Christel DeHaan Family Foundation

Christel DeHaan Family Foundation

Christel DeHaan founded the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation in 1997, drawing on wealth she generated as co-founder and architect of Resort Condominiums International (RCI). RCI essentially created the global timeshare-exchange market in the 1970s, and its sale provided DeHaan with the resources later channeled into this private Indianapolis foundation. DeHaan, who fled Berlin as a child during World War II and emigrated to the U.S. at 18, remained the governing figure in the foundation's grantmaking until her death in 2020. The foundation concentrated grants in arts, culture, and education across central Indiana, but it also maintained a global footprint through sustained support for Christel House International — a network of charter schools and educational charities DeHaan founded in 1998 that operates campuses in Mexico, India, South Africa, and Jamaica. While the foundation's investment-side operations remained private, it maintained private equity commitments alongside its grantmaking, managed by President and CIO Mark Willis out of Indianapolis. The foundation's board included DeHaan's sons, Timothy E. DeHaan and Keith A. DeHaan, as trustees. Following DeHaan's directive that the foundation should not exist in perpetuity, the board executed a final spend-down in late 2023. November 2023: The foundation distributed its remaining $55 million in grant commitments and formally closed operations, with the majority directed to Christel House International and central Indiana arts institutions. The closure marked the end of a 26-year philanthropic vehicle that donated an estimated total of over $200 million during its lifetime, making DeHaan's foundation one of Indiana's most significant cultural donors. The foundation's structure stood apart from the multi-generational perpetual trusts common among Midwest industrial fortunes. DeHaan opted for a limited-life foundation controlled by a tight family-and-executive board, concentrated on a narrow grantee set, and powered by proceeds from a single transformative liquidity event — the RCI sale — rather than a diversified operating company. This single-wealth-event, spend-down architecture made successor planning structurally straightforward at sunset.