Cedar Street Foundation

Cedar Street Foundation is a small, family-controlled Boston private trust ($10.2M in assets) governed entirely by members of the Gardner family — M Dozier Gardner, Margaret B Gardner, Dozier L Gardner, Grace G Schoelkopf, and Diana G Vogel — none of whom draw compensation. Every third-party database that tracks the foundation (Grantmakers.io, CauseIQ, Instrumentl) independently confirms it funds only preselected organizations and does not accept unsolicited requests. There is no public application portal, no published mission statement, and no grants page; the domain listed in most directories, cedarstreet.org, is in fact an unrelated Baptist church in Georgia, underscoring that this funder maintains zero public communications presence. Grantees skew heavily toward organizations with an existing multi-year relationship: of the 75 grants in the available grantee data, 62 went to Massachusetts recipients, and many top grantees (Teach For America - Massachusetts, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Friends of Excel Academy Charter School, Massachusetts Audubon chapters) received the same size gift across three consecutive grant cycles rather than a single award. Several purpose fields reference named sub-funds — 'Gardner Family Fund' at Dana-Farber and 'Friends and Family' at Boys & Girls Club of Boston — strongly suggesting these are personal-network relationships tied to the trustees rather than competitively solicited grants. First-time applicants should not expect to break in cold. The realistic path is an introduction through an existing grantee, a shared board connection, or the foundation's registered agent, Nichols & Pratt LLP (50 Congress St, Ste 832, Boston), which administers the trust's filings and correspondence. Organizations with genuine Massachusetts roots in K-12 education reform, cancer/rare-disease research, environmental conservation (especially Cape Cod), or elite independent schooling are the closest fit to the existing portfolio. Because the foundation funds almost exclusively via unrestricted, general-operating gifts rather than project grants, the strongest positioning is as a stable, mission-critical partner already known to the family — not as a new applicant pitching a specific program.

Cedar Street Foundation distributed $1,915,000 across 75 grants in the available grantee dataset, for an average grant of $25,533. The most recent single-year snapshot (26 grants) shows a tighter, more typical range: median $20,000, average $23,269, minimum $10,000, maximum $50,000 — though historical top grantees (aggregated across multiple years) reached as high as $150,000 (Teach For America - Massachusetts; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, split across the 'Emergency Response Fund' and 'Gardner Family Fund'). Annual grant totals have grown steadily: $465,000 (2012) → $494,000-$610,000 (2013-2019) → $630,000 (2020) → $650,000 (2021) → $622,961 (2022) → $777,693 total giving / $710,000 grants paid (2023) → an estimated $805,000-$827,000 (2024, per third-party 990 analysis; the DB record for FY2024 does not yet carry a finalized grants-paid figure). Total assets rose from $7.86M (2012) to $10.19M (2024), driven mainly by investment returns — net investment income exceeded contributions received in most years, and contributions were $0 in 2019 and 2020 before rebounding to $325,507 (2021), $190,991 (2022), and $232,768 (2023), indicating the family resumed actively re-funding the trust. Geographically, giving is overwhelmingly Massachusetts-concentrated: 62 of 75 tracked grants (83%) went to MA-based organizations, with small numbers in California (5), North Carolina (3), Illinois (3), and Maryland (2). By purpose, the dominant category by far is 'UNRESTRICTED SUPPORT' — appearing in the purpose list for at least 20 of the top 32 grantees — confirming this is a general-operating-support funder, not a project-grant funder. Program-area weighting across the top grantees splits roughly across four buckets: K-12/youth education (Teach For America, Excel Academy, Building Excellent Schools, Lynch Leadership Academy, Boston Schools Fund, Steppingstone Foundation, Catholic Schools Foundation, OneGoal, Up Education Network, Tenacity, National Council on Teachers Quality — the single largest concentration by grant count); health/medical research (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Chordoma Foundation, Cure Alzheimer's Fund, Winchester Hospital Foundation, Partners In Health, Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research); environment/conservation (five separate Mass Audubon chapters, New England Aquarium, Arnold Arboretum); and human services/arts (Sherrill House, Cape Abilities, Boys & Girls Club of Boston, Chatham Orpheum Theater, Museum of Science). No officer or trustee draws compensation in any filing year, meaning essentially all revenue net of modest overhead reaches grantees.

