Elias Foundation

Elias Foundation is a small, family-run private foundation (EIN 13-4092287, Mount Kisco, NY) governed entirely by the Mann family — Jacqueline Mann (President/Executive Director), Anastasia Mann (Treasurer), Alison Mann (Vice President), and James E. Mann (Secretary) — none of whom draw compensation. That structure matters strategically: there is no program-officer bureaucracy to court, and decisions run through a tight family board plus an outside Advisory Committee of "movement-building veterans." Founded in 1999 to serve Westchester County and widened to the full Hudson Valley in 2004, Elias spent its first fifteen years funding community organizations (14 to 23 grantees at a time, per its own funding history) before executing a deliberate 2014 wind-down of that endowment with "tie-off" grants. Since 2015, and formally since a 2019 relaunch, Elias's only active vehicle has been the Activist Fellowship — five-year, unrestricted personal stipends to individual grassroots organizers rather than grants to organizations or projects. This is the single most important fact for any applicant: Elias no longer makes general-operating or program grants to nonprofits (the underlying grantee data confirms this, showing legacy institutional grants like Wespac Foundation, $178,500 across 5 grants, and Westchester Children's Association, $172,000 across 5 grants, all dating to the pre-2015 era, alongside a growing roster of individual "Fellowship" payees such as Kathleen Cancio and Maria Dautruche at $115,000 each cumulative). First-time applicants should not treat this like a typical foundation LOI process. Access runs through nomination — a community leader, alumnus fellow, or Advisory Committee member vouching for an organizer's track record — or a self-submitted LOI (written or video) emphasizing lived accountability to a specific Hudson Valley community. The relationship, once established, is personal and trust-based: funds are explicitly unrestricted, covering training, education, debt reduction, travel, and even self-care, with no project reporting implied. Given the program currently shows as closed to new applicants on its own website, the realistic near-term strategy is relationship-building — get known within Hudson Valley organizing networks and the fellow alumni community — rather than a transactional application.

Elias's own 990 data (most recent typical-grant-size figures) shows 71 grants ranging from $25 to $100,000, with a median of $10,000 and an average of $16,354 — a wide spread reflecting the mix of small discretionary payments and full $85,000-$115,000 cumulative Fellowship stipends. Across the fuller 230-grant dataset spanning roughly FY2012-FY2023, total tracked giving is $3,585,305 at an average of $15,588 per grant. Assets have contracted sharply and intentionally: $6.2M (FY2014) to $5.78M (FY2015) to $3.48M (FY2024), a 44% decline over a decade consistent with the foundation's own account of spending down its Westchester endowment. Annual giving is volatile rather than steadily rising: total giving was $824,316 in FY2012, peaked at $1,674,080 in FY2023, but sat at just $948,564 in FY2022 and $847,404 in FY2019 — grants paid nearly doubled from $762,420 (FY2022) to $1,300,587 (FY2023). Net investment income (e.g., $1,098,932 in FY2023 against a $3.4M asset base) suggests strong market years partially replenish the spend-down, extending the foundation's runway. By program era, legacy institutional grants cluster $20,000-$270,000 (per the foundation's funding-history page) and dominate the largest cumulative recipients — Wespac Foundation ($178,500/5 grants, food program and general operating), Westchester Children's Association ($172,000/5 grants), Children's Village ($120,275/5 grants), and Just Leadership USA ($120,000/3 grants). The current Fellowship era instead produces a cluster of $85,000-$115,000 cumulative multi-year payments to named individuals (Kathleen Cancio, Maria Dautruche, Diana Sanchez, Ruby Olisemeka, Jonathan Alvarez, Jalal Sabur, and others), plus smaller advocacy-organization grants such as New Jersey Policy Perspective ($50,000/4 grants), Marijuana Policy Project ($40,000/4 grants), and Northstar Fund ($35,000/4 grants, including COVID Response Fund dollars). Geographically, 163 of 230 tracked grants (71%) went to New York-based recipients, with the remainder spread across DC (11), California (10), New Jersey (10), Maine (8), North Carolina (9), Louisiana (4), Illinois (3), South Carolina (3), and Tennessee (2) — a footprint wider than the Hudson Valley mandate implies, reflecting both legacy multi-state advocacy grants and fellows' national movement ties.

