Farmor Foundation

Farmor Foundation is a closed, relationship-driven family philanthropy, not a competitive grantmaking program. It has no staff and no program officers, and is run entirely by its two founding officers, Henry A. Flint (President & Treasurer) and Susan O. Flint (Vice President & Secretary), who serve without compensation from an administrative address at 1105 North Market Street in Wilmington, Delaware — a family-office setup rather than an operating foundation with public-facing infrastructure. IRS records mark the foundation "preselected only," and its application-instructions field is blank; there is no LOI portal, RFP calendar, or downloadable guidelines anywhere in the public record, including on its own (largely placeholder) website, farmor.org.

The grant history bears this out. Of the 56 recorded gifts totaling $2,625,330 in the available data, essentially all are coded "general operations" — Farmor does not fund restricted projects, capital campaigns, or program grants; it writes unrestricted checks to institutions the Flint family already trusts. Nearly every recipient falls into one of three clusters that map to personal ties rather than an open cause area: elite New England prep schools and colleges (Hotchkiss School, Williams College, Smith College, Colorado College), Berkshires, Massachusetts institutions (Fairview Hospital, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, Alford Land Trust), and Jackson Hole, Wyoming/Chaffee County, Colorado community organizations (Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, Chaffee County Amateur Hockey Association, Jackson Hole Historical Society). Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is the single largest relationship, receiving $481,379 across four gifts in the sample and a further $150,218 in the most recent filing year — consistent with a personal health-related tie rather than a programmatic cancer-research priority.

For a grant seeker, the realistic path in is not a cold proposal. It is an existing or discoverable connection to the Flint family, to one of their alma maters, or to one of the two core geographic communities (the Berkshires or Jackson Hole/Chaffee County). Organizations that already appear in the grantee list are typically renewed two to four times over several years, suggesting Farmor prizes continuity over breadth once a relationship is established. First-time, unconnected applicants should expect near-zero response and should not allocate significant proposal-writing time here without a warm introduction.

Farmor's total giving has ranged from $159,915 (FY2012) to $822,035 (FY2022) as assets grew from $3.6M to $7.1M over the past decade, but the trend is uneven rather than steadily rising. Total giving by year: FY2020 $571,459, FY2021 $625,851, FY2022 $822,035, FY2023 $701,593, and FY2024 $670,807 across 15 grants, with FY2025 showing a sharper pullback — $336,862 in revenue against $857,367 in total expenses, a roughly $520,505 net loss, and 12 grants recorded so far in that cycle. The most recent typical-grant-size data puts the median award at $35,056 and the average at $42,551, with a floor of $2,000 and a ceiling of $100,259 — though single-year gifts have run as high as $150,218 (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, FY2025) and cumulative multi-year relationships have reached $481,379 (also Dana-Farber, across four gifts).

Every grant in the available sample is coded "general operations" — Farmor does not appear to fund capital campaigns, restricted programs, or research grants; 100% of its recorded giving is unrestricted operating support. By geography, the 56-grant sample splits heavily between two regions: Massachusetts (19 grants, 34%) and Wyoming (18 grants, 32%), with Colorado (7, 12.5%) and Vermont (7, 12.5%) as secondary clusters, and Connecticut (3), New York (1), and North Carolina (1) as outliers. This two-hub geographic concentration — Berkshires/New England and Jackson Hole/Chaffee County — is far tighter than the foundation's own stated "Community Development" tag suggests, and tighter than the "Education, Philanthropy, Arts & Culture" categories third-party aggregators assign it.

Grant sizes cluster by institution type: large, established institutions (Dana-Farber, Hotchkiss School, University of Vermont Foundation, Williams College) receive the largest cumulative sums, often $90,000-$480,000 across repeat gifts, while smaller community and place-based organizations (Slow Food in the Tetons, Friends of Pathways Jackson WY, Teton Historical Preservation Fund) typically receive one-time gifts of $2,000-$15,000. There is no evidence of a published minimum/maximum grant policy — the range reflects relationship depth and institutional scale rather than a formal program ceiling.

