Cordelia Corp

Cordelia Corp is a closed, family-directed private foundation with no website, no published mission statement, no staff, and no public application process (its own Form 990-PF filings list application instructions as none). Every third-party aggregator checked — Instrumentl, Candid/Foundation Directory Online, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Cause IQ — confirms the same picture: Instrumentl specifically lists "0 live grant opportunities." This behaves less like a program-driven foundation and more like a personal giving vehicle for its three uncompensated officers, Mary A. Bing (President), Douglas Ellis (Treasurer), and William Stinehart Jr. (Secretary), registered at a Reno, NV address (990 N. Sierra St.) typical of a Nevada-incorporated private foundation administered by a registered agent rather than staffed from an actual program office.

The grantee list bears this out. Of 35 grants totaling $35.03M tracked since roughly 2021, the two largest recipients — Yale University ($15.99M across 3 gifts for the "320 York St" renovation) and Stanford University ($9.38M across 3 gifts for the Frost Amphitheater renovation) — account for 72% of all dollars granted. These are capital-campaign gifts to elite universities, the kind negotiated directly with a university's development office by a major donor or alumnus, not solicited through an open RFP. The remaining grantee roster (New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, The Film Foundation, Transportation Alternatives, Bedales School/the John Badley Foundation in the UK, the London Library, the National Gallery London) reflects a narrow set of recurring personal interests: elite higher education, performing arts, film preservation, urban cycling/transportation advocacy, and UK cultural institutions with a likely alumni connection.

For grant seekers, this is not a fundable prospect via cold application. There is no LOI process, no deadline, no public contact, and any "accepting applications" flag in an aggregator database should be read as an unverified default, not evidence of an open door. Organizations with realistic odds fall into three buckets: (1) elite university capital campaigns where a trustee or family member is an alumnus or major donor, (2) New York performing-arts or film-preservation nonprofits, or (3) transportation/cycling advocacy groups in NYC (Transportation Alternatives alone received four separate gifts). Outside those categories, the best path in is a warm introduction through a shared board member, alumni network, or development-office contact who already has a relationship with the foundation's officers — not a written proposal.

Total assets stand at $100.3M (FY2024), down modestly from $105.4M in FY2018 as payout has generally outpaced net new contributions. Annual giving swings sharply: FY2021 was the peak in the dataset at $11.4M total giving ($10.665M in grants paid), coinciding with the large Yale/Stanford capital gifts, while FY2022-2023 giving fell to just $2.94M per year. FY2024 giving was $6.68M on total revenue of $6.37M and net investment income of $5.30M. FY2018 saw a one-time revenue spike to $35.6M driven by a $20.3M contribution influx into the corpus, yet grants paid that year held flat at $4.84M — new capital does not appear to translate quickly into higher payout.

At the grantee level, 35 grants totaling $35,026,288 have been tracked since roughly 2021, averaging $1,000,751 per recipient (a multi-year cumulative figure, not a single-grant size). The foundation's own typical-grant-size metadata, sampled from its 5 largest gifts, shows a range of $15,000 to $7,000,000 with a median of $500,000 and an average of $2,133,000 — a barbell pattern of a handful of massive capital gifts alongside many far smaller five-figure awards.

By program area (dollars, since 2021): higher education dominates at roughly $30.37M, or 87% of tracked giving — Yale ($15.99M), Stanford ($9.38M), and Alder Graduate School of Education ($5M, general support). Arts and culture (New York City Ballet $1.05M, Pacific Northwest Ballet $100K, The Film Foundation $150K, Maysles Documentary Center $30K, National Film Preservation Foundation $10K) totals roughly $1.34M, under 4%. Transportation/cycling advocacy (Transportation Alternatives $1.425M plus a separate $125K gift, Intandem Cycling $75K) totals about $1.63M, roughly 5%. UK cultural and educational institutions (Bedales School/John Badley Foundation $165K, the International Friends of the London Library $134,834, American Friends of the National Gallery London $134,834) total about $435K, roughly 1%.