This peer set was matched purely on asset size (all cluster within roughly $1,500 of Elias's $3,476,467 in reported assets) rather than mission, and none of the five maintain a discoverable public website — a common pattern among small family trusts filed under the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE category. Elias stands apart from this cohort by being unusually transparent for its size: it runs a full public website with a named program, a multi-year funding-history archive, and a stated (if currently closed) application pathway, making it far easier for prospective applicants to research than a same-size peer with no online footprint at all.

The clearest recent-activity signal is not a new grant announcement but a status change: Elias's own Programs page now states the Activist Fellowship is no longer accepting applications, after seven cohorts launched between 2019 and 2025. The last dated news items on the foundation's site are from its early Fellowship years — the inaugural cohort of five fellows selected July 26, 2019 from more than 40 letters of interest, and a second cohort of five new fellows announced February 8, 2020. No newer cohort announcements, press releases, or media coverage from 2025 or 2026 turned up in web search, despite the foundation's most recent Form 990-PF being filed around November 6, 2025 and its third-party grant-database profile (grantmakers.io) last refreshing January 16, 2026 — indicating the foundation remains active and continues filing, just without public-facing announcements in this window. The foundation's last website refresh predates this: a redesigned site and logo were launched December 14, 2016 in partnership with Purchase College Art+Design. Leadership has been stable and family-held throughout (Jacqueline Mann as President/Executive Director, with Anastasia Mann, Alison Mann, and James E. Mann rounding out the uncompensated board) with no leadership-change news found. Taken together, the most useful "recent activity" takeaway for a grant seeker is procedural, not celebratory: the foundation's flagship program appears paused or between cycles as of this research, so timing an approach should start with a direct status check rather than assuming the historical September-LOI/February-announcement rhythm is still running.

Elias does not run a conventional proposal process, so generic grant-writing advice does not apply. First, confirm the program is actually open — the website currently shows the Activist Fellowship as closed to new applications, so email info@eliasfoundation.org (or the program's historical contact, Polly Withers at pwithers@eliasfoundation.org) before drafting anything. Second, understand the two entry points the foundation has publicly described: a self-submitted Letter of Intent (written or video) describing your activism, your community, and how you'd use five years of personal, unrestricted support — or a nomination route, where a community leader provides a short testimonial on your behalf. Both are treated as valid; there is no preference signal for one over the other, but a credible nominator inside Hudson Valley organizing circles likely shortens the path given the Advisory Committee's own composition of "multi-racial, cross-generational movement builders" from the region. Third, speak directly to Elias's stated eligibility language — the foundation prioritizes people who self-identify as low-income, people of color, indigenous, immigrant, women, trans, gender-nonconforming, LGBTQ, youth, working-class, and/or disabled, with deep roots in the Hudson Valley and demonstrated accountability to a specific community. Generic nonprofit-sector language about "impact" or "scalability" will read as off-target; personal narrative and community accountability are what the program is built around. Fourth, do not pitch an organization or project budget — this is personal support for an individual's development as an organizer (training, coursework, debt reduction, travel to convenings, coaching, even self-care), and the foundation explicitly stopped funding Westchester nonprofits as organizations after its 2014 endowment tie-off. A common mistake would be treating this like the foundation's earlier (pre-2015) grantmaking era, which no longer exists. Finally, competition has historically been steep relative to slots: the inaugural 2019 cohort drew more than 40 letters of interest for just five fellowship spots, so a nomination or LOI needs to distinguish itself on specificity of community ties rather than breadth of ambition.