Grace Charitable Foundation Inc.

Grace Charitable Foundation Inc. (also filed as Doreen Downs Miller Foundation Inc., EIN 74-3116739) is a small, unstaffed family foundation run entirely by unpaid officers — Doreen Downs (Director/President/Treasurer) alongside Andrew Miller and Peter Miller in recent filings — out of Garden City, NY. The platform record marks it 'preselected_only,' and there is no LOI template, RFP, published deadline, or online application (application_instructions field is literally blank). In practice, this is a checkbook philanthropy vehicle: nearly all 133 recorded grants are unrestricted 'GENERAL PURPOSE' or 'GENERAL SUPPORT' gifts, and most recipients appear repeatedly (2-4 times each) across the giving history, meaning the foundation renews trusted relationships rather than running competitive cycles. Cold, unsolicited proposals are a long shot with no program officer to receive them. The three largest cumulative grantees — New Venture Fund ($875,000 across 4 grants), MIT ($400,000 across 2 grants), and Chimp Haven ($261,000 across 4 grants) — together account for roughly 58% of all tracked giving ($2,627,886 over 133 grants), and all three connect to identifiable founder interests: New Venture Fund is a fiscal-sponsorship platform often used for specific pass-through projects, MIT and the Center for Systems Awareness ($180,000) point to ties in the Peter Senge/Society for Organizational Learning systems-thinking network, and Chimp Haven anchors a broader primate/wildlife welfare cluster. First-time applicants have the best odds if their work sits in one of the foundation's demonstrated lanes — animal welfare and wildlife conservation, environmental/land conservation on Long Island (Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary, North Shore Land Alliance, Cornell Lab of Ornithology), reproductive health access (The Brigid Alliance, National Network of Abortion Funds), public media/journalism (New York Public Radio, WNET Thirteen), or Long Island community institutions (United Way of Long Island, Good Plus Foundation) — and who can secure a warm introduction rather than submit a written application cold. The realistic entry point is a short, direct email or phone call to the Garden City office (105 Rockaway Ave, Garden City, NY 11530; (212) 949-8700) proposing a brief conversation, not a formal proposal packet.

Across the tracked history, Grace Charitable Foundation Inc. made 133 grants totaling $2,627,886, averaging $19,759 per grant, though the platform's typical-grant-size field (drawn from the most recent 990) shows a tighter recent pattern: median $2,500, average $12,360, range $500-$125,000 across 34 grants. The gap between the aggregate average and the recent median reflects heavy concentration at the top: New Venture Fund ($875,000, 33% of all giving), MIT ($400,000, 15%), and Chimp Haven ($261,000, 10%) alone account for 58% of cumulative dollars, while dozens of smaller recurring gifts of $1,500-$25,000 make up the long tail. By cause area (estimated from grantee purpose and identity, since the foundation has no formal program categories): systems-thinking/organizational-learning and education-adjacent giving (MIT, Center for Systems Awareness, Seventh Generation Advisors, NYU, UC Berkeley Foundation, DonorsChoose) totals roughly $416,000-plus MIT's share — about 42% when New Venture Fund's likely pass-through use is included; animal welfare and wildlife conservation (Chimp Haven, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Orangutan and Chimpanzee Conservation, Defenders of Wildlife, Equine Advocates, National Wildlife Federation, Farm Sanctuary, Humane Farming Association, Factory Farming Awareness Coalition) totals roughly $335,000, or 13%; community/human services (United Way of Long Island, Good Plus Foundation, Homes Not Borders) totals roughly $351,000, or 13%; public media (New York Public Radio, WNET Thirteen, The Hechinger Report, Consumer Reports) totals roughly $207,000, or 8%; environmental/land conservation (National Audubon Society, Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary, Riverkeeper, Cornell Lab of Ornithology) totals roughly $75,000, or 3%; and reproductive health (The Brigid Alliance, National Network of Abortion Funds) totals roughly $34,000, or 1%. Geographically, grants concentrate in New York (55 of 133 recorded grants), followed by California (18), DC (12), Massachusetts (7), Virginia (6), Oregon (5), Louisiana (4), Pennsylvania (4), Florida (3), and Maryland (3) — a national spread driven by cause alignment rather than a strict geographic mandate. Annual total giving has ranged from $428,267 (2019) to $900,766 (2021), with a $1,283,286 outlier in 2014 tied to a $4.5M one-time contribution that year; the most recent public filing shows $931,190 in disbursements against a deficit year, funded by drawing down the ~$12M asset base rather than new contributions.

