Brady Hunter Foundation Inc.

Brady Hunter Foundation Inc. (North Miami Beach, FL; EIN 92-2272842) is a founder-led, fast-scaling private foundation built and run by Josh Fox, who serves as Chairman & Executive Director alongside David Kanfer (Secretary & Chief of Staff) and Shlomo Halberstam (Treasurer). This is not an open-application funder: the foundation checked the IRS box confirming it 'only makes contributions to preselected charitable organizations,' and third-party trackers list zero live, competitive grant opportunities. Officer compensation was $0 in FY2023, underscoring a lean, personally-driven operation rather than a staffed program office running formal RFP cycles. In practice, the foundation says it has built more than 80 strategic charitable partnerships across a dozen-plus countries in roughly three years, so despite the closed-door framing, it is clearly still adding partners actively — the entry point is simply relational rather than transactional. The documented process is to submit information 'thoroughly' via the Partners/contact form on bradyhunter.org, after which the team evaluates alignment and, if there's a fit, schedules a discovery call. There is no disclosed LOI template, deadline, or board review calendar, consistent with a founder making case-by-case decisions. Organizations that succeed tend to bring a specific, nameable, fundable project rather than a request for unrestricted operating support — recent grants funded an ambulance, a mobile veterinary unit, a surveillance drone, AI-enabled anti-poaching collars, and a vehicle for a gorilla protection team. First-time applicants should treat the contact form less like a cold-outreach grant application and more like a partnership pitch: lead with a discrete capital or program need with a clear price tag, a compelling narrative (the foundation was itself named for two beloved dogs, Brady and the founder's brother Hunter, and the language throughout its materials is emotionally driven — 'every life counts'), and quantifiable outcomes in the style the foundation itself reports (e.g., '117+ animals rehabilitated,' '44+ animals saved'). Media-friendly, joint-announcement-ready partnerships (the foundation regularly issues PR Newswire releases) appear to be especially attractive.

Financial data shows a foundation still in an early build-up and spend-down phase rather than a mature endowed grantmaker. In FY2023, the foundation received a large capital infusion — $10.4M in contributions against $10.4M in total revenue — pushing total assets to $10.2M; that year it reported $197,872 in total giving against just $41,180 in grants paid on its own 990 extract, with $0 officer compensation. By FY2024, total assets had fallen to $6.84M (a roughly one-third decline), while total revenue normalized sharply to $456,965 with no comparable new capital gift — consistent with the foundation actively distributing down its initial endowment rather than building a permanent corpus. Third-party 990 aggregation (Instrumentl) reports a considerably larger FY2024 distribution of $739,869 across 35 awards — implying an average grant near $21,000 — which sits within the foundation's own stated typical award range of $15,000 to $100,000. (Note: the DB's own extracted 2023 figures and Instrumentl's 2024 aggregate reflect different fiscal-year cuts and reporting methodologies, so treat the two as directional rather than a single reconciled total.) Either read points to a funder whose per-grant size is modest-to-mid relative to its asset base, favoring a larger number of smaller, project-specific checks over a few large grants. Geographically, 2024 awards concentrated in Florida, New York, and California, with additional grants to Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin, plus international awards to Argentina and Indonesia — evidence the foundation will fund well beyond its Miami base, including cross-border wildlife and veterinary work in Kenya, Rwanda/DRC, and South Africa. Programmatically, giving spans at least six buckets: animal advocacy/rescue, wildlife protection, environmental conservation, food security/homeless aid, children's empowerment, and discrete 'animal projects' — with a clear pattern of funding tangible equipment and infrastructure (ambulances, drones, vehicles, anti-poaching collars, mobile veterinary units) rather than general operating grants.

Brady Hunter Foundation sits squarely among a cluster of small, single-state or founder-driven Animals-category private foundations in the $6.5M-$7M asset range, but it stands out for its unusually high partner count, active PR presence, and international program footprint relative to peers of similar size.

