The DEW Foundation joins hands with charitable organizations worldwide, promoting the common good through the passion, financial contributions and personal involvement of our family members.
About DEW Foundation
Our Mission
By contributing financial support, DEW Foundation joins hands with effective charitable organizations to meet human need and promote the common good worldwide, encouraging and empowering our family’s personal involvement.
What does this mean?
We believe effective charitable organizations will couple organization, resources, and leadership with winning ideas and vision to meet pressing needs and fulfill vital missions. Our mission is to provide financial assistance to those we select to support. An implied part of our mission is to discern effective organizations from the less effective. This does not mean that we only support older, well established organizations having proven track records. Our mix includes support for younger, more entrepreneurial organizations as well.
Our History
In 1994 the Dale and Edna Walsh Foundation, a 501(c)(3) private charitable contribution family foundation, was founded in Illinois. In 2008, operations were moved to Reno, Nevada and our name was officially shortened to DEW Foundation.
A Board of Directors governs DEW’s general affairs and allocates our annual charitable distributions. Reflecting the varied interests of this board, we support a broad range of charitable activities including ministries, relief, social services, education, health, arts, etc.
Who we are
DEW does not itself provide charitable services nor are we guided by a single charitable vision. Instead, Board members each seek non-profit organizations in which they are interested and whom we determine have clear vision and capabilities to be successful. DEW’s role then is to help selected organizations financially with grants. This sounds easy. But the difficulty is seldom in recognizing good and bad, but discerning good and better.
Someone defined a foundation as a pile of money surrounded by people who want some. That’s an overly pessimistic view. More exactly, a charitable foundation like DEW is a tax-exempt organization set up and usually funded by its founders to carry out charitable activities subject to a few broad rules in the U.S. Tax Code and guidelines set by its Board of Directors. You can find our guidelines here.
To get a more complete picture of the broad range of causes the DEW Foundation supports, we invite you to view our most recent Form 990s.