All five peers cluster within roughly $11,974,526-$11,988,680 in assets, essentially identical to Grace Charitable Foundation's $11,981,054 — this is a well-populated tier of small, unstaffed single-family foundations with no listed websites, which is itself the norm: none of the five peers publish a website in the platform's data, reinforcing that Grace Charitable Foundation's near-total lack of public application infrastructure is standard for foundations this size, not an outlier. Grantseekers should expect the same relationship-based, invitation-only dynamic across this entire peer set.

No news articles, press releases, or media coverage of Grace Charitable Foundation Inc. were found — consistent with an unstaffed family foundation that has no communications function. The most current available data point is its latest public IRS Form 990-PF, aggregated by ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, which shows total assets of $11,981,054 (matching the platform record exactly), revenue of $826,398, expenses of $999,998, and a net deficit of $173,600 for the year — the shortfall was covered by selling $482,117 in appreciated securities rather than new contributions, which were $0. Charitable disbursements in that filing were $931,190, roughly in line with the foundation's 2021 peak of $900,766 and well above its 2019-2020 range of $428,267-$496,020. The officer listing in this filing names Andrew Miller and Peter Miller alongside longtime leader Doreen Downs, a detail worth confirming directly since it may signal a generational transition in who reviews outreach. One important flag for anyone using this platform's foundation page: the website URL on file (gracecharitablefoundation.org) describes a foundation supporting the Holy Great Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, Greece, at a Manhattan address (420 E. 55th Street) — a different street address than this foundation's registered 105 Rockaway Ave, Garden City filing address. That site almost certainly belongs to an unrelated organization that happens to share a similar name, and should not be used as a source of this foundation's priorities or contact information.

There is no formal application to optimize — the single most important tip is to stop looking for a portal or RFP and instead pursue direct human contact. Call or write to the foundation at its registered address (105 Rockaway Ave, Garden City, NY 11530-1415) or phone (212) 949-8700, and keep the initial outreach to a short note of introduction rather than a full proposal packet; nothing in the public record suggests they review unsolicited written applications. Because 100% of recorded grants are coded general purpose or general support, do not build a request around a restricted project budget — ask for flexible, unrestricted funding, which is what every other grantee appears to receive. Anchor your pitch in one of the foundation's demonstrated interests rather than a generic mission statement: animal welfare and wildlife/primate conservation (Chimp Haven, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife), systems-thinking and organizational learning tied to the MIT/Society for Organizational Learning world (Center for Systems Awareness, Seventh Generation Advisors), Long Island community and land-conservation institutions (United Way of Long Island, Theodore Roosevelt Sanctuary, North Shore Land Alliance), reproductive health access (The Brigid Alliance, National Network of Abortion Funds), or public media/journalism (New York Public Radio, WNET Thirteen). The most common mistake would be treating this like a programmatic funder with a competitive cycle — the grantee list shows the same organizations renewed year after year, so a realistic goal for a first-time contact is a modest gift (the recent median is $2,500; the recent average is $12,360) that opens the door to a multi-year relationship, not a single large award. Given the founders' unpaid, hands-on structure, any warm introduction — a Long Island civic or nonprofit board connection, a tie to the MIT Sloan/organizational-learning community, or a shared connection in wildlife/animal-welfare circles — will do more than any amount of proposal polish. Because there is no published deadline, timing is flexible, but note the deficit-year filing suggests they may be more selective or slower to add brand-new relationships while managing a drawdown of the asset base.