All Points North Foundation

All Points North Foundation (APNF), a Chestnut Hill, MA private foundation with roughly $3.83M in assets, runs an unusually structured process for a foundation its size — most $3-4M private foundations file minimal public disclosure and take no unsolicited contact at all, but APNF publishes a full multi-stage pipeline: two-page concept paper, invitation-only Letter of Intent (LOI), invitation-only full application, committee presentation, site visit, and Board review, spanning 10-12 months. The foundation favors organizations, not individuals, that are 501(c)(3)-qualified, US-based, and have 'a proven track record of successful organizational and project operations' of at least one year — it explicitly screens out newer or unproven groups and anything with religious affiliation or conversion-conditioned services. Grantee data confirms a strong preference for renewal relationships over one-off gifts: of the top 33 grantees in the DB sample, the large majority received grant_count of 2-3 (i.e., the same project funded across consecutive years) rather than a single award — Breakthrough Collaborative ($220,000 across 3 grants), Grid Alternatives ($186,667/3), PowerMyLearning ($160,000/3), TeachUnited ($160,000/3), and Ann Richards School Foundation ($160,000/3) are the largest cumulative relationships in the data. First-time applicants should expect a single-year or two-year award in the $20,000-$81,000 range (median $40,000) rather than the full $60,000-$100,000 the foundation cites as its typical total grant size — that figure describes the cumulative multi-year commitment, not the first check. Multi-year status is explicitly reserved for partners of two-plus years' standing, so the realistic first ask is a modest, tightly scoped pilot with clear renewal potential. Given the tiny, hands-on staff (an Executive Director/Trustee model with a small unpaid board), relationship quality with foundation leadership matters disproportionately — the foundation's own materials stress emailing before applying, and a recent Executive Director transition (Laura Staich to Tony Moten) means prior relationship history with the foundation may need to be re-established with new leadership.

APNF's DB grantee sample shows 72 grants totaling $2,896,668, an average grant of $40,232, and a foundation-reported typical grant size (most recent cohort of 20 grants) of $20,000-$81,000 with a $40,000 median and $49,673 average — consistent with the foundation's own public statement that project grants run $60,000-$100,000 in cumulative, multi-year terms (i.e., roughly $20,000-$40,000 per year over two to three years). Total giving has grown from $206,260 in FY2014 and $455,923 in FY2015 to $1,185,022 (FY2019), $1,476,998 (FY2020), $1,812,256 (FY2021), $1,677,178 (FY2022), and $2,286,135 in FY2023 — more than a 10x increase over the decade, though FY2024 total_giving is not yet reported and total assets slipped from $4,247,843 (FY2023) to $3,833,682 (FY2024). Contributions received have held steady at roughly $1.9-2.0M per year (2021-2023), tracking closely with annual giving — APNF behaves largely as a pass-through vehicle funded by a steady annual gift rather than an endowment compounding off investment returns (net investment income was a modest $88,414-$147,467 in 2022-2023). Geographically, the DB sample skews to California (15 of the top grantees' state matches, the largest single bucket), followed by Massachusetts (9), New York and Colorado (7 each), Texas (6), Oregon (6), and smaller counts in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland (3-4 each) — a national footprint but with a clear California and Massachusetts (home-state) concentration. By program, the grantee list splits roughly two-to-one toward education/teacher-training/SEL awards (Breakthrough Collaborative, PowerMyLearning, TeachUnited, Citizen Schools, Sisters Circle, Beyond Differences, and others) versus solar awards (Grid Alternatives, Safe Haven Farms, Resource Central, Tantasqua Education Foundation, We Care Solar), matching the foundation's stated two-priority model. Officer compensation of $150,000-$193,750 (2021-2023) against $1.7-2.3M in annual giving implies an operating-cost ratio in the high single digits — lean for a foundation running a full multi-stage review process.

