De La Cour Family Foundation

De La Cour Family Foundation is a small, entirely unstaffed private foundation run by three uncompensated family directors — Willis S. De La Cour Jr., Dr. Edmund P. De La Cour, and Lea De La Cour — with no program officer, no published grants page, and no application form on file. Its own records mark grants as effectively preselected, and 100% of the top 50 recorded grants carry the identical purpose code 'to help fund the recipient's operating budget,' meaning this is a general-operating funder, not one that solicits project proposals through a formal review cycle. The realistic path in is relational, not transactional. Across 398 recorded grants, the largest single relationship is First Parish in Concord (a Unitarian Universalist congregation), which received $158,000 across three consecutive grants — the clearest evidence that the family has a durable, faith-community tie in Concord, Massachusetts. A second cluster of Unitarian Universalist grantees (UU Mass Action Emergency Fund, UUM Meetinghouse Restoration Campaign, UU Urban Ministry) reinforces that this congregational network is a meaningful entry point for aligned organizations. Beyond that anchor, giving fans out to environmental and land conservation groups (Massachusetts Audubon Society, Audubon New York, Trustees of Reservations, Billion Oyster Project, Preservation Long Island), civil-liberties and civic organizations (ACLU Foundation of Massachusetts, RepresentUs Education Fund, Tides Foundation Movement Voter Fund), community health (Partners In Health, SeekHealing, University of Michigan Scleroderma Biorepository Fund), and independent education (Darrow School, Hartsbrook, Pratt Institute). First-time applicants should not expect a competitive RFP process or site visit — there is no evidence either exists. Instead, first asks should be modest: the median recorded grant is $2,000, and most top recipients built up to larger cumulative totals only after 2-3 consecutive years of renewed, modest support. Organizations with a genuine tie to the Concord, MA or Glen Cove, NY communities, the UU faith network, or New England land conservation stand the best chance; a cold ask from an unrelated cause or region, however worthy, has little precedent in this foundation's giving history.

The foundation is funded exclusively by investment income — contributions received were $0 in every filing year on record — and its endowment has grown from $3.34M (2012) to $7.44M (2023) and $7.71M (FY2025 per its most recent 990-PF), roughly doubling in just over a decade. Giving has scaled with that asset growth: total giving rose from $471,595 (2012) to a peak of $886,448 (2021, a year of unusually strong investment gains), settling to $749,441 (2023) and $781,550 (FY2025). The 2023 payout ratio — $749,441 in giving against $7,438,202 in assets — works out to roughly 10.1%, comfortably above the 5% federal minimum distribution requirement, indicating an above-average payout relative to endowment size for a foundation this small. At the grant level, Granted's typical-grant-size metric shows a median of $2,000, an average of $5,094, and a range of $150 to $49,000 across 129 tracked grants — confirming this is a high-volume, small-dollar funder rather than one writing a handful of large checks. The aggregated grantee history (398 total grants, $1,964,950 cumulative, averaging $4,937/grant) supports the same picture. Geographically, giving concentrates heavily in the Northeast: New York accounts for 198 of 398 grants (49.7%) and Massachusetts for 93 (23.4%) — together 73.1% of all recorded grants — with smaller footprints in Maine (19), Rhode Island (16), Pennsylvania (11), DC and Florida (8 each), and Connecticut/Virginia/New Hampshire (3-4 each). By theme, the largest identifiable clusters among the top 50 grantees are environment/conservation (roughly a dozen organizations, including Massachusetts Audubon Society, Audubon New York, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the Trustees of Reservations), Unitarian Universalist/faith institutions (First Parish in Concord and three affiliated UU causes), civic/social-justice organizations (ACLU of Massachusetts, RepresentUs, Community Service Society of New York, First Nations Development Institute, New Israel Fund), education (Darrow School, Hartsbrook, Pratt Institute, University of Pennsylvania, INSEAD), and community health (Partners In Health, SeekHealing, the University of Michigan Scleroderma Biorepository Fund). Nearly every grant is general operating support rather than project-restricted funding.

