Aspen Trust

Aspen Trust is a small, closely held private foundation (NTEE T22, Philanthropy & Grantmaking) formed in October 2020 and administered by a corporate trustee — currently IQ EQ Trust Company US LLC, previously Commonwealth Trust Company — out of Rapid City, South Dakota, a jurisdiction chosen for trust administration rather than program presence. All grantmaking authority sits with two individual trustees, Roland Worms and Patricia Terdjman, both reporting zero compensation; there is no program staff, communications office, or public grants portal. The stated mission is broad — "disadvantaged communities worldwide," human rights, sustainable and economic development, and support for Jewish culture and a pluralistic society in Israel — plus a distinct Arts program funding exhibition of contemporary art and collaboration among artists, curators, and institutions.

In practice, one relationship dominates the checkbook: Artnow International Inc received 3 grants totaling $3,148,000, roughly 86% of the $3.66M tracked across 48 grants. That concentration is the single most important fact for a prospective applicant — this behaves like a foundation built around one flagship partner, not a competitive open-call grantmaker. Everything else is a long tail of 47 grants averaging under $11,000 apiece, most in the $2,000-$20,000 range, frequently repeated once at an identical amount in a second year rather than renewed or scaled.

With application_form_url, grants_page_url, and funding_cycle all null in the IRS-sourced record, and application_instructions literally recorded as "__none__," first-time applicants should not expect a cold-LOI or portal-based path in. The realistic entry points are: (1) a warm introduction through an organization already in the trust's network — contemporary art spaces (Parasite Hong Kong, Sa Sa Art Association Cambodia, Wekalet Behna Egypt, Fundación Teatro Odeón), Jewish/Israel civil-society groups (Kanaf Pef Israel Endowment Fund, Institute for Jewish Spirituality), or (2) direct geographic proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area/Mendocino County cluster that receives the bulk of small domestic gifts (Presidio YMCA, Glide Foundation, San Francisco Food Bank, Huckleberry Youth, Arts Council of Mendocino County, KZYX). Absent one of those two paths, the odds of a first contact converting appear low.

Assets stood at $7,490,715 at FY2024 close, down sharply from a $15,632,917 peak in FY2021 after that year's unusually large revenue event ($9,619,640, including $2,680,155 in new contributions). Giving has swung dramatically year to year: $29,989 (2020, the foundation's first partial year) to $382,592 (2021) to $1,670,440 (2022) to $1,818,775 (2023) to $445,056 (2024, per the FY2024 Form 990-PF) — a 75% pullback in the latest filing, consistent with a return toward the roughly 5%-of-assets minimum qualifying distribution required of private foundations rather than a sustained programmatic ramp.

Grant sizing is bimodal. The most recently disclosed grant cohort (n=10) shows a median of just $3,000, an average of $36,500, and a range of $2,000-$248,000 — a distribution pulled upward by a small number of large outliers. Looking at the fuller 48-grant/$3.66M tracked history, the flagship relationship (Artnow International Inc, $3,148,000 across 3 grants, averaging roughly $1.05M each) accounts for 86% of all dollars. Strip that single relationship out and the remaining 47 grants average just $10,894, with most clustering between $2,000 and $95,000 (Parasite Art Space Limited, $95,000/1 grant, is the largest of this tier).

Program-area tagging in the underlying data is thin — most grants are coded generically as "CHARITY," with only Parasite Art Space carrying an explicit arts-award purpose code. Reading the mission's two disclosed program buckets against the grantee list, the Arts program (contemporary exhibition, cross-institutional artist/curator collaboration) appears to carry the largest dollars via the Artnow relationship, while the Philanthropy program (human rights, sustainable/economic development, Jewish culture and Israeli pluralism) is served mostly through the small-dollar tail — e.g., Kanaf Pef Israel Endowment Fund ($30,000/2 grants), Institute for Jewish Spirituality ($8,000/2 grants), LGBT Asylum Project ($8,000/2 grants).

Geographically, of the 39 domestically geocoded grants, California receives 30 (77%), New York 6, Florida 2, and Maryland 1 — reflecting a Bay Area/Mendocino County cluster plus a handful of New York arts venues (New York Live Arts, $8,000/2 grants). A meaningful share of the long tail goes to international grantees in Hong Kong, Cambodia, Egypt, France, Uruguay/Argentina, and Israel that fall outside the by-state breakdown.

