of this peer set with a public website, published priorities, an open application portal, and press-covered activity — the other four appear to be closed, staff-less family vehicles with no public web presence at all.

For grant seekers, this comparison matters practically: none of the four peer foundations have a discoverable website, grants page, or contact channel in this dataset, meaning Wing 2 Wing is unusually approachable for its asset size even though most of its dollars still flow through pre-existing relationships. Seekers who strike out with the closed peer foundations should treat Wing 2 Wing's Ventures portal as the more realistic entry point of the group, while recognizing its direct-grant dollars remain concentrated in West Virginia/Appalachia rather than open nationally.

Wing 2 Wing's public-facing activity has accelerated through 2025 and into 2026, consistent with Brad Smith's rising public profile after becoming Marshall University's president. Dated announcements from the foundation's own Updates page show a steady cadence: a $25,000 investment in Teach For America Appalachia (Feb. 24, 2025) to expand teacher recruitment in underserved WV communities; an investment and mentorship commitment to student-retention startup Brite (May 16, 2025); the 'Keep the Ball Rolling' event (Oct. 27, 2025, funds distributed by Dec. 1, 2025) that put a $1,500 check into every West Virginia public school for student food, clothing and supplies; a WV Living Magazine feature on the Smiths (Apr. 10, 2026); a renewed $60,000 commitment to the Fairfield University/Marshall University School of Medicine youth mentorship program (May 22, 2026); and the newly launched Ascend Heroes Initiative (Jul. 21, 2026), a veteran-relocation program built with WVU and state tourism officials. Separately, a February 2026 fireside chat between Brad D. Smith and Operation HOPE founder John Hope Bryant at Marshall University marked continued follow-through on the foundation's Feb. 2024 $1 million Operation HOPE pledge for financial literacy programming. Press coverage also attributes a reported $50 million commitment from Brad and Alys Smith personally to Marshall University's 'Marshall For All' debt-free/tuition-free initiative in 2025 — this is a large enough figure that grant seekers should note it may run through personal giving vehicles rather than the Wing 2 Wing Foundation's own 990-reported grants, and it was not independently verified in the financial data reviewed here. Taken together, the pattern is one of increasing frequency but consistently narrow geographic focus: every dated 2025-2026 update ties back to West Virginia institutions (Marshall University, WVU, statewide public schools) or Marshall-adjacent partners, reinforcing that this remains a hyper-local Appalachian philanthropy even as its founders' national profile grows.

Because Wing 2 Wing Foundation runs two distinct channels, tailor your approach to the one that fits: (1) For entrepreneurs/startups, use the 'Apply for Investing & Advising' portal at wing2wingfoundation.org/ventures/apply-for-investing-advising/. The foundation is explicit that it favors 'scrappy entrepreneurs who have moved beyond market research and have built rough prototypes or conducted scrappy field experiments that measure end-user behavior through their actions, not their words or intentions' — so lead with usage data, pilot results, or a working prototype, not a business plan narrative. Explicitly tie your venture to Appalachian economic opportunity or environmental sustainability; the site names both as screening criteria. (2) For traditional nonprofit program grants, there is no visible open RFP or LOI form — every disclosed 990 grantee (Marshall University Foundation, Operation HOPE, Coalfield Development, Teach For America Appalachia, Huntington Museum of Art) already had an existing relationship or was already prominent in West Virginia's education/economic-development ecosystem before receiving funding. Cold LOIs to a general inbox are unlikely to be reviewed; the realistic path is warm introduction through Marshall University, the WV Department of Education/Arts & Culture, or Operation HOPE's network, all of which recur as co-branding partners in 2025-2026 announcements. Common mistakes to avoid: framing a proposal as a request for the foundation's own funds rather than researching whether your organization fits one of the three stated pillars (education, entrepreneurship, environment) with an explicit Appalachian or West Virginia tie-in; submitting a heavy project-restricted budget when 15 of 16 historical grants were unrestricted general support (signal trust-based flexibility in your ask, not a line-item program budget); and ignoring the environment pillar's underdeveloped grant history — treat any pitch there as pioneering rather than assuming an established review process. On timing, there is no published deadline or cycle in the data reviewed; announcements land year-round (February, May, July, October, December in 2025-2026), suggesting rolling, opportunistic decision-making tied to the Smiths' calendar (e.g., Marshall University events, Operation HOPE convenings) rather than a fixed annual RFP window. Given zero reported officer compensation and no program staff on the 990, expect direct trustee-level engagement rather than a program-officer intake process — relationship-building with the Marshall University and WV economic-development ecosystem is the most credible on-ramp.