El Espacio 23 Inc.

El Espacio 23 is a private operating foundation, not a conventional grantmaking foundation — a critical distinction for anyone building an approach strategy. Founded in 2019 by real estate developer and collector Jorge M. Pérez (President; family members Jon Paul Perez and Nicholas Perez sit as Directors, with Patricia Hanna, Matthew J. Allen, and Jeffrey Hoyos serving as Vice Presidents/Secretary), the foundation reports $0 in grants paid to third-party organizations in every fiscal year on file, 2019 through 2023. Instead, it channels its Form 990-PF qualifying distributions — $983,642 in FY2023 — directly into running its own 28,000-square-foot Allapattah exhibition space, artist-in-residence apartments, and the Jorge M. Pérez Collection's public programming. There is no roster of grantee nonprofits in this dataset because the foundation does not make grants in the conventional sense.

Practically, this means nonprofits pursuing unrestricted operating support, capital grants, or program grants should not target El Espacio 23 — there is no LOI or proposal intake for that purpose, and nothing in the five-year financial history suggests one exists. The realistic applicant here is an individual visual artist or independent curator, not an organization. Access runs through time-boxed open calls submitted via Cognito Forms rather than year-round unsolicited outreach; the foundation's own site explicitly routes interested parties to its "Open Calls" page rather than a general grant-inquiry contact.

The relationship progression that does exist is: open call announcement, online application, curatorial shortlist, video interview, selection announcement, then a 6-12 week Miami residency with housing, studio space, and a production budget — or, per the new Delfina Foundation partnership, a fully-funded 12-week residency in London for Latin American and Caribbean artists. First-time applicants should treat curatorial fit — alignment with the Pérez Collection's recurring themes of migration, territory, diaspora, and Afro-Latin identity — as the deciding factor, not a budget narrative or organizational capacity statement, since there is no separate cash grant to negotiate.

El Espacio 23's Form 990-PF filings show a foundation that spends entirely on its own direct charitable activities rather than distributing grants to outside organizations: grants_paid equals $0 in FY2019, FY2020, FY2021, FY2022, and FY2023 — the full five-year window in this dataset. "Total giving" (the IRS qualifying-distribution figure for a private operating foundation's direct charitable activities) has instead climbed steadily: $0 in 2019 (its founding/funding year), $601,841 in 2020, $638,426 in 2021, $784,705 in 2022, and $983,642 in 2023 — a roughly 63% increase in program spend over that 2020-2023 stretch. That spend maps to housing artists, mounting exhibitions from the Pérez Collection, and running the Allapattah facility, not to grant checks.

Total assets grew from $5.1 million at founding (2019) to $6.97 million by FY2023, funded by irregular capital infusions from Jorge and Darlene Pérez: contributions received were $5.1M in 2019 (the initial endowment), $1.8M in 2020, $656,000 in 2021, $897,200 in 2022, and $1.78M in 2023. Net investment income is negligible ($0-$3 across all five years), confirming this is a donor-fed operating vehicle rather than an endowment-return grantmaker — funding levels track the Pérez family's annual contribution decisions, not market performance.

Geographically and programmatically, essentially all activity is concentrated in one site (Miami's Allapattah neighborhood) and one programmatic bucket — visual arts exhibitions and artist/curator residencies — with a single reported program description in the most recent detailed 990-PF covering warehouse space, improvements, exhibition costs, and artist housing ($1,753,825 in program expenses in that filing). There is no by-state or by-sector grantee breakdown to analyze because there are no external grantees; the funding pattern here is direct-charitable-activity spend on one institution's own operations, supplemented since February 2026 by co-funded international residencies through the Delfina Foundation partnership (up to four fully-funded placements over two years).