Cedar Street Foundation sits in a cluster of similarly-sized private foundations (all roughly $10.2M in assets) tagged under the same Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category, but the peer set splits sharply on public accessibility.

Of the six foundations at this asset tier, Cedar Street Foundation and most of its true peers (Holder, Aresty, Bullfrogs and Butterflies) have no public grants page at all, reflecting a common pattern among sub-$15M single-family trusts: assets are large enough to generate meaningful annual giving (typically $500K-$800K) but the family has chosen not to build out grant-seeker-facing infrastructure. T.W. Lewis stands out as the exception, running an actual named 'Grant Partners' program with a visible application link — a useful reference model if Cedar Street's trustees were ever advised to formalize their process, but not the current reality for this funder.

No news coverage, press releases, leadership changes, or program announcements were found for Cedar Street Foundation in 2025-2026 — consistent with its near-total absence from public communications channels. The most concrete recent signal is financial: the FY2024 Form 990-PF (the latest on file, filed in early 2026) shows total assets of $10,187,221 and total revenue of $1,215,176, with third-party 990 analyses (Instrumentl) estimating roughly $805,000 in 2024 grant disbursements across an estimated 25 awards — up from $710,000 across grants paid in FY2023 and $622,961 in FY2022. That represents a real step-up in giving pace over the last two reported years. The five trustees (M Dozier Gardner, Margaret B Gardner, Dozier L Gardner, Grace G Schoelkopf, Diana G Vogel) have remained unchanged and uncompensated across all filings reviewed, suggesting stable, continuous family governance rather than any recent transition. Also notable: contributions received by the trust, which were $0 in both 2019 and 2020, resumed at $325,507 (2021), $190,991 (2022), and $232,768 (2023) — indicating the founding family began actively topping up the corpus again in this window, which likely explains the parallel rise in grant totals. No new grantee categories or geographic markets appear in the available data; the same core group of Massachusetts education, health, and conservation organizations continues to receive multi-year repeat support.

There is no formal application process to prepare for here in the conventional sense — three independent grant-tracking sources (Grantmakers.io, CauseIQ, Instrumentl) all describe Cedar Street Foundation as funding only preselected organizations and not accepting unsolicited proposals, and no LOI form, portal, deadline, or program officer contact exists anywhere online. The single most important tip is to recalibrate expectations: this is not a funder to apply to cold, it is a funder to be introduced to. Given that the purpose fields on the largest grants reference the 'Gardner Family Fund' and 'Friends and Family' designations, and that the trustees are all members of one family (Gardner/Schoelkopf/Vogel), organizations already connected to that family's personal or professional network — through board service, alma mater ties, or Cape Cod community institutions (Chatham Orpheum Theater, Mass Audubon Cape Cod, Cape Abilities are all Cape-based) — are far likelier to be considered than an organization reaching out through a general inquiry. If your organization has no existing tie, the most productive use of effort is indirect: identify board or staff overlap with current grantees (Teach For America - Massachusetts, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Audubon, Excel Academy Charter School, and Milton Academy are the largest and most established), and pursue a warm introduction through them rather than contacting the foundation directly. Any outreach that does happen should go through the registered agent, Nichols & Pratt LLP, at 50 Congress St, Suite 832, Boston, MA 02109 — the only address of record — and phone (617) 523-6800. Because virtually every grant in the dataset is coded 'UNRESTRICTED SUPPORT,' proposals (if ever solicited) should emphasize organizational stability and general operating need rather than a discrete project budget; this funder does not appear to fund one-off capital campaigns or pilot programs except in rare cases (e.g., a one-time $40,000 library construction gift to Milton Academy and a $40,000 Discovery Center capital gift to Mass Audubon Long Pasture). The common mistake to avoid is treating this like an open RFP funder and investing time in a cold, unsolicited full proposal — that effort is very unlikely to be read given the foundation's documented preselected-only posture.