Pablo Foundation Grant

The Pablo Foundation Grant aims to foster a vibrant and sustainable community in Eau Claire by funding innovative projects over $10,000 that align with its vision and commitments to equity, diversity, and environmental sustainability.

Pablo Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Pablo Group. The Pablo Group owns and oversees a collection of businesses including hotels, restaurants, commercial buildings, and apartment complexes. Pablo Group's founders—Zach Halmstad, Julia Johnson, and Jason Wudi—wish to contribute to a financially, culturally, and environmentally healthy Eau Claire community.
To support this vision, Zach, Julia, and Wudi founded Pablo Foundation in 2017 to bolster a revitalized, diverse, and sustainable Eau Claire. Its first significant contribution to this effort began with funding the Pablo Center at the Confluence, a state-of-the-art performing arts venue located downtown where the Chippewa and Eau Claire rivers meet. Since then, Pablo Foundation has expanded its funding beyond the arts to housing, health, and education, with a focus on projects bound to build a financially and environmentally healthy, robust, and vibrant Eau Claire for all our neighbors, including—and especially—the most vulnerable among us.
Our mission to create a model for a healthy and sustainable community by funding toward our vision and the four pillars of housing, health, education, and arts is unified by our commitments to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and our commitment to Environmental Sustainability. We seek to be partners with organizations that value and prioritize their work culture and projects around human equity and environmental sustainability.
To create as broad an impact and to touch as many lives as possible, Pablo Foundation approves project- or program-based requests greater than $10,000 that meet the Foundation’s:
vision, mission, and anti-discrimination policy.commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion and its commitment to organizational and project-specific environmental sustainability.Is innovative, transformative, and either fulfills an existing gap or meets a new need concerning health, housing, education, and/or the arts in the greater Eau Claire area.Demonstrates a need for funding along with the significance of the impact in the greater Eau Claire area, including the number of people from varying backgrounds that will benefit and the longevity of the impact.

Eligibility

To be eligible, the organization applying for a grant must:Serve the greater Eau Claire area,Align with Pablo Foundation's commitments to anti-discrimination; equity, diversity, and inclusion; and environmental sustainability,Be a charitable organization with an active 501(c)(3) status or an organization properly utilizing a current 501(c)(3) as a fiscal sponsor to receive tax-exempt funds, and Be currently registered as a Charitable Organization with the WI Department of Financial Institutions (and therefore authorized to solicit funding in the State of Wisconsin).
For religious organizations:Faith-based organizations likely meet eligibility requirements for Pablo Foundation’s grant consideration under the following conditions:The organization is not a house of worship (such as a mosque, synagogue, or church) where a congregation regularly attends religious services;The organization provides nonreligious services that align with Pablo Foundation’s mission and vision as well as our commitments; andThe organization’s services are provided to community members with no faith or religious participation requirements.

Ineligibility

Pablo Foundation will not fund any charitable organizations who violate the Foundation’s anti-discrimination statement.Further, Pablo Foundation does not fund individuals, businesses, political organizations, or organizations opposed to religious freedom.No Pablo Foundation funds may be used to participate or intervene in political campaigns or to support or attempt to influence legislation except to the extent that such activities are permissible under IRS rules pertaining to recognized 501(c)(3) organizations.A grant request to cover general operating costs to sustain the organization and its current activities will likely be denied.