Rasmuson Foundation resumes grantmaking with larger awards and expanded programs after 6-month pause

The Rasmuson Foundation, Alaska’s largest private charitable funder, announced this week it will resume grantmaking after a pause that began in January that followed a major change in its leadership structure.

The organization is expanding its grant programs to increase award sizes and speed up award schedules, the foundation said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Our mission is to empower Alaskans to help each other,” Gretchen Guess, Rasmuson Foundation president and chief executive.

She said the changes reflect the foundation’s focus on providing resources that support Alaska-based nonprofits, government entities, and tribal organizations.

The resumption of grants is good news for Alaska organizations, said Ira Perman, executive director of the smaller Atwood Foundation.

“The Rasmuson Foundation funds more broadly than we do and they fund statewide, just about everything you can imagine,” Perman said.

Perman said there were no significant impacts from the pause, in part because the Rasmuson Foundation provided significant notice of its plans.

“They did it very responsibly,” he said.

The organization last year gave out the largest amount of money in its history, at $35 million, Guess said in an interview Thursday.

Under its new approach, the foundation has added a third category to its major grantmaking efforts to help expedite awards.

Starting Aug. 15, the foundation will begin accepting applications for the highly sought-after Tier 1 grants program. The program will see awards jump to as much as $35,000, up by 40%. Also, organizations can now apply up to 15% of an award toward programmatic or administrative costs. The goal is to award these grants within 90 days, Guess said.

Also starting Aug. 15, applications will be accepted for a new Community Support grant. This new grant creates a mid-range grant category, for requests between $35,000 and $250,000. The grants under this category that provide for capital needs will be funded on a quarterly basis, twice as frequently than in the past, Guess said. Non-capital requests will be reviewed twice a year, Rasmuson said in the statement.

The foundation’s largest grants, for awards of $250,000 and more, will be called Legacy grants. The Legacy grants will be similar in many ways to the former Tier 2 grants in their size, application process and review schedule, the Rasmuson statement said. They will support programmatic and capital needs of eligible organizations.

Organizations with needs that might fall under the Legacy program can contact a program officer as soon as possible, through an online through a scheduling link at Rasmuson’s website.

Also, the Individual Artist Awards will return in early 2025. Program details will be released later this year, the Rasmuson statement said.

Rasmuson’s grant pause followed major changes at the top of the organization. The foundation solidified its mission, vision and values, Guess said.

“Especially our values, which speak to how we show up, how we work in partnership with those people doing the work, and how we elevate them,” she said.

In 2022, longtime board chairman Ed Rasmuson passed away. The chairman of the foundation’s board, Adam Gibbons, took over from his uncle in 2021. Ed Rasmuson was the son of Elmer Rasmuson, the banker who co-founded the foundation with Elmer’s mother, Jenny in 1955.

Also in 2022, CEO Diane Kaplan announced her plans to depart the organization after 27 years there, during which time its assets grew from around $5.8 million to $730 million at the end of 2022. Kaplan was named a senior fellow at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.