Zahn Foundation Inc.

Zahn Foundation Inc. is a tiny, closely held family foundation incorporated in 2014 and run entirely by three family members — Steven Zahn (President/Treasurer), Teri Zahn (Secretary), and Sandra Zahn-Oreck (Board Member) — none of whom draw compensation across any filed year. There is no program officer, no communications staff, and (based on available records) no distinct public-facing website; the domain listed in IRS data, zahn.org, actually belongs to an unrelated German dental association, which means this funder currently has no verifiable online presence at all. That absence, combined with a `preselected_only` flag on file and an application-instructions field that reads literally "__none__," points strongly toward a foundation that gives to organizations the family already knows rather than one that runs an open, competitive RFP process. The only recipient-level detail captured from its 990-PF schedule is a two-grant total of $448,461 (average $224,231) marked "See Attached" with an unrestricted purpose designation — the underlying schedule wasn't itself parsed, so specific grantee names aren't available in this dataset, but the unrestricted-purpose pattern is consistent with general operating support to a small, stable set of relationships rather than project-specific RFP awards. For a grant seeker with no prior relationship to the Zahn family, the realistic path in is not a cold LOI — it's identifying a genuine community, professional, or personal connection to Steven or Teri Zahn, or to the Fair Play/Oconee County, South Carolina area where the foundation is registered (107 Reeder Point Rd, Fair Play, SC 29643). Organizations that do have such a connection should expect an informal, relationship-driven conversation rather than a portal submission, and should be prepared to demonstrate specific, credible use of unrestricted general support rather than a heavily earmarked project budget, since that's the only purpose category on record. First-time applicants without a warm connection should treat this as a low-probability, high-effort prospect and prioritize funders with documented open application processes instead.

Total giving has grown steadily as the foundation's asset base matured: $6,641 (FY2014, its first full year), $24,313 (FY2015), $129,838 (FY2019), $221,457 (FY2020), $245,635 (FY2021), $285,225 (FY2022), and $294,512 (FY2023, the most recent filed year). Grants paid specifically ran $258,844 in FY2023, $254,316 in FY2022, $208,928 in FY2021, $194,145 in FY2020, and $101,976 in FY2019 — a five-year median of roughly $245,600 and a five-year range of about $102,000 to $259,000. Across the full filing history back to a nominal $0 in FY2013, cumulative grants paid total just over $1.05 million. The jump in scale between FY2019 and FY2020-2023 coincides with two large contributions to the corpus — $324,951 in FY2019 and $316,411 in FY2020 — after which annual contributions settled back to $75,000-$102,131 (FY2021-FY2023), implying the family largely finished funding the endowment and the foundation now runs mostly on investment income (which ranged from $82,209 to $270,030 across FY2021-FY2023). Total assets stood at $3,247,021 in the FY2023 filing but the IRS Business Master File currently lists $4,256,320 in assets, suggesting roughly $1 million of additional growth in the two years since that filing — which, if payout rates hold near the recent 8-9% of assets, could support giving in the $340,000-$380,000 range going forward. The only recipient-level breakdown available shows exactly two grants captured, totaling $448,461 (average $224,231), both classified as unrestricted purpose and both attributed to South Carolina — but this is a single attached-schedule notation rather than a full grantee list, so it should be read as illustrative of grant size, not as the foundation's complete giving footprint. No program-area or geographic breakdown beyond "South Carolina" and "unrestricted" exists in the data on hand.

Zahn Foundation Inc. sits in a cluster of small, single-state family foundations with near-identical asset levels (~$4.26 million), all classified under the same Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category — a peer set built on asset-size proximity rather than shared mission, so the comparison below should be read as "funders at the same capacity tier" rather than "funders in the same field."

All five peers cluster within about $1,100 of Zahn's asset figure, which confirms this is an asset-tier match rather than a thematic one — none of the peer records in this dataset carry giving totals, focus-area detail, or documented application processes, so no peer currently shows more transparency than Zahn does. Practically, this tells a grant seeker that Zahn operates at the low end of the private-foundation scale nationally (sub-$5 million in assets, sub-$300,000 in annual grants paid), a tier where family foundations overwhelmingly give by relationship rather than open competition — a pattern Zahn's own "preselected only" flag and blank application fields corroborate directly.

No news coverage, press releases, or announcements specific to Zahn Foundation Inc. (EIN 46-3076181, Fair Play, SC) turned up in web research — this is consistent with a foundation that has no independent website and no communications function. The domain listed as its website in available records, zahn.org, is confirmed to belong to an unrelated organization (a German dental continuing-education association), so it should not be treated as a source of foundation news or as a live contact channel. The most concrete "activity" signal available is governance stability drawn from IRS filings: the same three officers — Steven Zahn (President/Treasurer), Teri Zahn (Secretary), and Sandra Zahn-Oreck (Board Member) — appear across every filing year captured, all at $0 compensation, indicating an unchanged, all-volunteer family board with no staff turnover to report. Financially, the most recent filed activity (FY2023, the year ending in the 2023 tax period) shows $258,844 in grants paid against $294,512 in total giving and $219,348 in total revenue, continuing a multi-year climb from $101,976 in grants paid as recently as FY2019. The IRS Business Master File's current asset figure of $4,256,320 — roughly $1 million above the FY2023 filed total of $3,247,021 — suggests the foundation has grown further since its last available Form 990-PF, but no filing corresponding to that growth was available to confirm specifics. In short: this is a quiet, low-visibility funder with no detectable public activity beyond its annual IRS filings.

There is no documented open application process for Zahn Foundation Inc. — application_instructions is recorded as "__none__," and there is no application form URL, no posted deadline, and no opportunities page. Combined with the `preselected_only` designation, the most defensible reading is that this foundation identifies its own grantees rather than reviewing unsolicited proposals, likely through the personal and community networks of Steven Zahn, Teri Zahn, and Sandra Zahn-Oreck around Fair Play, SC and the broader Oconee County/Lake Hartwell area. The single practical implication for outside applicants: do not invest time building a full proposal package on spec. If you have — or can develop — a genuine local or personal connection to the family, the better approach is a brief, personal introduction letter to the officers at the foundation's registered address (107 Reeder Point Rd, Fair Play, SC 29643) rather than a cold submission to a generic inbox. Do not rely on the sekretariat@zahn.org contact email surfaced in some records; that domain resolves to an unrelated German dental association's website, so treat that address as unverified and confirm current contact details against the foundation's latest Form 990-PF (Part XV, "grant application information," or the officer-contact line) before sending anything. Because the only purpose classification on record for its grants is "unrestricted," organizations that do get a hearing should lead with general-operating-support framing and organizational credibility (track record, financial health, community standing) rather than a narrowly scoped project budget — that's the giving pattern this foundation's own data shows, not a generic best practice. Given total annual grants paid in the $200,000-$295,000 range spread across (per the limited schedule available) as few as two recipients in some years, this is a foundation capable of a small number of meaningfully sized unrestricted grants (in the neighborhood of $200,000+ each) rather than many small awards — so it is a poor fit for organizations seeking modest, project-specific funding, and a plausible fit only for a small number of organizations the family already trusts with significant unrestricted support. The most common mistake here would be treating this like a conventional competitive foundation and submitting an unsolicited LOI; nothing in the available record suggests such a submission would be reviewed.