Avalon Foundation

Avalon Foundation (EIN 13-3437931, Newtown, PA) is a classic closely-held family pass-through foundation, not a program-driven public grantmaker. Its own IRS filings state plainly that it is "not involved in any direct charitable activities" and exists solely to make contributions to other 501(c)(3) organizations. It is governed by three unpaid trustees — Michael D. McCarthy, Deborah Berg McCarthy, and Jonathan L. Cohen — the same McCarthy family that also runs the related Eureka Foundation (EIN 13-4148244), a $12M-asset entity Avalon has funded with $991,224 across two gifts, its single largest grant relationship on record. Avalon's other known recipients skew toward institutions with likely personal or family ties: Lasalle College High School, a Catholic boys' prep school in Wyndmoor, PA ($500,000 across two gifts, averaging $250,000 each — consistent with a major or capital-style gift rather than a program grant), and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, a Chicago-based museum-quality photography nonprofit ($20,000 across two $10,000 gifts). With only 8 total tracked grants averaging $226,091 each, Avalon operates at a scale and cadence typical of relationship-based, invitation-only giving rather than a competitive application process. There is no evidence of a public grants portal, published RFP, or staffed program office. Note also that the domain avalonfoundation.org — surfaced by generic web search and listed in some databases against this EIN — actually belongs to an unrelated Maryland nonprofit, The Avalon Foundation Inc. of Easton, that operates the Avalon Theatre performing-arts venue; it has no connection to this Newtown, PA grantmaking trust. First-time applicants without an existing relationship to the McCarthy or Cohen families, or to one of its known grantee institutions, should treat this as an extremely low-probability cold-outreach target. Organizations with a genuine, demonstrable connection — alumni ties to Lasalle College High School, museum/photography institutions comparable to FEP, or cultural/educational nonprofits in the Bucks County, PA area — have the most plausible path in, and should lead with that connection explicitly rather than a generic proposal.

Avalon Foundation's tracked giving totals $1,808,724 across 8 grants to 4 distinct recipients, for an average grant of $226,091 — but that average is skewed heavily by two outsized gifts: $991,224 (55% of tracked giving) to sister organization Eureka Foundation and $500,000 (28%) to Lasalle College High School. The remaining recipients received far smaller amounts: $297,500 to a recipient recorded only as "See List Attached" (indicating the underlying Form 990-PF schedule was not individually itemized in available data) and $20,000 to the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography. Recorded recipient addresses span PA, NY, MN, and KS (2 grants each), though this likely reflects filing/mailing addresses on the Form 990-PF schedules rather than a deliberate multi-state program strategy. On an annual basis, total giving has fallen sharply over time: $1,436,109 in FY2011, down to $1,050,086 (FY2018), $413,629 (FY2019), $318,921 (FY2020), $204,543 (FY2021, a pandemic-era low), $831,210 (FY2022), and $691,104 (FY2023) — with the most recent confirmed figure, FY2025, showing $567,500 in total expenses against just $37,230 in revenue. Total assets have fallen in step, from $7,354,388 (FY2012) to $3,417,138 (FY2023) to $2,886,868 (FY2025), a roughly 61% decline since 2011. Despite the shrinking asset base, Avalon's payout rate has stayed elevated: FY2023 grants paid ($675,000) against that year's assets implies close to a 20% payout, roughly double the 10.3% average payout rate Foundation Source's 2025 Report on Private Philanthropy found among foundations under $10M in assets. That combination — a shrinking corpus paid out at double the typical small-foundation rate — is the clearest signal that Avalon is being deliberately spent down rather than sustained as a perpetual endowment.

Because Avalon Foundation is a closely-held, non-public family vehicle with no grants page, program staff, or public disclosure beyond its Form 990-PF, this report was unable to identify multiple truly comparable, independently-run peer foundations; only one verified related entity (Eureka Foundation, run by the same trustees) and sector-level benchmark data are included below rather than fabricated peer rows.

Avalon pays out at roughly double the typical sub-$10M family foundation rate (about 20% of assets versus a 10.3% sector average), while its sister foundation Eureka — despite being four times larger by assets — gives at a rate much closer to sector norms and, notably, is the only one of the two with any public application process at all. For grant seekers, this underscores that access to Avalon runs through personal or institutional relationships to the McCarthy/Cohen family, not through a competitive process comparable to peer family foundations.

No 2025-2026 news coverage, press releases, or announcements specific to this Avalon Foundation (EIN 13-3437931) were found in web search — expected for a foundation with no public-facing website or communications function. The most recent confirmed activity is financial: fiscal year 2025 filings show total revenue of $37,230 (68% dividends, 26.6% asset sales), total expenses of $567,500, and net assets of $2,886,868, continuing the multi-year decline from $3,417,138 in assets at the end of FY2023. Leadership has been stable: the same three trustees — Michael D. McCarthy, Deborah Berg McCarthy, and Jonathan L. Cohen — have governed the foundation across all available filing years with no compensation and no reported turnover. The most notable recent-era development is not a new initiative but a continuation of the foundation's core pattern: concentrated, large gifts to a small circle of recipients, led by its relationship to Eureka Foundation, which itself reported $528,500 in charitable disbursements and $12.05M in assets for fiscal year 2024 — meaning the McCarthy family's overall philanthropic capacity is materially larger than Avalon's balance sheet alone suggests, even as Avalon itself continues to shrink.

There is no evidence Avalon Foundation accepts, reviews, or responds to unsolicited grant applications — no public website, no listed grants page, no RFP, and a grantee history of just 4 organizations over the years for which data is available, at least two of which (Eureka Foundation, Lasalle College High School) appear connected to the trustee family through more than a standard applicant relationship. Do not attempt a cold LOI or generic proposal submission; there is no known channel for one to reach the trustees, and the contact_email on file (boxoffice@avalonfoundation.org) actually routes to the unrelated Avalon Theatre in Easton, MD, not this foundation. The single most productive move for a prospective applicant is to establish whether a genuine, verifiable connection exists to the McCarthy or Cohen family, to Lasalle College High School (alumni, faculty, or institutional partnership), or to museum-quality photography/exhibition work comparable to the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography's programming. Organizations without one of those specific ties should not prioritize this foundation — the realistic odds of a cold approach succeeding are near zero given the pattern of concentrated, relationship-driven giving. If a legitimate connection does exist, the better entry point may actually be Eureka Foundation (same trustees, EIN 13-4148244), which does run a public online application and reviews proposals twice yearly, in June and November, with a recommended submission window of at least one month before each board meeting; a strong showing there is the most plausible way to eventually surface on the McCarthy family's radar for an Avalon gift. Given Avalon's declining asset base (down 61% since 2011) and above-average payout rate (~20% of assets versus a 10.3% sector norm for sub-$10M foundations), the foundation appears to be in a deliberate spend-down phase — meaning any future giving is more likely to go toward closing out existing relationships (as with the large Lasalle College High School and Eureka Foundation gifts) than toward new grantees.