Amara Foundation

Amara Foundation is a young (IRS ruling June 2023), trustee-directed private foundation with $12.4M in assets, zero paid staff, and two unpaid trustees: Taylor Milsal and William D Hillis. Its IRS record lists 'accepting_applications' as technically true, but no application form URL, grants page, or public grantmaking guidelines exist anywhere in public filings or web search — a strong signal that giving flows through trustee relationships rather than open competition. Grant purposes recorded on its 990s cluster tightly around a distinctive, personal set of causes: long-term/existential-scale thinking (its single largest grantee, The Long Now Foundation, received $107,000 in FY2024), genetic rescue and de-extinction science (Revive & Restore), reproductive rights and family planning (Rffnh, Turimquire Foundation, and newly the National Women's Health Network), land conservation (Mount Grace Land Trust), criminal justice reform (Impact Justice), alternative K-8 education (Pioneer Valley Waldorf School), open-knowledge infrastructure (Wikimedia Foundation), and historical/archaeological research (Ancient Egypt Research Associates). This is not a service-delivery-nonprofit funder; it reads as a personally curated portfolio reflecting one or both trustees' intellectual interests. Notably, trustee William D Hillis shares his name with W. Daniel ('Danny') Hillis, the well-documented co-founder of The Long Now Foundation and a figure closely tied to genetic-conservation and futurist circles — a pattern consistent with, though not confirmed as, the source of this foundation's giving priorities. First-time applicants without a credible connection to these specific networks (Long Now seminars, Revive & Restore's conservation-science community, Cambridge/MA or Bay Area futurist and biotech circles) should expect long odds via cold outreach. The realistic relationship progression is: identify a genuine thematic and network overlap, secure a warm introduction, submit a short concept note rather than a full proposal, and expect an informal, non-staffed trustee review rather than a multi-stage LOI-to-site-visit pipeline. Organizations whose missions sit outside this narrow cluster of causes are unlikely to be a fit regardless of general merit or need.

Amara Foundation's giving is modest in volume but has grown sharply in per-grant size. FY2022 grants paid totaled $206,000; FY2023 grants paid were $215,000 (total giving $274,093 including related expenses); FY2024 charitable disbursements reached $360,482 across 11 grants — an average of roughly $32,771 per grant that year, up from a $10,000-$20,000 typical grant size in 2022-2023. Aggregated 2022-2023 990 data shows 22 individual grant payments to 11 unique organizations (each receiving exactly two grants), totaling $412,000 at an average of $18,727 per grant. The distribution is uneven: Rffnh alone received $200,000 across two grants (48% of that two-year total), while Wikimedia Foundation received just $2,000 across two grants — a range spanning $1,000 to $100,000 per individual grant instance in that window, before the FY2024 Long Now grant reset the ceiling to $107,000 in a single payment. Geographically, recipient organizations concentrate in Massachusetts (8 of 22 tracked grants, 36%) and California (6, 27%), with smaller representation in Washington DC, Maine, New Hampshire, and New York (2 each) — a bicoastal pattern consistent with New England conservation/education nonprofits paired with West Coast futurist and biotech-adjacent organizations. By cause, roughly half of tracked dollars went to family planning/reproductive health and long-termism/science causes combined, with land conservation, education, criminal justice, and open-knowledge grants making up smaller, single-digit-thousand-to-low-five-figure allocations. On the asset side, the foundation grew from $9.8M (2022, following a $10M contribution that year) to $12.3M (2023, plus a further $2.4M contribution) to $12.4M (2024), with net investment income of $378,481 in 2023 funding a growing share of payout. Annual giving (~$206K-$360K) has consistently run below the roughly 5% minimum distribution requirement implied by its asset base (~$500K-$620K), which typically forces newly-formed foundations to increase grant volume and/or size in subsequent fiscal years to stay compliant.

