Coleman Foundation

A critical flag before any strategy: the IRS record behind this report (EIN 13-6126040, a Trust based at a Rye Brook, NY accounting-firm address, "c/o Revonary") does not appear to be the same organization as the website on file, colemanfoundation.org, which describes a Chicago 501(c)(3) headquartered at 20 N. Wacker Dr. Nothing in the IRS filings — geography, asset size, grantee list, staffing — matches the Chicago organization's profile. Grant seekers should verify the EIN of any 'Coleman Foundation' they are pursuing before investing time. The remainder of this analysis treats the two as distinct: quantitative sections describe the actual filer (EIN 13-6126040); news and application-process sections, sourced from the live website, describe the Chicago namesake, clearly labeled. For the actual filer: this is a small, single-trustee vehicle (John Coleman, Trustee, $0 compensation) with no paid staff since at least 2015 and no public grants program. Every one of the 107 sampled recent grants is coded "GENERAL SUPPORT," and the same roughly 50 institutions recur with grant_count values of 2-4 across the sampled years — Cedars-Sinai Medical Center ($216,000/4 grants), the Kravis Center ($73,000/3), University of Miami's Lowe Art Museum ($60,000/4), and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine ($52,500/4) top the list. That repeat-recipient pattern, concentrated in hospitals, performing-arts institutions, synagogues, and university medical/arts programs across New York, South Florida, and Southern California, is the signature of a founder- or trustee-directed personal giving vehicle rather than an institutional program with open competition. First-time applicants with no existing relationship to the trustee or these legacy institutions should not expect a cold LOI or proposal to succeed — there is no eligibility survey, RFP, or portal on file, and "application_instructions" in the underlying data is explicitly blank. The realistic path in is an existing board, medical-staff, or congregational connection to the Coleman family circle, not a competitive application process.

Based on IRS Form 990-PF data for EIN 13-6126120: total assets have declined steadily from $4.67M (FY2012) to $3.39M (FY2022), a roughly 27% erosion over a decade, while total giving has stayed comparatively flat — $296,327 in FY2022, $294,000 in FY2021, $331,044 in FY2020, $307,935 in FY2019, and $359,165 in FY2018. That implies a payout rate around 7-9% of assets in most years, well above the 5% IRS minimum, consistent with a foundation slowly spending down rather than growing its corpus. One outlier year, FY2010, shows a $1,245,155 total-giving spike (versus a normal ~$250K-$350K band), suggesting a one-time special distribution rather than a new baseline. The typical_grant_size field puts the modal award at a median of $6,500 and an average of $9,460, with a floor of $1,000 and a ceiling of $50,000 per single grant line — though top recipients receive that ceiling repeatedly across years, pushing multi-year cumulative totals into six figures (Cedars-Sinai's $216,000 across 4 gifts, for example). Geographically, of 107 recent sampled grants, New York accounts for 43 (40%), California 30 (28%), Florida 19 (18%), with single-digit tails in Arizona (5), Texas (4), Pennsylvania (2), Rhode Island (2), the District of Columbia (1), and New Mexico (1) — a pattern that maps to the trustee's likely residences/circles (New York, Palm Beach, Los Angeles) rather than any programmatic geographic mandate. There is no program-area breakdown in the data (100% of purposes are "GENERAL SUPPORT"), but the recipient names cluster into four informal buckets: hospitals/medical research (Cedars-Sinai, Charles R. Drew University, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Tower Cancer Research Foundation, Memorial Sloan-Kettering), performing arts (Kravis Center, Lincoln Center, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Geffen Playhouse), Jewish communal organizations (Jewish National Fund — appearing under two name variants totaling $80,000/6 grants combined, Congregation Emanu-El, UJA-Federation of New York), and Palm Beach-area civic/recreation groups (Palm Beach Police & Fire Foundation, Frenchman's Creek Charity Foundation, Palm Beach Area Tennis Patrons).