Granted's peer set groups De La Cour with five other small, family-run foundations that fall in the same $7.70M-$7.71M asset band — a striking cluster that reflects an asset-proximity match rather than confirmed thematic similarity, since none of these peers publishes a website or public grant guidelines either.

What stands out is not a competitive advantage for any single foundation but a category-wide pattern: all six are unstaffed, single-family vehicles with essentially no public disclosure beyond their IRS Form 990-PF, and none maintains a working grants website. Applicants should not expect De La Cour to be an unusually closed outlier within this peer group — closed, relationship-driven grantmaking is the norm at this asset tier — which means the differentiator for grant seekers is not process sophistication but finding an actual personal or community connection to the family.

No dedicated press coverage, announcements, or program launches were found for the De La Cour Family Foundation in 2025 or 2026 — consistent with an unstaffed, non-publicized family vehicle that does not maintain an active web presence (delacour.org currently serves only a generic 'under construction' hosting placeholder). The single verifiable recent data point is the foundation's FY2025 Form 990-PF, filed March 4, 2026, which reported $658,306 in revenue, $917,837 in expenses, $781,550 in charitable disbursements (85.2% of total expenses), and net assets of $7,709,229 — essentially unchanged from the $7,438,202 reported for fiscal year 2023 in Granted's database, once normal investment fluctuation is accounted for. Leadership has shown no turnover: the same three De La Cour family directors — Willis S. De La Cour Jr., Dr. Edmund P. De La Cour, and Lea De La Cour — appear as the foundation's sole governance across every filing year on record, and none has ever drawn officer compensation. There is no indication of a staff hire, a new program area, or a public grant cycle being introduced. Given the absence of fresh public signals, the most reliable guide to current funding intent remains the historical grant pattern itself: a multi-year renewal relationship with roughly 400 recorded grants, heavily concentrated in New York and Massachusetts, and anchored by a decade-plus relationship with First Parish in Concord and its affiliated Unitarian Universalist causes. Grant seekers should not expect this foundation's priorities to shift meaningably year to year — its giving has moved in lockstep with investment returns, not strategic repositioning.

This foundation shows every sign of being a closed, relationship-based funder rather than one running a competitive grant cycle: there is no grants page URL, no application form URL, no stated deadline, and Granted's own enrichment records list the application-instructions field as blank while flagging grants as effectively preselected. Practical implications for grant seekers: First, do not rely on delacour.org for guidance — it currently redirects to a generic parked-domain placeholder with no foundation content, so treat any 'official site' information found elsewhere with caution. Second, because virtually all of the largest historical relationships (First Parish in Concord at $158,000 across 3 years; United Movement To End Child Soldiering at $92,000 across 2 years) show multi-year renewal patterns rather than one-off competitive awards, the strongest strategy is securing a warm introduction — through a shared Unitarian Universalist congregation, a Concord, MA or Glen Cove, NY community connection, or a referral from an existing grantee — rather than submitting a cold, unsolicited proposal. Third, the only documented contact channel is postal/phone: '% Willis S De La Cour,' 3 Pond View Dr, Glen Cove, NY 11542, phone (718) 852-3271; there is no email or online form on file. Fourth, right-size the ask to this foundation's actual scale — the median recorded grant is $2,000 and the typical range is $150 to $49,000, so a first-time request above roughly $10,000-$15,000 sits well outside the norm even though the single largest historical grant reached $49,000. Fifth, frame the request around general operating stability, not a restricted program — every one of the top 50 recorded grants carries the purpose 'to help fund the recipient's operating budget,' with no project-specific grants identified in the sample. Sixth, organizations working in environmental/land conservation, Unitarian Universalist community life, civil liberties and voting rights, community health, or independent education, and based in New York or Massachusetts (73% of all recorded grants), sit squarely inside this foundation's demonstrated pattern; organizations entirely outside those themes and geographies have little precedent to point to. The most common mistake to avoid is treating this like a large, staffed institutional funder — with three uncompensated family directors and no program officer, a polished, cold, multi-page LOI is unlikely to receive the kind of formal review it would at a larger foundation.