Dobson Foundation Inc.

Dobson Foundation Inc. is a small, family-run private foundation (EIN 13-6168259) based in Lancaster, PA, with two unpaid officers — Sarah Jeffords, Esq. (President) and Kenneth Totilo (Treasurer) — and no reported program staff. There is no public application form, LOI portal, or stated deadline (application_form_url, opportunities_url, and funding_cycle are all unpublished in its own filings), and the foundation's own metadata flags it as "preselected only" — a strong signal that it operates as an invitation/relationship-driven funder rather than one that reviews open applications. This mirrors larger peers like Prospect Hill Foundation, which explicitly does not accept unsolicited proposals.

The grantee data backs this up: of the top 50 recipients tracked (153 grants, $1,190,535 total across the sampled years), the large majority received grants in three or four separate years, meaning Dobson behaves like a sustaining funder that renews relationships year over year rather than churning through new applicants. First-time seekers should expect a long relationship-building runway, not a single-cycle ask.

Three constituencies are clearly favored: (1) bird and coastal conservation science — National Audubon Society ($344,035/4 grants, by far its largest relationship), Cornell Lab of Ornithology, The Peregrine Fund, Seabird Institute and Friends of Hog Island (Audubon's Maine puffin-restoration program), Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust; (2) environmental and civil-liberties legal advocacy — Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness Society, Planned Parenthood of NYC, the ACLU and NYCLU; and (3) hometown Lancaster, PA institutions — the Lancaster Historical Society, Lancaster Conservatory, Boys & Girls Club of Lancaster, Lancaster Farmland Trust, and the Lancaster County Community Foundation, plus a smaller Saratoga/Adirondack, NY equestrian and historical cluster (National Museum of Racing, National Steeplechase Association, Adirondack Council). Applicants outside these three lanes have little documented precedent for funding.

Dobson Foundation's asset base has ranged $3.6M-$5.3M over the past decade, with $4,982,914 reported in its most recent filing (up from $4,167,771 in FY2023). Annual total giving has swung widely: from a low of $164,705 (2014) to a high of $583,932 (2021), averaging roughly $250,000-$350,000 most years. The two most recent years tracked by third-party services show a pullback — $234,770 across 33 grants (2024) and $241,750 across 29 grants (most recent), both well below the 2021 peak and closer to the foundation's long-run baseline.

Grant size is modest and right-skewed. Across the 153 grants sampled (avg. $7,781/grant), the typical award clusters at $2,000-$10,000, while a handful of anchor relationships pull the average up: National Audubon Society ($344,035/4 grants, ~29% of the sampled total), National Museum of Racing ($86,000/4), Planned Parenthood of NYC ($80,000/4), Yale University ($65,000/3), and Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust and Friends of Hog Island ($50,000/4 each). The foundation's own typical_grant_size metadata reports a median of $7,500 and average of $21,706 (count 22, max $253,025), consistent with a small number of large, long-standing gifts sitting atop a base of small annual grants.

By program area, bird/coastal conservation is dominant — Audubon (national + Maine chapters), Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Seabird Institute, Peregrine Fund, Bigelow Laboratory, and Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust together account for well over $500,000 of the $1.19M sampled. Environmental/civil-liberties legal advocacy (Earthjustice, NRDC, Wilderness Society, Planned Parenthood, ACLU, NYCLU) forms a second tier near $150,000-$200,000. Lancaster, PA hometown giving totals roughly $115,000 (Historical Society, Conservatory, Boys & Girls Club, Farmland Trust, County Community Foundation), and a Saratoga/Adirondack equestrian-and-history cluster totals about $106,000. Geographically, New York leads with 56 of the tracked grantee relationships, followed by Maine (27), Pennsylvania (20), and Washington DC (18, largely national advocacy-org headquarters).

Dobson is an order of magnitude smaller than each of these peers in both asset base and annual payout, and its $7,500 median award is a fraction of Jane's Trust's $75,000 median — positioning Dobson as a small sustaining or supplemental funder rather than a lead grantmaker. What it shares with all three larger peers is a closed, relationship-driven posture: none of the four operates a conventional open RFP, and Prospect Hill's stated "invitation only, no unsolicited proposals" policy is the closest documented analog to Dobson's own "preselected only" designation. Grant seekers should treat cold outreach to any of these four as low-probability and instead pursue introductions through the shared ornithology/coastal-conservation or regional community-foundation networks these funders draw from.

The most recent Form 990-PF on file (filed 2025-08-21, per ProPublica) shows total assets of $4,982,914, up from $4,167,771 at the end of FY2023. Reported charitable distribution in the most recent full year tracked by third-party services was $241,750 across 29 grants, down slightly from $234,770 across 33 grants the prior year — both figures well below the $583,932 total giving reported for FY2021, the highest payout year in the decade of financial data reviewed. This pattern points to a foundation that scaled back distributions after 2021 and has since held giving roughly flat in the $235,000-$250,000 range.

The clearest confirmed activity in 2025 is philanthropic rather than programmatic: the foundation (credited as "Sarah Jeffords/Dobson Foundation") appears on Lancaster Farmland Trust's 2025 Honor Roll of donors, confirming continued support for Lancaster County land conservation into the current year. No press releases, new program announcements, grant-cycle changes, or leadership transitions were found in web search for 2025-2026; leadership (Sarah Jeffords, Esq., President; Kenneth Totilo, Treasurer) has been stable across every year of financial data reviewed (2011-2025), and neither officer has ever reported compensation.

One important caveat for researchers: the domain listed in the foundation's own database record, dobsonfoundation.org, in fact belongs to an entirely different, unrelated "Dobson Foundation" based in Stevensville, MD (EIN 83-1041534, founded 2018, focused on Chesapeake Bay-region giving). No verified, foundation-specific website was located for Dobson Foundation Inc. of Lancaster, PA (EIN 13-6168259) during this research.

Treat this as a closed, relationship-driven funder rather than an open grants program — there is no published LOI portal, application form, deadline, or funding cycle, and its own records flag it as "preselected only." Cold, unsolicited applications have no documented history of succeeding here.

The strongest entry points are proximity to the foundation's three demonstrated giving lanes: bird/coastal conservation science, environmental and civil-liberties legal advocacy, and Lancaster County, PA community institutions. Organizations already connected to anchor grantees — National Audubon Society, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Seabird Institute/Friends of Hog Island, The Peregrine Fund, or the Lancaster County Community Foundation — sit at the center of this funder's giving network and are the most plausible sources of a warm introduction or referral.

Because most large, recurring relationships in the data span three to four consecutive tracked years, position any initial outreach as the start of a multi-year partnership rather than a one-time ask, and set expectations accordingly: the realistic range for a new relationship is $2,000-$25,000, based on the $7,781 average across 153 sampled grants; only a handful of long-tenured partners (Audubon, the National Museum of Racing, Planned Parenthood of NYC, Yale) receive amounts in the tens of thousands or more.

Send a concise, one-to-two page letter of introduction — not a full grant application — addressed to Sarah Jeffords, Esq., President, at the foundation's registered address (55 N School Ln, Lancaster, PA 17603), since no verified email or online contact channel exists for this EIN. A common and avoidable mistake is contacting dobsonfoundation.org — that site belongs to an unrelated Maryland foundation and will misroute any inquiry. There is no evidence of a fixed annual deadline (reported giving has varied from $164,705 to $583,932 across the years reviewed), so approach opportunistically, but budget for a long cultivation period before a first grant materializes.