Al Hirschfeld Foundation

The Al Hirschfeld Foundation (EIN 20-0908729, established 2004) is not a high-volume competitive grantmaker — it is a legacy foundation built around caricaturist Al Hirschfeld's estate that spends most of its budget on its own direct charitable activities: traveling exhibitions of Hirschfeld artwork, licensed poster books (Hirschfeld's Sondheim, 2025; Hirschfeld's Icons, 2026), the Hirschfeld Century podcast, and loans or donations of original art to museums. Third-party cash grants are rare and small by comparison: the platform's grantee data shows only 4 recorded grants totaling $22,500 (average $5,625), all to two organizations — Bucks County Playhouse ($12,500 across two grants) and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS ($10,000 across two grants) — both with direct ties to the Foundation's home markets of New York City and New Hope/Bucks County, PA. There is no published grants page, LOI portal, or application form: the IRS/990 data field for application_instructions is explicitly blank, and the Foundation's own website navigation (Home, About, News, Exhibitions, Timeline, Shop, Contact) contains no Grants or Apply section. Governance is a small, unpaid volunteer board — President & Treasurer Lynn Surry, plus directors Joshua Sherman MD, Valerie Kempner, Lawrence Benenson, Jenny Sherman, and Robert S Bader, none of whom draw compensation — which reinforces that this is a low-overhead, relationship-driven operation rather than a staffed grants shop. For applicants, the realistic path in is not a cold proposal but a partnership pitch: organizations already embedded in the theater/Broadway ecosystem (regional playhouses, theater museums, performing-arts libraries, entertainment-industry health causes) stand the best chance, especially if they can offer something reciprocal — exhibition space, a co-branded event tied to a poster-book launch, or an artistic tie to Hirschfeld's legacy. First-time applicants should treat contact as the start of a relationship (propose hosting an exhibition, or partnering on a Broadway-history program) rather than a transactional grant request, and should size any cash ask modestly given how few standalone grants this Foundation issues in a typical year.

Total assets have declined gradually from $6,463,332 in FY2012 to $5,417,785 in FY2024 — a drop of roughly 16% over 12 years — while annual revenue has been volatile: $205,213 (FY2024), $296,563 (FY2023), $424,519 (FY2022), $338,582 (FY2021), and as low as $62,481 (FY2014). 'Total giving' (which the Foundation's 990 filings appear to blend with its own direct charitable program spending — exhibitions, publishing, the digital archive) ranged from $166,737 (FY2012) to a peak of $447,214 (FY2022), but the narrower grants_paid line — cash out the door to third parties — was $0 in FY2023, FY2021, and FY2020, and only $11,250 in FY2022 and $3,000 in FY2019. Historical grants_paid highs include $106,641 (FY2015) and $28,000 (FY2014). At the individual-grant level, the platform's tracked sample is thin but telling: 4 total grants, $22,500 combined, average $5,625 per grant, with a tight range of $5,000-$6,250 per individual award. Both known recipients — Bucks County Playhouse ($12,500 over two grants) and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS ($10,000 over two grants) — sit in the Foundation's core geography, split evenly between New York (2 grants) and Pennsylvania (2 grants), matching the Foundation's dual base in Manhattan (its (212) phone number) and Bedminster Township/New Hope, PA (its registered address). Net investment income, not new contributions, funds most Foundation activity ($168,092 in FY2023, $159,675 in FY2021, $89,355 in FY2022), while incoming contributions are modest and irregular ($11,078 to $62,523 across recent years). No program-area or geography breakdown beyond the NY/PA split is available given the small sample size — this is a foundation whose 'funding pattern' is best understood as mostly self-directed program spending with an occasional small, targeted cash grant to a theater-adjacent nonprofit.

All five peers were matched on near-identical asset size (within $2,500 of each other, all around $5.42M) rather than mission — they are all small, generalist private foundations coded under the same 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category, and none has public giving or application data available in this dataset. Al Hirschfeld Foundation stands apart from this peer set in one important way: it is not a generalist grantmaker but a single-purpose legacy foundation, so applicants should not expect its behavior (small, occasional, theater-specific grants layered under heavy self-directed program spending) to resemble a typical $5.4M family foundation's open, cash-forward giving pattern.

The Foundation's public-facing activity in 2025-2026 has centered on publishing and touring exhibitions rather than new grant announcements. On 2026-02-19 it announced Hirschfeld's Icons: A Poster Book, a 25-print second volume (Abrams ComicArts, publishing 2026-04-28) featuring Julie Andrews, Charlie Chaplin, Richard Pryor, Chita Rivera, Ray Charles, and the Marx Brothers, paired with a partner exhibition at the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room (April 28-May 8) and additional spring events nationally. That follows a 2025-10-09 series of national events celebrating the first volume, Hirschfeld's Sondheim, which the Foundation reports was a USA Today bestseller and which drove exhibitions and talks across New York, California, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey; that book was first announced 2025-03-17 ahead of its September 2025 release. On the leadership side, the Foundation added three new board members on 2024-02-26 — a notable governance event for an organization with only five to six listed directors, none compensated (Lynn Surry remains President & Treasurer). No news item in the available web research describes a new or expanded cash-grants initiative, a change to funding priorities, or a formal application process being introduced. Combined with the 990 data showing grants_paid at or near $0 in several of the last five fiscal years, the clearest read is that the Foundation's growth energy in 2024-2026 has gone into its publishing/licensing program and exhibition partnerships (Algonquin Hotel, national poster-book tour venues) rather than into a larger third-party grants budget — those partner venues and touring-exhibition hosts are the closest thing to a 'grantee pipeline' visible in current activity.

There is no published application form, portal, deadline, or review cycle for the Al Hirschfeld Foundation — the platform's own enrichment flags application_instructions as empty despite marking the Foundation as technically 'accepting applications,' so the first step for any grant seeker should be a direct email to info@alhirschfeldfoundation.org (or a call to (212) 683-3636) to confirm current interest before drafting anything. Because the Foundation's own spending skews heavily toward its own programs (poster books, exhibitions, the Hirschfeld Century podcast) rather than outbound grants, proposals that offer a partnership — hosting or co-branding an exhibition, tying a program to a poster-book launch (Hirschfeld's Icons ships April 2026), or proposing a Broadway-history or theater-education tie-in — are more likely to land than a straightforward cash-grant request. Keep any cash ask modest and specific: the two documented past grantees, Bucks County Playhouse and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, each received grants in the $5,000-$6,250 range, not large multi-year commitments. Geographic and mission alignment both matter: both known grantees sit in the Foundation's core footprint (New York City and the Bucks County/New Hope, PA corridor, the same area as its Bedminster Township registered address) and in causes tightly linked to the theater industry itself — a regional playhouse and an entertainment-industry health charity — rather than the arts broadly. A common mistake would be treating this like a conventional open-call arts funder with a competitive RFP; there is no evidence of one, and a cold, generic proposal is unlikely to get traction with a five-to-six-person unpaid board that has no program staff to triage submissions. Build the relationship first: reference the Foundation's recent public activity (the Sondheim and Icons poster-book tours, the Algonquin Hotel exhibition) to show genuine familiarity, propose a concrete point of collaboration rather than a generic 'general operating support' ask, and be prepared for a slow or informal response given the Foundation's minimal staffing. If Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS or Bucks County Playhouse is a peer or partner organization, a warm introduction through them is likely more effective than any unsolicited written inquiry.