APNF sits in a peer bucket of private foundations near $3.83M in assets, all classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, but the comparison exposes how unusual APNF's public-facing structure is for that asset tier — every listed peer has no public website on file, meaning no published criteria, no LOI process, and effectively no way for an outside grantseeker to make contact.

APNF's near-$2.3M in annual giving on $3.8M in assets is a payout rate well above the 5% IRS minimum and above what a typical closed family trust of this size distributes — evidence it is actively re-granting fresh annual contributions rather than drawing down a static corpus. For grantseekers, the practical takeaway is that APNF is the only viable point of entry in this peer set; the other five foundations, despite comparable balance sheets, appear to be closed vehicles with no public application channel.

APNF's news page (allpointsnorthfoundation.org/all-news and /good-news) shows a steady cadence of grant announcements through mid-2026: a July 30, 2026 award to the Science Museum of Minnesota for a thin-film solar upgrade; a July 14, 2026 renewal-style grant to Children's Home Society of Florida (a prior three-grant, $100,000 relationship) to expand youth resilience programming; and a run of June 2026 education awards — VentureLab (entrepreneurship life skills, June 29), TNTP (math instruction, June 25), Modern Classrooms Project (math-teacher mentorship, June 16), and Girls Inc. of New York City (student mental health, June 11). On the solar side, a May 12, 2026 grant to the Heart of America Solar Project brought electrification to Navajo Nation homes, continuing a multi-year pattern of tribal-land solar investment alongside earlier Grid Alternatives and Remote Energy awards on Navajo and Ojo Encino Chapter land. The most consequential internal change is a leadership transition: Form 990 data shows Laura Staich moving from Executive Director/Trustee (most recently $150,000 compensation) to 'Past-Executive Director/Trustee' status, with Tony Moten now listed as Executive Director at $113,393. No public announcement of this transition surfaced in web search results, so grantseekers with existing relationships built under Staich should confirm current staff contacts directly rather than assuming continuity. Financially, the most recent completed fiscal year (2023) showed total giving jumping to $2,286,135 (up from $1,677,178 in FY2022) on contributions received of $1,900,000, while FY2024 shows total assets easing to $3,833,682 from $4,247,843 — consistent with continued active re-granting rather than any pause or wind-down.

Reach out cold, but do it through the front door: the foundation explicitly asks interested organizations to use its Contact page before submitting anything, and the two-page concept paper is genuinely the only unsolicited entry point — the LOI (due June 1) and full grant application (due September 1) are invitation-only, so a strong concept paper is doing far more work than a typical LOI at other funders. Keep the concept paper to two pages and map it directly onto the foundation's own review language: it screens for a 'clearly articulate[d]' set of organizational goals, 'a clear plan for achieving results,' and outcomes 'tracked... with specific metrics' — proposals that lead with a logic model and named metrics (not just narrative impact stories) will read as a closer match to how APNF says it evaluates. Do not submit anything outside the two stated priorities (public middle school education/teacher training, or solar energy programs) — the FAQ and Key Criteria pages are unusually explicit that off-focus proposals, non-US projects, and organizations with religious affiliation or conversion-conditioned services are excluded outright, regardless of program quality. Expect the full cycle to run 10-12 months from LOI to funds landing (grant periods typically begin August 1), so first contact needs to happen roughly a year ahead of when funding is actually needed. A common mistake is asking for a multi-year commitment out of the gate — the foundation's own criteria state multi-year grants go only to organizations with two-plus years of partnership history, so a credible first ask is a single-year, tightly scoped pilot ($20,000-$40,000 based on the current typical-grant data) with an explicit plan to demonstrate results worth renewing. Budget for a site visit roughly seven to nine months into the cycle if you clear the committee-presentation stage — have a program site and staff ready to host it. Finally, since Executive Director Tony Moten has apparently succeeded longtime ED Laura Staich, don't assume any pre-existing relationship or verbal encouragement from prior leadership carries forward automatically; re-confirm current staff and priorities before investing in a concept paper.