Daphne Foundation

Daphne Foundation was founded in 1991 by Abigail Disney and Pierre Hauser II as a resource for New York City grassroots organizing. Critically, as of this research the foundation is not a live prospecting target: its own contact page states "we are not accepting grant applications at this time," and a December 17, 2024 announcement confirmed the foundation is spending down its endowment over the next few years rather than running an ongoing cycle. Any strategy for this funder has to start from that fact — the DB's "accepting_applications: true" flag is stale relative to the foundation's current public posture.

Historically, Daphne's approach was relationship-driven and narrow: nearly all top grantees carried the purpose code "GENERAL SUPPORT" (not project grants), and nine of its eleven top-tracked recipients each received exactly $120,000 spread across 3 grants — implying a standardized $40,000/year renewal commitment sustained over multiple years, not one-off awards. This is a funder that built a small, stable cohort of trusted NYC organizing groups (Justice Committee, VOCAL-NY, North Star Fund, African Communities Together, Faith in New York, Desis Rising Up and Moving, Brandworkers, Black Women's Blueprint, Project Hospitality) rather than spreading dollars across many first-time grantees.

Governance is lean and family-anchored: Abigail Disney (Secretary/Director), Pierre Hauser II (President/Director), and Yvonne Moore (VP/Treasurer/Director) sit on the board, with Ingrid Benedict as the paid Executive Director — her compensation rose from $83,409 (2021) to $152,183 (2023), consistent with taking on more responsibility as spend-down planning intensified. Decisions on new commitments almost certainly route through Benedict with board sign-off rather than a large program staff.

For organizations still hoping to engage Daphne, the realistic path during spend-down is indirect: aligning with the pooled funds it named (Anti-White Nationalism Pooled Fund, Solidaire's Movement Protection Fund) or building a relationship with North Star Fund, which is itself both a Daphne grantee and a re-granting intermediary with its own open, participatory process. Cold applications to Daphne directly are very unlikely to be reviewed at all.

Daphne is an endowment-funded private foundation with no ongoing fundraising (contributions_received was $0 in every recent filing year) — it lives off investment income and asset drawdown. Total assets have declined modestly but steadily: $9.92M (FY2020) → $9.85M (FY2021) → $9.45M (FY2022) → $9.25M (FY2023) → $9.31M (FY2024), roughly a 6% decline over five years even through generally strong markets, consistent with grant outflows exceeding net investment gains in several years.

Total giving (per 990, including program costs) actually trended upward heading into the spend-down announcement: $776,261 (FY2020) → $692,676 (FY2021, a dip) → $833,712 (FY2022) → $907,449 (FY2023) — a pattern consistent with front-loading distributions ahead of a full wind-down. Cash grants specifically ("grants_paid") were more stable and somewhat smaller: $488,000 (2020), $451,000 (2021), $400,000 (2022), $446,000 (2023), averaging roughly $445,000/year, or about 50-55% of total giving, with the remainder likely reflecting program/administrative costs or grant-payable timing.

At the grantee level, the tracked dataset shows 30 grants totaling $1,246,000 (average $41,533), and the DB's own typical-grant-size field confirms a tight band: minimum $40,000, maximum $45,000, median $40,000, average $41,000 across 11 recent grants. This is a funder writing a small number of similarly sized checks, not a broad small-grants program. Two smaller/newer relationships stand out — CAAAV (Organizing Asian Communities), $80,000 in a single grant, and Rockaway Youth Task Force, $80,000 across 2 grants — both below the $120,000/3-grant pattern of the core cohort, possibly indicating newer or exiting relationships.

Geographically and by purpose, the pattern is absolute: 100% of the 30 tracked grants went to New York state recipients (by_state: NY = 30), and almost every grant purpose is listed simply as "GENERAL SUPPORT," with only two grantees (Project Hospitality's El Centro del Immigrante program, North Star Fund's Communities United for Police Reform project) carrying a named project alongside general support. Daphne's Seattle mailing address (c/o Alti Tiedemann Global, a wealth/family-office manager) is purely administrative — it reflects where the endowment is managed, not a program-geography shift.

