Birchrock Foundation

Birchrock Foundation is a small, closed family foundation — not a professionally staffed grantmaking institution seeking new applicants. It is administered out of Graypoint, an Albany, NY family office, with tax/financial support from The Ayco Company (a Goldman Sachs-affiliated wealth-management subsidiary), and governed by three family managers: Lawrence J. Lasser (former Putnam Investments CEO), Michelle Lasser, and Ethan Lasser (a museum curator). None draw compensation, underscoring how tightly the family controls it directly. The IRS mission statement is boilerplate ('supports charitable organizations under 501(c)(3)... not involved in direct charitable activities'), and there is no public grants portal, RFP, or Grants/Programs page — application_instructions is recorded as blank, and there is no application_form_url, opportunities_url, or funding_cycle on file. In practice this is a vehicle for the Lasser family's personal philanthropy, not an open competitive grantmaker, and Granted's own system flags it 'preselected_only.'

The 62-grant sample in Granted's database shows the foundation favors institutions the family already has a direct tie to: Boston-area Jewish community organizations (Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Temple Beth Elohim, Adas Yoshuron Synagogue), elite cultural institutions (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Shelburne Museum — consistent with Ethan Lasser's museum career), a teaching hospital (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), a Jewish day school (The Rashi School), and a scatter of Maine/Georgia community groups reflecting personal or seasonal-home ties (Waldoborough Historical Society, St. Simons Land Trust). New, unsolicited applicants without a pre-existing relationship to a family manager have essentially no realistic path to funding.

For organizations that do want to pursue this funder, the strategy is 'build the relationship,' not 'submit a strong LOI.' Boston/Cambridge Jewish community institutions, major art museums, Williams College (a documented major 2024 recipient), and coastal Maine or St. Simons Island, GA nonprofits are the realistic target list. First-time applicants should not expect a formal LOI-to-full-proposal-to-site-visit progression; expect informal, invitation-based decisions made directly by the three trustees, most plausibly around annual-fund cycles or year-end tax planning rather than a published review calendar.

Total assets have held roughly steady at $5.4M-$5.8M for five years: $5.37M (FY2019) → $5.42M (FY2020) → $5.80M (FY2021) → $5.77M (FY2022) → $5.56M (FY2023) → $5.59M (FY2024). Contributions received were $0 in every year on file (2019-2023) — the foundation is not being replenished by new family gifts; its asset base moves almost entirely with net investment income ($114K-$564K/year).

Grants paid by year: $200,336 (2019), $322,340 (2020), $197,425 (2021), $173,249 (2022), $322,299 (2023) — volatile, averaging roughly $243K/year with no consistent growth trend. Total giving (grants plus related program costs) ran $367K-$553K/year over the same window.

Per-grant size, per the foundation's own typical_grant_size record, spans $250 to $75,000 across 24 tracked grants, with a median of just $1,000 and an average of $8,226 — a long tail of small, symbolic gifts ($250-$3,000) to alumni associations and local historical societies, punctuated by a handful of much larger gifts to core relationship organizations. Granted's grantee database (62 grants, $543,923 total, average $8,773) confirms this pattern: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center leads at $150,000 across 3 grants, followed by The Rashi School ($100,000/2 grants), a $75,000 pass-through to Ayco Charitable Foundation (a donor-advised fund, not an operating charity), Metropolitan Museum of Art ($51,000/6 grants), Combined Jewish Philanthropies ($45,000/3 grants), and Temple Beth Elohim ($44,158/6 grants). A third-party 990 aggregation (Grantable.co) shows an FY2024 outlier: a single $200,000 gift to Williams College, nearly double any grant in Granted's historical sample — evidence of occasional major one-off capital or endowment gifts above the typical range.

Geographically, Massachusetts dominates: 28 of 62 tracked grants (45% by count), and roughly 58% of dollars per Grantable's FY2024 breakdown, reflecting the family's Boston-area base. New York follows (12 grants, ~35% of FY2024 dollars), then Maine (7), Virginia (6), Georgia (4), Ohio (2), Vermont (2), and Maryland (1) — a scattered footprint tied to family homes and personal history rather than a defined service region. By purpose, essentially 100% of tracked grants are coded 'GENERAL CHARITABLE PURPOSE': the foundation does not fund defined program areas, consistent with unrestricted, relationship-based giving rather than a stated grantmaking strategy.