All five peers cluster within about $70,000 of El Espacio 23's $7.33M asset base and share its Arts & Culture NTEE classification, but the comparison is asset-only: this dataset has no public grantee lists, giving totals, or websites for any of the five peers, so their funding levels and application posture can't be independently confirmed the way El Espacio 23's can. What sets El Espacio 23 apart within this peer set is operational transparency — it is the only one of the six with an active public website, named leadership, a documented program, and a live 2026 open-call calendar, so grant seekers researching the other five peers should expect to rely on IRS filings and direct outreach rather than public program pages.

On November 20, 2025, El Espacio 23 opened its sixth major exhibition, "A World Far Away, Nearby and Invisible: Territory Narratives in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection," curated by Claudia Segura Campins (Head of Collection, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona/MACBA) in dialogue with in-house curators Patricia Hanna and Anelys Alvarez — continuing the space's pattern of pairing outside curatorial voices with its permanent team. The most significant programmatic news is the February 18, 2026 announcement that Jorge M. and Darlene Pérez are funding a new partnership with London's Delfina Foundation: four fully-funded 12-week artist residencies over two years, prioritizing Latin American and Caribbean artists — explicitly excluding applicants currently based in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina "as these nations have benefited from dedicated residencies over the last two years," signaling a deliberate rotation of geographic priority toward underrepresented countries and diaspora communities. That call closed April 6, 2026, with interviews from May 18 and selections by June 1, 2026; residencies run September-December 2026 (London) and January-March 2027.

On the Miami residency side, 2026 has stayed active: Victor Ehikhamenor and Jozua Gerrard completed stays in May 2026, Madeline Jiménez and Verónica Vázquez in April 2026, and as of August 2026 current residents are Rafael Villares, Sebastián Vidal Mackinson, and Nicolás Robbio. Press coverage in 2026 has skewed toward the Pérez family's broader collecting profile — a June 8, 2026 Mansion Global feature on Pérez's art advisor and a July 1, 2026 Cultured Magazine piece on the family's Aspen property — rather than new funding or grant announcements. No leadership changes were identified; the same officer slate (Jorge M. Perez, President; Patricia Hanna, Matthew J. Allen, Vice Presidents; Jeffrey Hoyos, VP & Secretary; Jon Paul Perez and Nicholas Perez, Directors) appears across all filings reviewed.

Apply only during a named open call — El Espacio 23 does not maintain a standing grant-inquiry or LOI process; its site routes all interested parties to a dated "Open Calls" listing, and each call (the Delfina Foundation partnership, The55Project residency, WOPHA artist-in-residence) has its own eligibility rules, portal, and deadline.

Read the Guidance Notes and Terms & Conditions in full before starting — the foundation explicitly flags this on its Delfina call, and eligibility exclusions are non-obvious: the spring 2026 Delfina call excluded artists currently based in Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina despite being framed as a "Latin America & Caribbean" call, because those countries had been prioritized in prior cycles.

International calls run on hard GMT deadlines (6 April 2026, 23:59 GMT for the most recent Delfina round) — build in a time-zone buffer. Applications go through Cognito Forms, not email or a general contact form, so locate the specific form link on the individual open-call post rather than the homepage.

Curatorial fit beats budget narrative: the Pérez Collection's recurring themes — migration, territory and place, Afro-Latin and Latin American diasporic identity, textile abstraction — should shape portfolio selection and artist-statement framing far more than a funding "ask," since residencies are in-kind (housing, studio, production budget) rather than cash grants.

Shortlisted candidates should expect a video-interview stage roughly 4-6 weeks after the deadline (May 18, 2026 start for the spring 2026 cycle), with final selections announced about 8 weeks after the deadline (June 1, 2026 in that cycle).

The most common mistake for grant seekers is treating this as a conventional funder: nonprofits submitting general operating-support proposals or program-grant requests have no channel to reach decision-makers, since the foundation's Form 990-PF shows $0 in third-party grants across all five years on file — it funds its own direct programs, not other organizations. Relationship-building runs through curatorial and residency channels rather than development staff — prior residents and guest curators (e.g., Claudia Segura Campins of MACBA) are the visible bridge into future programming, suggesting curatorial introductions carry more weight than cold outreach.