Clover Fields Preservation Foundation Inc.

Clover Fields Preservation Foundation Inc. is not a conventional Arts & Culture grantmaker, and grant seekers should recalibrate expectations before investing time here. The foundation's own database record confirms it: `preselected_only` is set to true, it accepts applications by invitation only, and no application form, grants page, or deadline exists in its own filings (`application_instructions` is explicitly blank). Its IRS filings mark it as an operating foundation (`is_operating: true`), meaning its charitable activity is largely the direct restoration of a single asset — Cloverfields, an 18th-century plantation house in Queenstown, Maryland (Queen Anne's County, Eastern Shore) tied to the Hemsley family. The three listed officers, Stephen J. Hemsley (President), Barbara K. Hemsley (Director), and John M. Hemsley (Director), all serve uncompensated ($0 across every filing), consistent with a closely held family vehicle rather than a public-facing grants program. Web research corroborates this: no funder-facing forums or grant databases identify a submission process, and the one credible external grantee on record — Friends of Wye Mill Inc., for roughly $5,000 — is a hyperlocal historical organization operating in the same corner of the Eastern Shore as Cloverfields itself. First-time applicants should not read this foundation as a national or regional Arts & Culture funder; it is best understood as a working restoration project with a charitable wrapper. The only plausible opening for outside organizations is direct mission adjacency — Queen Anne's County historic preservation, Revolutionary War-era Maryland scholarship, decorative arts or textile conservation, or agricultural history tied to the Eastern Shore's colonial plantation economy. For those organizations, the realistic path is not a proposal but a relationship: offering a research collaboration, object loan, or joint public program that dovetails with the foundation's own restoration and curatorial work, initiated through direct outreach rather than a cold LOI. Everyone else should treat this listing as a landscape data point for understanding small, single-project family operating foundations in the historic-preservation space, not as an active prospect.

Clover Fields' financials show a single-project spending arc rather than a diversified grants portfolio. Total assets peaked at $14,618,986 in FY2022 and have since fallen 64% to $5,212,414 in FY2024, driven by heavy restoration-era spending and no fresh capital since 2022. "Total giving" (which here means direct program/restoration expenditure, not third-party grants) ran $2,730,890 in FY2019, $4,445,826 in FY2020, $3,056,344 in FY2021, then dropped to $947,061 in FY2022 and $884,467 in FY2023 as the active restoration wound down — the foundation's own site confirms pre-restoration surveys (2018) and post-restoration documentation (2022) as the bracketing milestones. Critically, `grants_paid` is reported as $0 in every year with data, confirming this foundation does not distribute grants to outside 501(c)(3)s as its normal mode of operation; virtually all recorded giving is spent on the foundation's own architects, archaeologists, dendrologists, craftsmen, and curatorial staff. Contributions received were lumpy and family-sourced: $723,458 (FY2019), $4,066,560 (FY2020), $5,000,238 (FY2021), $2,009,285 (FY2022), then $0 in FY2023 — a sharp funding cutoff after the main capital campaign. Net investment income has been volatile ($3.9M in FY2019 during a market peak, down to $102,626 in FY2022), reflecting a conventional endowment portfolio rather than active grantmaking reserves. The foundation was effectively dormant from FY2012-FY2015, holding under $10,000 in assets and giving away token amounts ($2,751-$7,295/year) before its 2019 recapitalization — an 8x-plus asset jump that marks the true start of the restoration project. There is no program-area or geographic breakdown to analyze beyond the single Queenstown, Maryland property; this foundation has no history of the kind of multi-grantee giving pattern (median size, range, sector split) that would normally anchor this section.

The peer set is matched almost entirely on asset size ($5.21M-$5.25M) and shared NTEE Arts & Culture classification rather than on mission similarity — none of the five peers have public grants pages, application details, or giving totals surfaced in this research, so no head-to-head comparison of accessibility is currently possible. One peer stands out as structurally analogous: Open Field Foundation Bramble Hill Farm (MA) pairs a place name with "Foundation" the same way Clover Fields does, suggesting it may be another single-estate or single-property operating foundation rather than a multi-grantee funder — worth flagging for anyone building a comparison set of small preservation-focused operating foundations. Absent further data, grant seekers should not assume any of these five peers are more accessible than Clover Fields; each requires its own direct-outreach verification before an LOI is drafted.

Clover Fields' public activity is entirely programmatic (restoration and research updates) rather than grantmaking news, and it flows through the foundation's own newsletter rather than press coverage. The most recent issue (August 5, 2026) covers Col. William Hemsley's Revolutionary War service in the Second Continental Congress alongside new portraiture research on Charlotte Hemsley. The March 24, 2026 issue paired a piece titled "Henny Hemsley's Fight for Freedom" with commentary on early-republic tariffs and an update on period floor-covering restoration. The November 25, 2025 issue documented bedchamber furnishing work and a 1705-2025 retrospective on the estate's agricultural practices. A July 2, 2025 special issue marked America's 250th anniversary, tying Col. Hemsley's Revolutionary War role and Cloverfields' history to the nearby Wye Mill site. The most recent single artifact acquisition of note was the October 29, 2024 return of an 1799 miniature portrait of Henrietta Maria Hemsley by artist Robert Field, back at Cloverfields after more than two centuries. No leadership changes, new program announcements, or grant awards were identified in this research window — the three-person Hemsley family board (Stephen J. as President, Barbara K. and John M. as Directors) appears unchanged across all available filings, and there is no indication the foundation has opened or plans to open a competitive grants program.

There is no live application process to optimize for at Clover Fields Preservation Foundation — its own IRS record marks it `preselected_only`, its application-instructions field is blank, and no application form, portal, or deadline exists anywhere in its public filings or website. The single biggest mistake a grant seeker could make here is treating the NTEE "Arts & Culture" classification as a signal that this is an open RFP funder; it is not, and a cold LOI or proposal submission will almost certainly go unanswered, since the foundation's own "giving" is overwhelmingly spent on its own restoration contractors rather than external grantees. The one documented exception — a roughly $5,000 grant to Friends of Wye Mill Inc. — points to the only realistic opening: hyperlocal, mission-adjacent organizations within Queen Anne's County, Maryland's Eastern Shore, doing work that intersects directly with Cloverfields' own research agenda (Revolutionary War-era Maryland history, 18th-century decorative arts and portraiture, textile and furniture conservation, or plantation-era agricultural history). For organizations in that narrow lane, the productive move is relationship-first, not proposal-first: subscribe to the foundation's newsletter to track its current research threads, then reach out via cpf@cloverfieldspreservationfoundation.org or P.O. Box 297, Queenstown, MD 21658 with a specific collaboration offer — a research partnership, an object loan, a joint public program, or shared programming tied to the 250th-anniversary content the foundation has been publishing through 2025-2026 — rather than a funding request framed as a standard grant application. Timing-wise, the foundation's own spending has contracted sharply since its FY2020-FY2021 restoration peak (down to under $900K/year by FY2023, with zero new contributions received in FY2023), so this is not a moment of expansive new funding capacity; any outreach should be framed as mutual benefit (visibility, scholarship, shared audience) rather than an ask for a grant of meaningful size. Given the all-volunteer, uncompensated Hemsley family board, expect any response to be slow and personal rather than staffed and process-driven.