All six foundations cluster tightly by asset size (within ~$460K of each other), suggesting Brady Hunter is not an outlier in capital base, but public data availability sets it apart: none of the five peers have a disclosed website in this dataset except Nature Defense Foundation, and none show the level of active media coverage, named partner organizations, or documented recent grants that Brady Hunter does. For grant seekers, this means Brady Hunter is comparatively easier to research and approach than its Animals-category peers, most of which appear to operate with minimal public visibility and no evident inbound application process at all.

The foundation has been highly active through 2025 and into 2026. On February 21, 2026, it hosted 'Padel for A Purpose,' a pro-am charity tournament at Reserve Padel Miami pairing elite athletes with the community to raise funds for vulnerable children and animals. In July 2025, Haute Living profiled founder Josh Fox and the foundation's growth to more than 80 strategic charitable partners across a dozen-plus countries, describing it as 'a global force for compassion and change.' Recent programmatic announcements include sponsorship of a new ambulance for the South Florida Wildlife Center; a strategic partnership with Sheldrick Wildlife Trust USA to fund a mobile veterinary team unit in Africa; a partnership with the Dian Fossey Fund to sponsor a 'Gorilla Protection Team and Vehicle Purchase' in Rwanda/DRC; sponsorship of a surveillance drone for VETPAW's anti-poaching operations; and a literacy partnership with Scholastic at Barbara Hawkins Elementary, a low-income school in Greater Miami. In 2025 the foundation also launched its 'Electric Carriage Initiative,' a campaign to phase out horse-drawn carriages in major U.S. cities — its most policy/advocacy-oriented initiative to date. On the domestic animal-welfare side, PAWS NY publicly credited the foundation (June 2024) with funding six pet-pantry food distribution events across New York City providing cat and dog food to households in need, illustrating the foundation's continued support for smaller, direct-service nonprofits alongside its larger international wildlife commitments. Leadership has remained stable, with Josh Fox as Chairman & Executive Director, David Kanfer as Secretary & Chief of Staff, and Shlomo Halberstam as Treasurer; no leadership changes were identified in available reporting.

There is no open portal, published deadline, or formal LOI template — treat outreach as relationship-building, not form-filling. Start at the 'Partners' page on bradyhunter.org and complete the contact form thoroughly; the foundation states its team reviews submissions for goal alignment and schedules a discovery call when there's a fit, so the form functions as a screening step before any real conversation happens. Because the foundation's own 990 filing confirms it gives only to preselected organizations, cold submissions with no prior visibility or introduction face long odds — look for warm paths in first, such as shared partner organizations (Global Strays, Muttville, VETPAW, Sheldrick Wildlife Trust USA, and the Dian Fossey Fund are known partners), South Florida animal-welfare or child-services networks, or press/media connections, since the foundation issues frequent PR Newswire announcements and clearly values co-brandable stories. Anchor the ask to a specific, priced, nameable project rather than general operating support — recent funded projects (an ambulance, a mobile veterinary unit, a surveillance drone, anti-poaching collars, a gorilla-protection vehicle) show the foundation prefers to 'buy' something concrete it can point to and publicize. Requests in the $15,000-$100,000 range match its documented typical award size; smaller, discrete asks (in the $15K-$25K band) appear more common given the ~$21,000 average implied by 2024 aggregate data. Use outcome-driven, quantified language mirroring the foundation's own reporting style ('X animals rescued,' 'X pounds of trash collected,' 'X families served') rather than abstract mission statements. Emotional, narrative-forward framing fits this funder's voice — the organization itself is named for two beloved dogs and its materials lean heavily on personal storytelling and 'every life counts' language. Common mistakes to avoid: submitting a generic annual-fund or capacity-building request with no specific deliverable; applying without first checking whether the organization's work maps to one of the foundation's six stated buckets (animal advocacy, wildlife protection, environmental conservation, food security/homeless aid, children's empowerment, animal projects); and treating this as a competitive grant cycle when it functions as an ongoing, rolling partnership-development process driven personally by the founder.