Farmor sits in the middle of a small cluster of similarly structured, closed family foundations, several of which — like Farmor — are administered from Delaware family-office addresses rather than run by dedicated program staff.

Farmor is larger than Deupree by assets but smaller than Rajam, and dwarfed by Singer's $60.9M — yet all four private-foundation peers share Farmor's defining trait: none operate a public application process, a common pattern among small, family-office-administered foundations that fund by relationship rather than competition. The one genuinely open door in this set is the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, a public charity (not a private foundation) running competitive grant cycles in one of Farmor's two core funding regions — a more realistic near-term target for unconnected grant seekers who want exposure to the same Jackson Hole donor and nonprofit community Farmor already funds.

No news coverage, press releases, or leadership announcements about Farmor Foundation exist in the public record — it has never been the subject of a news article in searches covering 2025-2026, and its own website, farmor.org, is essentially a placeholder domain with no About, Grants, or Contact content beyond the bare name. The most current signal available is its FY2025 Form 990-PF data: total revenue of $336,862 against total expenses of $857,367, a net loss of roughly $520,505, on total assets of $7,147,117. That expense-to-revenue gap is the widest in at least a decade of filings, suggesting either a deliberate step-up in giving or a drawdown posture; it is worth watching in the next filing cycle. Twelve grants are recorded so far in that cycle, including gifts to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($150,218), Community Foundation of Jackson Hole ($110,131), and Fairview Hospital ($50,454) — all repeat relationships consistent with prior years, not new program areas.

Leadership has been stable since the foundation's 1994 founding: Henry A. Flint (President & Treasurer) and Susan O. Flint (Vice President & Secretary) remain the sole officers, both unpaid, with no evidence of staff additions, board expansion, or succession activity. FY2024 closed with $670,807 distributed across 15 grants, continuing a giving range that has held between roughly $517,000 and $822,000 annually since 2021. There is no indication of a new RFP, program launch, or geographic expansion beyond the existing Massachusetts/Wyoming/Colorado/Vermont footprint.

Because Farmor has never operated a public application process — its own record marks it "preselected only" with a blank application-instructions field — the highest-leverage move for a grant seeker is confirming eligibility before investing time, not polishing a cold LOI. Call the foundation's Wilmington office at (302) 594-4543 (also listed as (302) 294-0823) to ask directly whether unsolicited inquiries are ever considered; expect that most are not, but a brief, respectful call costs little and occasionally surfaces an opening others miss.

Look for a genuine connection point before reaching out. The grant history shows two dominant clusters: Berkshires, Massachusetts institutions (Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, Alford Land Trust, Williams College, Smith College) and Jackson Hole, Wyoming/Chaffee County, Colorado community organizations (Community Foundation of Jackson Hole, Jackson Hole Historical Society, Chaffee County Amateur Hockey Association, Friends of Pathways). A board member, alum, patient, or donor connection to any of these — or to Hotchkiss School, Colorado College, or Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the largest single relationship in the record — is a far stronger entry point than a generic proposal.

Frame any approach as a request for general operating support, not a restricted project or capital grant. Every recorded gift in the data is coded "general operations," and there is no evidence Farmor has ever funded a capital campaign or named program. Organizations already in the portfolio tend to receive repeat gifts two to four times over several years rather than a single large award, so the foundation appears to value sustained relationships over one-off transactions — a pitch built around a multi-year partnership will read as more credible than a one-time ask.

Common mistakes to avoid: submitting a formal LOI or full proposal (there is no portal or format to submit it into), requesting restricted or capital funding, and assuming visibility in national grant databases will prompt outreach — Farmor has no history of proactively soliciting new grantees outside its existing network. Smaller, newer relationships do appear occasionally (ACLU Foundation received $2,500; Lake Toxaway Fire & Rescue in North Carolina received $5,000), suggesting the trustees do sometimes add modest new gifts, likely through personal interest rather than a formal review process.