Geographically, 18 of 35 grants (51%) went to New York-based recipients and 9 (26%) to California, with smaller counts in Connecticut (4), Virginia (2), Massachusetts (1), and Washington (1) — a strong NY/CA concentration despite the foundation's Nevada domicile, which corroborates third-party aggregator data showing the same geographic skew.

All five peer foundations cluster within about $150K of each other in total assets ($100.27M-$100.46M) and share the identical "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE classification as Cordelia Corp, which suggests this set was drawn as an asset-matched cohort rather than genuine program peers. Only Vibrant Village Foundation (Oregon) maintains a public website; the other three, like Cordelia Corp, publish no grants page, contact email, or application portal, reinforcing that closed, relationship-driven grantmaking is common — not unique to Cordelia Corp — among foundations at this roughly $100M asset tier. Grant seekers who cannot find a public presence for a foundation this size should default to treating it as invitation-only rather than assuming an undocumented application process exists.

Web research turned up no foundation-specific press coverage, leadership announcements, or program news for Cordelia Corp in 2025-2026 — unsurprising for a foundation with no website, communications staff, or public program. The most current verifiable information comes from its own IRS Form 990-PF filings as aggregated by Instrumentl, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and Cause IQ (Instrumentl cites data current through May 18, 2026). That data shows the foundation made 11 grants in FY2025, up from 4 in FY2024 and 5 in FY2022 — a recent uptick in grant-making volume, though total dollars given still sit well below the FY2021 peak of $11.4M.

Leadership has been stable across every filing reviewed: Mary A. Bing (President), Douglas Ellis (Treasurer), and William Stinehart Jr. (Secretary) appear consistently from the earliest available records through the most recent, with no reported officer turnover, and all three continue to serve without compensation. No new program announcements, RFPs, or public statements were located anywhere.

Absent any communications channel, the most reliable signal of current priorities remains the disbursement pattern itself. The FY2021 Yale ($15.99M) and Stanford ($9.38M) capital gifts appear to be the dominant recent activity on record, funding building and venue renovations — the "320 York St" project at Yale and the Frost Amphitheater at Stanford — that suggest multi-year capital pledges rather than one-off awards. Grant seekers should monitor future Form 990-PF filings (EIN 88-0326514) directly, since this is the only channel through which the foundation's evolving interests surface publicly.

Cordelia Corp is one of the harder foundations in this database to court through conventional grant-seeking channels, and applicants should calibrate expectations accordingly.

No public LOI, RFP, deadline, or online form exists anywhere — not on a foundation website (none is registered for this entity), not through Candid/Foundation Directory Online, and not through Instrumentl, which lists "0 live grant opportunities." Do not spend time searching for a portal; none has surfaced through any major grant-research platform.

Treat this as an identify-then-introduce prospect, not a write-and-submit one. The realistic path in is a warm introduction: a shared board member, a development officer at Yale or Stanford who already manages the relationship (both universities have received multi-year, multi-million-dollar capital gifts from this funder), or a personal connection to officers Mary A. Bing, Douglas Ellis, or William Stinehart Jr.

Fit matters more than need. The grantee list skews heavily toward institutions with a personal or alumni tie to the funders — elite university capital campaigns, New York performing arts and film preservation, and cycling/transportation advocacy in NYC (four separate gifts to Transportation Alternatives suggest an officer or family member is personally engaged with that cause). Organizations without a plausible personal connection to one of these themes are unlikely to be considered regardless of proposal quality.

If a genuine connection exists, lead with relationship-building rather than a cold proposal — request an introductory conversation through the shared contact before drafting any written ask. Given the foundation's capital-gift pattern (the Yale and Stanford gifts were structured as multi-year pledges paid across 2-3 installments), a large capital or naming-opportunity ask is more consistent with this funder's history than a program or general-operating request.

A common mistake to avoid: mailing an unsolicited general proposal to the Reno registered-agent address (990 N. Sierra St.). This is a corporate/trust administrative address, not a program office, and unsolicited mail is unlikely to reach a decision-maker.

Smaller nonprofits with only a modest personal connection have still received grants in the $1,000-$30,000 range (Michael Chekhov Association, Maysles Documentary Center, Grace Church), so a modest, relationship-based ask is not automatically out of reach even without capital-campaign scale.