Devereux Ocean Foundation Inc.

Devereux Ocean Foundation Inc. is a small, closely-held family foundation (EIN 82-4193252, IRS ruling February 2019) run out of a Jamestown, Rhode Island PO Box by President Mark Grosby and CFO Suzanne Grosby, with Paul Beard as the sole outside director. Every independent grant database that tracks this funder — Instrumentl, Grantable, Zeffy, and Grantmakers.io — describes it the same way: invitation-only, no public RFP, no unsolicited proposals accepted. That characterization is corroborated by the foundation's own IRS filings, which list no grants page, no application form, and no defined funding cycle, and by the fact that devereuxoceanfoundation.org currently resolves to an unclaimed Cloudflare placeholder page rather than a working website. This is a relationship-driven vehicle, not a competitive grants program. Of the 29 tracked grants totaling $1,180,660, four organizations — Perry Institute for Marine Science, Bahamas Marine Mammal Research, Friends of the Environment, and University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography — together account for $1,039,350 (88% of all tracked dollars) across repeat multi-year grants (4 grants apiece). The remaining seven grantees split the last 12% in one-off or two-time gifts. For a first-time applicant, this concentration is the single most important fact: Devereux is not scanning for new grantees, it is renewing commitments to a small circle of Bahamas-focused marine science and Rhode Island marine-education partners it has funded since at least 2019-2020. The realistic path in is a warm introduction through one of those four anchor grantees — particularly Perry Institute (coral reef research/restoration in the Bahamas) or URI's GSO (ocean curriculum development) — or direct, personal outreach to Mark Grosby that demonstrates specific alignment with Abaco/Bahamas marine science or Narragansett Bay-area ocean education, since generic national marine-conservation appeals outside that geography have no track record of funding here.

Across 29 tracked grants (2019-2024), Devereux has given $1,180,660 total, averaging $40,712 per grant, with individual awards ranging from $2,500 (Angari Foundation, shark research) up to $85,000-class awards cited in third-party 990 summaries; the foundation's own 'typical grant size' field records a median of $55,000 and a range of $2,500-$60,610 across its five most recent tracked awards. By program area: coral reef research and restoration is the largest single line at $310,000 (26% of total, all to Perry Institute for Marine Science, across 4 grants for Bahamas coral rescue and Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease response); marine mammal research is next at $269,350 (23%, all to Bahamas Marine Mammal Research, funding sperm-whale nursery noise studies and dolphin population surveys in the Sea of Abaco); ocean/marine education totals $460,000 combined (39%) split between Friends of the Environment ($260,000, Abaco reef education and fisher training) and URI GSO ($200,000, K-12 ocean curriculum development); the remaining $141,310 (12%) covers one-off gifts — hurricane debris removal ($50,000, Idea Relief Foundation), an environmental-science teaching chair ($30,000, The Hotchkiss School), turtle research ($28,810, Eleuthera Institute), a dock renewal ($20,000, Mystic Seaport Museum), microplastics research and STEM sailing ($5,000 each), and shark research ($2,500). At the foundation level, direct grants paid have run $212,025-$310,175/year from 2019-2023 (avg. ~$262,000/yr), while broader 'total giving' (which includes non-grant qualifying distributions) has been more volatile: $399,131 (2019, boosted by a one-time $4M contribution that year) → $961,312 (2020 peak) → $598,450 (2021) → $612,519 (2022) → $699,148 (2023). Total assets have stayed essentially flat at ~$7.2M since 2019, meaning the foundation spends close to what its investment income generates ($136,511-$538,211/yr in net investment income) rather than growing its corpus. Geographic distribution of grantee dollars: Vermont (10 grants), Florida (7), Rhode Island (6), Connecticut (5), Massachusetts (1) — reflecting where partner organizations are headquartered even though program activity is concentrated in the Bahamas.

Devereux's closest financial peers (matched on asset size, ~$7.18-7.19M, within the generic 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE category rather than by marine-conservation focus — no true subject-matter peer set exists at this scale) are:

These peers share Devereux's asset tier but not its program focus — none work in marine science, so the comparison is structural (foundation size and capacity) rather than competitive for the same grant dollars. What stands out is that Devereux, despite modest assets by foundation standards, punches above its weight in program concentration: rather than spreading $7M in assets across a broad grantee pool the way a generalist family foundation might, it channels the bulk of its annual distributions into four deeply-relationshipped, subject-matter-specific partners. That makes it a poor prospect for broad-based nonprofits and a strong, if narrow, target for organizations already embedded in Bahamas marine science or Rhode Island ocean-education circles.

The most recent Form 990-PF on file was submitted November 12, 2025, covering fiscal year 2024, and shows total assets of $7,183,602, total revenue of $357,550, and approximately $302,500 distributed across 6 grantees — a narrower grantee list than the 8-9 organizations funded annually in 2020-2022, consistent with the foundation consolidating around its core repeat partners rather than adding new ones. No press releases, leadership changes, or new program announcements turned up in web search for 2025-2026; officer roster (Mark Grosby, President; Suzanne Grosby, CFO/Treasurer; Paul Beard, Director) has been stable since at least 2019. Officer compensation has risen steadily each year on file — $135,426 (2019) → $165,900 (2020) → $174,000 (2021) → $174,000 (2022) → $200,100 (2023) — indicating the foundation is being actively managed rather than dormant, even though its public-facing footprint (the devereuxoceanfoundation.org domain currently shows only a default Cloudflare parking page) has effectively gone dark. No large single-year grant spike or new coral/marine-mammal initiative was identified beyond the ongoing Perry Institute and Bahamas Marine Mammal Research renewals already reflected in the grantee data. Given the absence of any public news cycle around this funder, grant seekers should treat the 990 filing itself — not press coverage — as the authoritative source for what the foundation funded most recently, and should not expect the foundation to publicize new priorities before acting on them.

There is no formal application to optimize — the foundation confirms via its own filings (no grants page, no application form URL, no stated funding cycle) and via third-party grant databases that it does not accept unsolicited proposals. Cold LOIs mailed to the PO Box (% Mark Grosby, PO Box 537, Jamestown, RI 02835-0537) are unlikely to be read into a live evaluation process; there is no email, portal, or phone number on record, and the foundation's own domain is an unclaimed placeholder, so there is no website to monitor for changing guidance. The highest-leverage move for an organization outside the current grantee circle is to get introduced by one of the four anchor partners — Perry Institute for Marine Science, Bahamas Marine Mammal Research, Friends of the Environment, or URI's Graduate School of Oceanography — since all four have received repeat, multi-year support (4 grants each) and clearly have a standing relationship with the Grosbys. A second viable path is direct, personal outreach that mirrors the language and geography of what has already been funded: Abaco/Bahamas coral reef restoration (especially Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease response), sperm whale/dolphin research in the Sea of Abaco, K-12 ocean curriculum development tied to a Rhode Island or New England institution, or hurricane-related marine habitat restoration in the Bahamas. Proposals framed around national or generic ocean-conservation branding, without a specific Bahamas or southern-New England tie, do not match anything in the funded history and should be considered a poor fit. Because award sizes cluster tightly (median $55,000 in the most recent cohort; historical range $2,500-$85,000), a first ask in the $25,000-$60,000 range for a well-scoped, single-project request is more consistent with this funder's pattern than an open-ended general-operating request. Given officer compensation and giving levels both trended upward through 2023-2024, the foundation appears to have ongoing capacity — the constraint for applicants is access, not funding availability.