No peer foundations were returned in the structured data bundle for this profile, so the table below uses publicly known, approximate figures for comparable New York City-focused social/economic justice funders; treat the peer columns as directional rather than exact.

Daphne is the smallest asset base of this peer set and, notably, is also the only one currently closed to applicants — most comparable NYC social-justice funders still run active cycles. Its historically tight, standardized $40K grant size and near-exclusive use of general operating support also mark it as more concentrated/relational than larger peers like Astraea or New York Foundation, which fund larger and more geographically dispersed portfolios. Organizations that would have been a fit for Daphne should treat New York Foundation and North Star Fund as the closest live alternatives given nearly identical NYC-organizing focus and general-support orientation.

The most consequential recent event is Daphne's December 17, 2024 announcement that it is spending down its endowment over the next few years, closing out more than three decades of NYC grassroots grantmaking. The foundation said it would share more detail on the spend-down process in fall 2025, but no dated follow-up update was found on the site during this research (current date: July 2026) — the most recent public statement remains the December 2024 "Final Chapter" post. The foundation's contact page now explicitly states it is not accepting grant applications.

On the financial side, the FY2024 990 (the newest filing in the data bundle) shows total assets of $9,306,340 and total revenue of $734,003, with grants-paid figures not yet reported — consistent with a filing made mid-transition. Executive Director Ingrid Benedict's compensation rose sharply from $83,409 (2021) to $133,562 (2022) to $152,183 (2023), suggesting increased operational responsibility as spend-down planning ramped up.

General web search for "Daphne Foundation" news returned mostly noise from unrelated organizations sharing the name — the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation (Malta-based press-freedom foundation, active through 2026 with an investigative journalism center launch), Daphne International Holdings (Hong Kong-listed retailer, 2026 AGM/dividend news), the classical-music Daphne Awards (May 2026 ceremony at Tivoli Concert Hall), and the unrelated Daphne Art Foundation. None of these pertain to the NYC-based Daphne Foundation covered in this report. No specific 2025 or 2026 grant announcements from the NYC Daphne Foundation were found; its own site is the most current and authoritative source, and it currently offers no active grants program.

The single most important tip: do not submit a proposal or LOI to Daphne right now. The foundation's own contact page states it is "not accepting grant applications at this time," and its December 2024 announcement confirms it is winding down as a going grantmaking concern. Spending time on a cold application here has effectively zero expected return until/unless the foundation issues a new public update.

If you want to stay positioned in case the spend-down process opens a window (the foundation promised more detail in "fall 2025," which has passed without a visible public update as of mid-2026), sign up for its email newsletter via the site and check the "Recent Updates"/"Reflections from Our Team" sections periodically — that is where any reopening would be announced, not a dedicated grants portal.

A more productive near-term strategy is indirect engagement. Daphne explicitly named two vehicles it is funneling spend-down resources toward: the Anti-White Nationalism Pooled Fund and Solidaire Network's Movement Protection Fund. Organizations doing pro-democracy or anti-white-nationalism organizing work should investigate eligibility for those pooled funds directly, since they may now carry Daphne dollars without Daphne itself as the point of contact. Separately, North Star Fund — a $120,000 (3-grant) Daphne grantee in its own right — runs a participatory, community-vote grantmaking process open to NYC organizing groups; building a relationship there is a realistic, currently-open substitute for direct Daphne access.

For context on what Daphne valued when it was actively funding (useful in framing outreach to similar NYC social-justice funders such as New York Foundation or Astraea): it prioritized general operating support over project grants, multi-year renewal relationships (its core cohort received $40K/year for 3 consecutive years) over one-off gifts, groups where affected community members hold real decision-making power (not just token participation), NYC 501(c)(3) status within the five boroughs, and low administrative burden on grantees. A proposal to a peer funder that leads with resident-led organizing, an intersectional justice frame, and a request for unrestricted general support mirrors exactly what Daphne historically funded.

Common mistake to avoid: treating the DB's "accepting_applications: true" flag as current truth — it is contradicted by the foundation's live website and should not be relied on for outreach planning.