Ellison Foundation

The Ellison Foundation (Bellevue, WA; EIN 91-6557865; Thomas A. Ellison et al., Trustees) is a closed-door private family foundation. Its only public communication on ellisonfoundation.org is a single line: "The Foundation cannot accept unsolicited requests for funding." This is not Oracle founder Larry Ellison's foundation — it is a separate Pacific Northwest family foundation founded in March 2003 and run by Thomas Ellison (President) and Maureen Sue Ellison (Vice President), with long-tenured Foundation Director Robert Hurlbut as the only paid staff. The funder's grant theory is not public; its theory of action is "fund a curated, relationship-driven portfolio of trusted organizations consistently over many years." For applicants the operative fact is: do not submit an unsolicited proposal. A cold LOI will be discarded. The only paths in are (1) a warm introduction from an existing Ellison Foundation grantee, (2) a recommendation from a peer trustee or Bellevue/Seattle philanthropic network contact, or (3) long-run relationship building with the Ellison family directly through shared civic or nonprofit boards.

Based on Form 990-PF filings (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer), the Ellison Foundation disburses approximately $2.8M-$2.95M per year in charitable grants, against an asset base that has grown from ~$40M (2022) to ~$45.9M (2024). That is a 6%-7% annual payout rate — above the IRS 5% minimum — consistent with a family foundation that intends to sustain giving level rather than grow the endowment. Income composition is investment-driven: dividends $1.1M-$1.3M and realized capital gains $0.4M-$3.6M, with zero new contributions received in recent years (the family is spending down investment returns, not adding principal). Officer comp is concentrated on one paid role — Robert Hurlbut (Foundation Director) at ~$152K/yr plus benefits — which is a tell that most program decisioning runs through him and the Ellison family, not a staffed team. Individual grant sizes are not published; typical patterns for foundations this size and this operational shape are $10K-$100K per grant across a long-standing roster of 30-60 recipient organizations. Geographic concentration is most likely Puget Sound / King County given the Bellevue base.

Against peers in the Washington State / Puget Sound private foundation space and the national $40M-$60M family foundation tier, Ellison Foundation is typical in size but unusually closed in intake posture.

Ellison's posture — explicit "no unsolicited requests" on a single-page site — puts it in the most closed-intake ~30% of private foundations nationally. Compared to regional Washington peers like Satterberg Foundation or Medina Foundation which publish detailed guidelines, Ellison operates by invitation only. This is structurally consistent with a family-trustee governance model where the board selects and re-funds a curated list rather than running cycles.

Recent Form 990-PF data (fiscal year 2024 filed Aug 20, 2025) shows the foundation in stable operating posture: $4.75M revenue (all from investment returns — dividends and realized gains), $2.96M total expenses of which $2.79M was charitable disbursements (94% of expenses), and net asset growth from $42.7M to $45.9M. This is a foundation that recovered from FY2022-2023 (which showed negative net income during broad market declines) through 2024's market rally. No leadership transitions are on record: Thomas Ellison remains President, Maureen Sue Ellison remains Vice President, and Robert Hurlbut remains Foundation Director at ~$152K compensation. No public news announcements, new programs, or strategic pivots are visible. No Instagram, X, LinkedIn, or Facebook presence tied to the foundation name is findable. The most recent 990-PF lists standard investment schedules (corporate bonds, corporate stock, other investments) but the grantee list (typically Form 990-PF Part XV) is not extracted in ProPublica's summary view — a full PDF retrieval would reveal the specific grantee roster.

1) Do not email or mail an unsolicited request. The foundation is explicit about this on its single-page website, and a cold ask will be ignored or discarded and may close the door on future warm intros. 2) If your nonprofit is Puget Sound / King County based — especially Bellevue-area or broader Eastside — and serves a cause category likely to align with the Ellison family's interests, focus on relationship building rather than proposal writing. 3) Identify existing grantees by retrieving the full 990-PF PDF from ProPublica (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/916557865) — Part XV lists paid grants. Find a grantee whose leadership overlaps with yours (shared board members, shared funders, shared venues) and ask for a warm introduction. 4) Engage Robert Hurlbut (Foundation Director) through a neutral venue — a regional funder convening, a Seattle philanthropy roundtable, a joint board meeting — rather than a proposal-first cold approach. Hurlbut has held the director role for multiple years and is the functional gatekeeper. 5) Do not name-drop Oracle's Larry Ellison Foundation or confuse the two — different entities, different trustees, different strategy. 6) If a warm path does not open, invest your proposal-writing time elsewhere: this foundation's ~$2.8M/yr flows through an established roster, and cold slots are effectively zero.