No peer foundations were returned in the underlying data bundle (the "peers" field was empty), so this table pairs the actual filer against the Chicago organization sharing its name — useful precisely because seekers are likely to conflate the two — plus general benchmarks for the small-family-trust category this filer actually belongs to.

The contrast is stark: this filer gives roughly 3% of what the same-named Chicago organization gives annually, has no staff, no website, and no competitive process, while the Chicago namesake runs a fully staffed, twice-yearly competitive grant cycle with defined program strategy documents. Grant seekers who found this foundation while searching for Chicago health, disability, or entrepreneurship funding are almost certainly looking for the unrelated Chicago organization, not this trust.

For the actual IRS filer, there is no recent activity to report: no website, no press coverage, and no filings in the bundle newer than FY2022 (grants_paid $248,880, total_assets $3,387,708) — consistent with a quiet, low-profile personal giving vehicle that generates no news. All identifiable recent activity under the "Coleman Foundation" name belongs to the Chicago organization at colemanfoundation.org. That organization appointed Nora Garcia as Executive Director effective July 7, 2025, succeeding prior leadership; Garcia previously spent seven years as Director of Programs at the Healthy Communities Foundation, where she already collaborated with Coleman on healthcare-access work, and holds a master's in social work from the University of Chicago. Her appointment came with public messaging about "updated grantmaking strategies" and board co-chair Alison Fitzgerald's statement that the Foundation would move toward initiatives "grounded in collaboration and community insight." In its first 2025 cycle under the refreshed strategy, the Chicago Foundation funded 31 organizations across its Entrepreneurship and IDD portfolios (per its Spring 2025 Newsletter). Most recently, it opened its 2026 program year with parallel Health and Entrepreneurship open calls: the Health Open Call spans a 2025-2027 investment window emphasizing accessible, equitable, and preventive care, with an eligibility survey opening on its Fluxx portal January 23, 2026, and two full cycles (spring: LOI Feb 27, proposal Apr 30; fall: LOI Jun 1, proposal Aug 5, all 2026 dates). Grant seekers targeting the Chicago organization should treat this cycle calendar as current and time outreach accordingly; those targeting the actual EIN 13-6126040 filer should not expect any comparable public cycle to exist.

Two very different playbooks apply depending on which "Coleman Foundation" is actually being pursued. If it is the EIN 13-6126040 trust behind this report: there is no LOI form, no eligibility survey, and no listed program officer — "application_instructions" is blank in the underlying filing data, and the grantee pattern (the same ~50 institutions renewed year after year at grant_count 2-4) indicates the trustee funds people and institutions he already knows rather than responding to inbound proposals. The only realistic entry point is a warm introduction through a shared board, medical staff, congregation, or alumni connection to one of the current recipients (Cedars-Sinai, the Kravis Center, Charles R. Drew University, Lincoln Center, or the Jewish National Fund are the largest and most consistently funded). Cold outreach by mail or email has no evident precedent in the data and should not be a primary strategy. If instead the target is the Chicago namesake at colemanfoundation.org: proposals there are explicitly invitation-only, so the first move is not a proposal but visibility — build a relationship with program staff, get organizational impact data in front of them through community channels, and watch the site's "News & Updates" page for open-call announcements rather than submitting unsolicited materials. When a call does open (as with the 2026 Health cycle), start with the Fluxx eligibility survey the moment the portal opens (January 23, 2026 for the 2026 cycle) since slots and staff attention are finite in a compressed six-week LOI window. Have audited financials from within the last two years ready in advance — this is a hard documentation requirement, not a formality. Keep requests at or below 25% of total organizational budget; proposals exceeding that ratio are explicitly out of scope. Submit only one active request per institution — the Foundation will not entertain parallel asks from different departments of the same organization. Common mistakes to avoid with the Chicago organization: applying outside Cook County, Illinois service areas (out of geographic scope), requesting funds for individuals, tuition, endowments, inpatient care, or general operating support for a religious/proselytizing program (all explicitly excluded), and submitting a proposal before being invited to do so.