Amazin Mets Foundation Inc.

The Amazin' Mets Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the New York Mets, founded in January 2021 by Alexandra M. Cohen after she and husband Steve Cohen acquired the team in November 2020. Alexandra Cohen serves as Trustee/President, Steve Cohen as Trustee/VP, with Jeanne Melino as Secretary and Stephen Canna as Treasurer — a lean, family-led governance structure typical of a corporate/celebrity-adjacent foundation rather than a staffed program office. Critically, this is not an open-door funder: the foundation states plainly it does 'not accept any unsolicited grant proposals' and does 'not accept any direct mail.' Funding flows exclusively through periodically announced Requests for Proposals (RFPs), most visibly for a 'Youth Baseball & Softball League Initiative.' At the time of research, the foundation's own site listed no open RFPs, meaning the realistic entry point for most nonprofits is monitoring, not applying. Organizations must be public 501(c)(3) nonprofits based in the United States; the foundation does not fund individuals. The observed relationship progression is best understood as RFP announcement → proposal submission during the open window → selection, with no evidence of a formal LOI stage. First-time applicants should recognize that the foundation's visible grantmaking skews toward organizations with an existing, recognizable footprint in Queens or in one of its four pillars — City Harvest (hunger), New York Cares (community), New York Blood Center (health), LaGuardia Community College (education), and local Little Leagues (baseball/athletics). This suggests the foundation favors either (a) large, brand-name institutional partners for flagship grants, or (b) grassroots youth-baseball/softball organizations during its recurring Little League RFP cycle. Our platform's own grantee database currently holds no historical grant-level records for this foundation (top_50 grantees list and financials array are empty), so this strategy leans on public reporting; seekers should independently verify current RFP status directly on the foundation's site before investing proposal time.

Hard grant-level data is limited: the foundation's most recent 990-PF snapshot in our database shows total assets of $5,158,804 and income of $3,984,603, with a 'typical_grant_size' extraction of just $660, $2, and $30,000 — almost certainly an artifact of incomplete OCR/parsing of the Schedule I grant list rather than a real representative range, and should be treated as noise. Public reporting is more reliable for scale: since incorporating in 2021, the foundation has distributed more than $19-20 million in grants to over 200 organizations, which against roughly five years of operation implies average annual distributions in the $3.8-4 million range — consistent with the $3,984,603 income figure on file. Individual disclosed grants span a wide range: a $5,000 Legacy Award grant to New York Girls Baseball (2026), $30,000 in aggregate LaGuardia Community College scholarships (2025-26), $150,000 to the New York Blood Center for its Queens donor center (2025-2026), and over $280,000 distributed across multiple local Little Leagues in a single March 2025 cycle (implying dozens of individual awards likely in the low thousands to tens of thousands each). This points to a barbell pattern: many small-to-mid grassroots awards (Little League equipment, uniforms, field repairs, likely $1,000-$25,000 each) alongside a handful of large signature institutional grants ($100,000-$150,000+) to flagship community partners. By program area, funding is organized under four pillars — Baseball & Athletics, Community & Neighbors, Health & Wellness, and Youth & Education — but the foundation does not publish a numeric breakdown by category, so seekers should treat any percentage split as unavailable rather than assume even distribution. All observed giving is geographically anchored to Queens and communities surrounding Citi Field, with no evidence of national or unrestricted geographic scope.

These five peers were matched purely on near-identical asset size (all clustered around $5.16M) within the broad 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category, not on mission alignment — most have no public website or disclosed giving data, and none appear to run an active, publicized RFP process like the Mets Foundation does. In practice, the Amazin' Mets Foundation is best benchmarked against other professional sports team foundations (e.g., other MLB, NBA, or NFL team charitable arms), which typically share its RFP-driven, brand-partner-heavy, single-metro-area giving model — but no such peer was available in this dataset.

The foundation has been highly active in 2025-2026 across its four pillars. On the health side, a $150,000 grant supported the New York Blood Center's new Queens donor center, which opened in late 2025 and was publicly recognized in a May 2026 QNS report for its early impact on regional blood supply. In athletics, the foundation named professional player Kelsie Whitmore as recipient of its 2026 Legacy Award in July 2026, accompanied by a $5,000 grant to New York Girls Baseball, and in March 2025 distributed over $280,000 across local Little Leagues for equipment, uniforms, field repairs, and scholarships. On education, $30,000 in LaGuardia Community College scholarships were awarded for the 2025-26 academic year (announced October 2025), continuing a recurring scholarship commitment led by President Alexandra Cohen. Community-facing programming remained steady through the holiday season: the 2025 MetsGiving Food Drive (November 13, 2025) benefitted City Harvest, and the 19th annual Coat Drive with New York Cares ran December 10, 2025, both at the Citi Field Team Store. The foundation also launched its 2025 Amazin' Auction as a recurring fundraising mechanism. No leadership changes were identified — Alexandra Cohen remains President, with Steve Cohen as Trustee/VP — and no new program areas beyond the existing four pillars were announced in the period reviewed. Grant seekers should note there was no evidence of a currently open RFP as of this research; the most recent visible cycle (Little Leagues) ran in Q1 2025.

Because the Amazin' Mets Foundation runs a closed, RFP-only process, the single highest-leverage tip is timing: monitor amazinmetsfoundation.org and the foundation's social accounts (@AmazinMetsFdn) for RFP announcements rather than submitting an unsolicited proposal, which will not be reviewed. Based on 2025 activity, the Little League/youth baseball RFP cycle has opened in the winter and resolved by March, so athletics-focused applicants should watch closely from December through February. The foundation explicitly states it does not accept direct mail or cold outreach, so relationship-building should instead focus on visibility within Queens community events the foundation already runs or sponsors — the Citi Field Food Drive (mid-November), the Coat Drive with New York Cares (early December), and the Amazin' Auction — where community organizations can build name recognition ahead of an RFP window. Proposals should speak directly to the foundation's four named pillars (Baseball & Athletics, Community & Neighbors, Health & Wellness, Youth & Education) using that exact language, and should tie the request to a concrete, local Queens/Citi Field-area beneficiary population — the foundation's disclosed grants (LaGuardia CC, New York Blood Center's Queens donor center, local Little Leagues) all have a tight geographic and demographic nexus to the borough. A common mistake would be applying as a national or non-Queens organization, or applying outside an open RFP window — both appear likely to be filtered out immediately given the stated no-unsolicited-proposals policy. Organizations without an existing profile should also consider that large signature grants ($100K+) have so far gone to already-established institutional partners (New York Blood Center, LaGuardia CC), while first-time or grassroots organizations have a more realistic path through the recurring, higher-volume Little League RFP, which appears to fund many smaller awards in a single cycle. Applicants should be prepared to demonstrate 501(c)(3) status and U.S. location up front, since these are the foundation's only stated formal eligibility criteria.