All five peers cluster within roughly $8,000 of Birchrock's $5.59M asset base and share the identical 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE classification, which indicates Granted's peer-matching here is asset-tier based rather than mission-based — these are not necessarily funders with overlapping subject-matter interests. Only one peer (Rolander) has a public website Granted could identify, and none of the five publish grantee lists, RFPs, or contact information for prospective applicants. That absence of public infrastructure is itself the useful signal: at this asset size ($5-6M, no paid staff, $0 officer compensation), family foundations overwhelmingly operate as closed, relationship-driven giving vehicles rather than institutional grantmakers, and Birchrock is a representative rather than unusual case within its peer set.

No independent press coverage or foundation announcements were found for Birchrock Foundation in 2025 or 2026 — searches for grant awards, application guidance, and news returned only foundation-directory listing pages (Cause IQ, Candid, Grantable, GuideStar) and unrelated results. That absence is itself informative: this is an unstaffed, non-communicating family vehicle, not an institutional funder with a press or program-officer function.

The most recent verifiable signal is a third-party aggregation of the foundation's Form 990-PF data (via Grantable.co) showing FY2024 giving of roughly $380,000 across 30 grants, up 17.8% year-over-year, with the single largest recipient being Williams College at $200,000 — a marked jump above any grant size in Granted's own historical grantee sample, where the largest cumulative grantee total was $150,000 to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center across three separate grants. This points to a probable one-time capital, endowment, or reunion-linked gift in 2024 rather than a new ongoing program area.

Leadership has been stable throughout the filing history on record: the same three managers — Lawrence J. Lasser, Michelle Lasser, and Ethan Lasser — appear with no reported changes, and none draw compensation in any year. Granted's foundation record was last refreshed 2026-07-25 and remains flagged 'preselected_only,' meaning the platform already treats Birchrock as a closed, relationship-based funder rather than one actively soliciting applications. Grant seekers should treat any claim of defined '2025/2026 funding priorities' with caution, since none could be independently verified beyond the consistent pattern of unrestricted 'general charitable purpose' giving to the same cluster of institutions.

There is no formal process to optimize — that is the central, actionable fact for this funder. No LOI portal, published RFP, or program-officer contact exists; the application_instructions field on file is blank and there is no application_form_url or funding_cycle. Attempting a cold, generic proposal is very unlikely to receive a response.

The highest-yield move is identifying an existing relationship: board membership, prior giving history, or a personal introduction to one of the three managers — Lawrence J. Lasser, Michelle Lasser, or Ethan Lasser. Given Ethan Lasser's career as a museum curator, arts and cultural institutions with a curatorial or museum-world connection (consistent with repeat gifts to the Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, MFA Boston, and Shelburne Museum) have a materially better shot than an unconnected proposal. Boston/Cambridge-area Jewish community organizations — day schools, synagogues, and federated giving (Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Temple Beth Elohim, The Rashi School, Adas Yoshuron Synagogue) — are a second strong lane, consistent with 45% of tracked grants by count landing in Massachusetts. Major teaching hospitals with Boston ties (Beth Israel Deaconess) and Williams College (a confirmed 2024 six-figure recipient) round out the pattern.

Organizations in coastal Maine (Waldoboro/Knox County) or St. Simons Island, GA should note the apparent seasonal-home or personal tie there — small, symbolic gifts ($500-$3,000) have gone to hyper-local groups like the Waldoborough Historical Society and Knox County Homeless Coalition; these are worth a modest ask but not a large one.

Calibrate ask size to the median, not the ceiling: most gifts are $500-$3,000 'friend of the institution' checks. Only request $50,000+ if you have a documented, direct relationship, as Williams College and Beth Israel Deaconess evidently do — unconnected requests at that level are very unlikely to land. Since essentially every tracked grant is coded 'general charitable purpose,' don't over-engineer program-specific language or a logic model; a simple annual-fund, capital-campaign, or membership-renewal ask that explicitly names the institutional or personal relationship will outperform a tailored proposal. The single most common mistake would be treating Birchrock like a staffed institutional foundation with published guidelines — it has none, and cold outreach to its Ayco/Graypoint administrative address is unlikely to reach anyone empowered to fund unsolicited requests.