All five peers sit within a few thousand dollars of Aspen Trust's $7.49M in assets, and four of the five have no discoverable public website — the same low-visibility, likely single-family-trust profile as Aspen Trust itself. Project Paradigm is the outlier with an active public website, suggesting it may operate closer to a program-delivering nonprofit than a pure passive grantmaker despite sharing the same NTEE classification. At this asset tier ($7-8M), the IRS's ~5% minimum qualifying distribution requirement implies roughly $375,000-$400,000 in required annual giving — Aspen Trust's FY2024 disbursement of $445,056 sits just above that floor, a pattern plausibly shared by same-tier peers rather than evidence of an active, expanding grants program.

No independent press coverage of Aspen Trust was identifiable — searches for "Aspen Trust" grants, news, and funding priorities returned only results for unrelated organizations (the Aspen Institute, Aspen Community Foundation, the City of Aspen, CO), confirming this is an intentionally low-profile private vehicle rather than a foundation with a communications presence. The most current verifiable activity comes from the FY2024 Form 990-PF, publicly available via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer: charitable disbursements fell to $445,056 in FY2024, down 75% from $1,818,775 in FY2023, while net assets held roughly steady at $7.49M after several years of decline from the 2021 peak of $15.6M (driven by a large one-time revenue/contribution event that year). The corporate trustee of record also changed to IQ EQ Trust Company US LLC (previously Commonwealth Trust Company) — a routine service-provider transition, not a strategic shift. Trustees Roland Worms and Patricia Terdjman have held their roles, uncompensated, across every filing since the foundation's October 2020 inception. No leadership changes, new program announcements, or public grant announcements were found for 2025 or 2026. For applicants, the practical takeaway is that FY2024 was a materially smaller giving year than FY2022-2023, and there is no signal yet of the foundation returning to its prior $1.6-1.8M annual giving level.

Aspen Trust has no application_form_url, no grants_page_url, no stated funding_cycle, and its application_instructions field is recorded simply as "__none__" — there is no known solicited process to submit into, and the website associated with this record (aspen.org) is confirmed unrelated (it is a generic informational page about the town of Aspen, Colorado). Practical guidance follows from the filing pattern rather than any published guidelines:

• Do not cold-apply through a general inquiry; there is no portal or LOI intake, and the corporate trustee (IQ EQ Trust Company US LLC, Rapid City, SD) is not a program office.
• Prioritize a warm introduction over direct outreach. Given the concentration in contemporary art institutions (Parasite Art Space Hong Kong, Sa Sa Art Association Cambodia, Wekalet Behna Egypt) and Jewish/Israel civil society (Kanaf Pef Israel Endowment Fund, Institute for Jewish Spirituality), a referral from an existing grantee is far likelier to open a conversation than an unsolicited request.
• Lean on geography for the small-dollar tail: 77% of domestically geocoded grants land in California, concentrated around San Francisco/Presidio and Mendocino County (Presidio YMCA, Arts Council of Mendocino County, KZYX Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, San Francisco Food Bank, Huckleberry Youth, Glide Foundation). A Bay Area or Mendocino nonprofit with an aligned mission has the clearest plausible path.
• Calibrate the ask to scale. Outside the single flagship Artnow International relationship ($3,148,000 across 3 grants), the other 47 tracked grants average $10,894 and typically range $2,000-$95,000, with a median as low as $3,000 in the most recent disclosed cohort. Do not propose a large, multi-year, or general-operating-support grant — request a specific, modest amount instead.
• Match language to whichever of the two disclosed programs fits: the Philanthropy program (human rights, sustainable/economic development, Jewish culture and Israeli pluralism) or the Arts program (contemporary exhibition and cross-institutional artist/curator collaboration). The grantee list is highly specific and personal to the trustees, not a generic charitable list — generic "support our mission" language is unlikely to resonate.
• Expect a conservative year. FY2024 disbursements ($445,056) were 75% below FY2023 ($1,818,775), tracking close to the statutory minimum payout on ~$7.5M in assets — this is not a moment to expect an expanded or newly opened program.
• Route any correspondence through the corporate trustee, since no phone, email, or named program officer is publicly listed; the contact of record is "% Iq Eq Trust Company Us LLC Ttee."