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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 Insurance Company (the fortune's story is in the Wealth section). The trustee today is PNC Bank, successor to the Fort Wayne National Bank whose chief executive Jack Lehman guided the founding, and the foundation is administered from Pittsburgh — a Fort Wayne fortune whose grantmaking is run, by its own structure, from out of state, while its grants stay home.
Scale, from the filings: The foundation's Form 990-PF reports assets at fair market value of $167,460,930 at the end of tax year 2024, and grants paid of $6,351,165 across 109 grants in 2024 — every itemized grant dollar to Indiana recipients, and eighty-nine of the grants in Fort Wayne. Measured by annual grant dollars it stands with the Foellinger Foundation at the head of the city's locally rooted private foundations, the two of them together paying out on the order of thirteen million dollars in 2024.
Sources:
- English-Bonter-Mitchell Foundation, Form 990-PF, tax years 2022–2024 (public filings, via ProPublica-derived foundation profiles) — assets and the 2024 grant count, geography and total; as compiled in Great Fortunes.
- Randy Harter, account preserved by the Allen County Genealogical Society — the 1972 creation by Mary Tower English, Louise Bonter and Elizabeth Mitchell; the Lehman guidance; the PNC trusteeship.