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Fort Wayne's charities feed, house, heal, mentor and perform; this section tells the other half of that story, the history of who pays. The grantmaking machine is the Foellinger Foundation, created in 1958 by Helene Foellinger and her mother Esther out of the News Publishing fortune, with Carl D. Rolfsen, personally selected by Helene, as its first president. The English-Bonter-Mitchell Foundation, created in 1972 to honor a founder of Lincoln Life, is administered today by a Pittsburgh trustee, a Fort Wayne fortune managed from out of state. Around the two giants stand the family foundations, McMillen and Freimann, Auer and Cole, and the newcomer: the Don Wood Foundation, established in 2018 by the founder of 80/20 Inc. to build the region's manufacturing workforce. The sector's division of labor, and its money, are the subject here.
The sector as a system: who pays for Fort Wayne's nonprofit world
The frame — service organizations are in Charities; this section is the money
The division of labor: Fort Wayne's charities feed, house, heal, mentor and perform; somebody has to pay for it, and the paying has its own history. The Charities section tells the service organizations' stories in full — the…
The Foellinger Foundation: the grantmaking machine
Created 1958 — the family's fortune is in Wealth; the foundation at work is here
The machine: Helene Foellinger and her mother Esther created the Foellinger Foundation in 1958, funded by Helene's lifetime gifts, both women's estates, and contributions from the News Publishing Company until The News-Sentinel…
English-Bonter-Mitchell: the Fort Wayne fortune administered from Pittsburgh
Established 1972 — the English fortune is in Wealth; the grantmaking is here
The structure: Mary Tower English, her sister-in-law Louise Bonter and her daughter Elizabeth (Betty) Mitchell created the English-Bonter-Mitchell Foundation in 1972 in honor of Dr. Calvin English, a founder of the Lincoln Life…
The smaller family foundations: McMillen, Freimann, Auer, Cole, and a wind-down
1961 forward — the long tail of Fort Wayne's named foundations
McMillen and Freimann: The feed-and-soya fortune of Dale McMillen took permanent form in the Harold and Rachel McMillen Foundation, created in 1961 for Allen County purposes, and the McMillen Foundation that donated and helped…
The Don Wood Foundation: the manufacturer-endowed newcomer
Established 2018 — the newest of the city's major grantmakers
Origin and purpose: Don Wood, founder of 80/20 Inc. — the Fort Wayne maker of modular aluminum framing systems — established his foundation in 2018, originally as the 80/20 Foundation Trust; Input Fort Wayne's profile dates its…
The Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne: the pooled vehicle
Founded 1922, terminated 1941, reborn 1956
The century, in brief: The Community Foundation's founding record is 1920s. It was established 2 June 1922 as the Fort Wayne Foundation — William Mossman's $5,000 gift its first — wound down when its trustees voted to terminate…
The St. Joseph Community Health Foundation: a hospital converted into grants
Born of the 1998 sale of St. Joseph Medical Center — the hospital itself is in Hospitals
Origin: The Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, founded at Dernbach, Germany in 1851, sent sisters to Fort Wayne in 1868 and in 1869 founded St. Joseph Hospital, the city's first hospital (a 2026 diocesan profile gives 1865 for the…
From AWS to WindSwell: the disability foundation
Created 2007 from the Anthony Wayne Services reorganization; renamed January 2026
Origin: When the board of Anthony Wayne Services — the disability-services organization founded in 1960 as the Allen County Council for Crippled Children and Adults, whose service story the Charities section tells in full …
The hospitals' own giving: Parkview's community-health grants and benefit ledger
The nonprofit hospital system's parallel grantmaking — the hospitals are in Hospitals; their money is here
The CHI grants: Parkview Health, the region's largest nonprofit employer (its system history is in the Wealth and Hospitals sections), runs a Community Health Improvement grant program funded from each hospital's net operating…
Corporate giving: the Lincoln foundation and the Vera Bradley foundation
The employers' philanthropy — the companies are in Business and Wealth; the giving is here
Lincoln Financial Foundation: Lincoln National was founded in Fort Wayne in 1905, and though the company moved its headquarters to Radnor, Pennsylvania in 1999 (the firm is in the Business leg), its foundation — incorporated…
Counting the sector, I: the Indiana University studies (1995–2009)
Published 2012 — the first full employment ledger for Allen County nonprofits
The numbers: The Indiana Nonprofits Project at Indiana University, working from federal Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages data, produced the first careful count of Allen County's nonprofit workforce: nonprofit…
Counting the sector, II: the 2018 human-services impact study
The Alliance for Human Services' count — 1,478 organizations; 30,744 nonprofit jobs
The study: The Alliance for Human Services — a membership body formed in 2016, with more than fifty Allen County human-service organizations — commissioned True North NPO and the University of Saint Francis to measure the sector…
The infrastructure: a library resource center, a fundraisers' chapter, an alliance
The small professional machinery that holds the sector together
The Paul Clarke Nonprofit Resource Center: In October 1982 the Allen County Public Library established the Paul Clarke Nonprofit Resource Center in its Readers' Services department (the library's own history is in the Libraries…
The great campaigns: Fort Wayne's habit of the joint ask
From the 1974 Embassy save to the 2023–26 campus campaigns — the institutions are in their own legs
The tradition: Fort Wayne's nonprofit buildings were repeatedly paid for by the same device: a named campaign, a lead foundation gift, and a public thermometer. The Embassy Theatre's 1974 rescue turned on Robert Goldstine's…
The sector today: the 2024–2028 ecosystem strategy
The Community Foundation's census and plan — the post-2020 position as documented
The third count: In November 2023 the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne published "Connected Community," the research volume of its Social Sector Ecosystem Strategy 2024–2028, commissioned from Transform Consulting Group…