All five peer foundations sit within roughly $100,000 of Amara's $12.4M in assets and share its generic 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' IRS category, but none maintain a discoverable website or public grant guidelines — confirming this is an asset-matched peer set of small, closely-held family/trust foundations rather than a mission-matched one. Amara stands out only in that its actual 990 grant history is detailed enough (via Cause IQ, Instrumentl, and ProPublica) to reconstruct real funding priorities and trustee identities, giving applicants more to work with than the near-total opacity of its five peers, none of which publish so much as a focus-area statement beyond the IRS NTEE code.

The most recent complete fiscal year on file (FY2024) shows Amara Foundation making 11 grants totaling $360,482, up from $215,000 (FY2023) and $206,000 (FY2022). The standout event is a $107,000 grant to The Long Now Foundation for 'fostering longer-term thinking' — more than five times the size of its prior-year gift to the same organization and by far the largest single grant in the foundation's short history. Revive & Restore, a genetic-rescue and de-extinction science nonprofit, received a renewed $20,000 grant, continuing a relationship first recorded in 2022-2023 filings. A new grantee, the National Women's Health Network, received $20,000 for health advocacy — the first appearance of this organization in the foundation's grant history, suggesting an expansion of its existing family-planning giving (previously concentrated in grants to Rffnh and Turimquire Foundation) into broader women's health advocacy. No trustee or leadership changes were identified; Taylor Milsal and William D Hillis have served as the foundation's only two trustees since its June 2023 IRS ruling date, and neither draws compensation. No press releases, media coverage, or public announcements specific to this Amara Foundation (EIN 88-4386139, Rindge, NH) were located in web search — searches for 'Amara Foundation' news predominantly surfaced unrelated organizations, including an Indian industrial conglomerate's Amara Raja Group, the unrelated Amara Hall of Fame Awards event, a Kentucky-based Amara Family Foundation, and a Dutch children's charity of the same name operating in Kenya. This foundation maintains an unusually low public profile, consistent with a young, trustee-directed vehicle with no communications staff or media presence.

There is no public LOI process, application form, or grants portal for this foundation — application_form_url and grants_page_url are both blank in IRS-sourced records, and no dedicated grantmaking guidelines page could be located. Applicants should not spend time searching for an online submission system. Instead, align proposal language directly with the specific, recurring purpose categories drawn from actual grant descriptions on file: 'foster longer-term thinking,' 'genetic rescue of endangered species,' 'family planning,' 'land protection and stewardship,' 'youth wellness,' and 'prison reform' — using this vocabulary signals genuine familiarity with the funder rather than a generic pitch. Because trustee William D Hillis shares his name with W. Daniel ('Danny') Hillis, the publicly documented co-founder of The Long Now Foundation with long-standing ties to genetic-conservation and futurist circles, organizations working in long-termism, existential risk, biodiversity conservation, or genetic-rescue science should treat any overlapping professional network — Long Now seminars, Revive & Restore's conservation community, MIT Media Lab/Applied Invention circles — as their most credible entry point; this is a pattern observed in public grant and biography records, not a confirmed identity match, so it should inform outreach strategy rather than be stated as fact in a proposal. Grant sizes vary enormously by relationship depth: a flagship-aligned cause can command $100,000+ (Long Now's FY2024 jump to $107,000), while smaller, more symbolic gifts of $1,000-$2,000 (e.g., Wikimedia Foundation) also occur, so a $12.4M-asset foundation should not be assumed to write only large checks. With zero program staff and unpaid trustees, expect slow, informal communication by phone ((415) 563-1300) or mail rather than a portal or online tracker — do not expect email response times typical of staffed foundations. A common mistake would be applying as a generic, broadly-mission-driven service nonprofit; the actual grant pattern consistently rewards narrow, intellectually distinctive, often niche-scientific, civil-liberties, or conservation-research causes over general human-services appeals. Because FY2024 payout ($360,482) still runs below the roughly 5% minimum distribution implied by $12.4M in assets, the foundation likely needs to increase both grant count and size in FY2025-2026 to remain IRS-compliant — a favorable window for a warm, well-targeted approach now.