Hazel Miller Foundation

The Hazel Miller Foundation is a hyperlocal, single-county funder: every dollar must serve organizations operating within the Edmonds School District boundaries in South Snohomish County, Washington. Established in 2009 by Hazel Miller — who, with husband Morris, built Seattle Quilt Manufacturing Company (maker of the "comfy" sleeping bag) before retiring to Edmonds — the foundation is run entirely by an uncompensated volunteer board (current chair Maria Montalvo; historical filings list trustees including Leigh Bennett, Patrick Shields, Diana White, Alicia Crank, and Shannon Burley, none drawing compensation) and administered day-to-day through Foundation Mgmt Group LLC rather than dedicated in-house program staff. That structure shapes what works: there is no multi-stage LOI-to-full-proposal ladder or documented site-visit process. Applicants submit a single General Application PDF by email, and the volunteer board decides within 90 days — so the first submission needs to carry the full case, written plainly enough for a small lay board to evaluate quickly. First-time applicants should treat the South Snohomish County/Edmonds School District boundary as a hard eligibility filter, not a soft preference — proposals should state geographic fit explicitly and early. The foundation funds only 501(c)(3) organizations and local government entities, never individuals, and currently accepts operating, program, and project requests only: major capital grant allocations (generally requests above $50,000 for buildings, land, or equipment) are on hold and unlikely to reopen before 2027. A one-grant-per-focus-area-per-year cap means organizations should plan which of the six focus areas (Education & Youth, Poverty Alleviation & Hunger, Civic & Community Services, Environment, Diversity, Culture & Arts) best fits before applying, since a rejected or funded application forecloses that area until the following year's cycle. The DB's own grantee history is thin — its top-recipient record is a single rolled-up 990 attachment line covering $6,051,544 across 4 aggregated Washington entries rather than itemized names — but web reporting shows the real practice: recent cycles have funded between 9 and 29 organizations at once, indicating the foundation favors breadth (many small-to-midsize local grants) over concentrated, large single awards. Recurring grantees such as the Foundation for Edmonds School District, funded in both the November 2025 and 2026 cycles, suggest funded relationships continue year over year once established.

FY2023 (most recent 990 on file) shows $1,375,026 in grants paid against total giving of $1,548,066, total assets of $11,892,526, and total revenue of $782,184 (largely $657,735 in net investment income, with no contributions received). That represents an 11.6% payout rate — well above the 5% federal minimum — consistent with an active, spend-focused board rather than a passive endowment. Assets have contracted from a peak of $15,675,585 in 2021 to $11,892,526 in 2023 (a 24% decline), while annual giving over the same window moved from $1,506,471 (2021) to $1,965,098 (2022) to $1,548,066 (2023) — a pattern more consistent with market losses on investments plus sustained high payout than with shrinking generosity. Zooming out, the decade-long trend is strongly upward: total giving grew from $450,609 in 2011 to over $1.5-2.1M annually by 2019-2023, roughly a 3-4x increase in giving capacity. Recent cycle-level web data adds granularity the DB financials can't: January 2025 distributed $199,375 to 9 organizations (avg. $22,153); the spring 2025 cycle gave $225,518 to 29 organizations (avg. just $7,776, the broadest reach on record); August 2025 gave $103,581 to 12 organizations (avg. $8,632); November 2025 gave $351,300 to 25 organizations (avg. $14,052); and May 2026 gave $335,553 to 24 organizations (avg. $13,981). Across these five cycles (roughly $1.22M over 15 months), individual grant sizes reported in the press cluster between $1,000 and $25,000, confirming this is a small-to-midsize-grant funder, not a six-figure-check funder, for general operating and program requests. Geographically, funding is 100% concentrated in South Snohomish County/Edmonds School District boundary organizations — no exceptions found in DB or web sources. By program area, the 2026 restructuring locks funding into three cycles of two categories each (Culture & Arts + Civic & Community in February; Poverty Alleviation & Hunger + Environment in May; Education & Youth + Diversity in November), effectively capping how often any one focus area competes for dollars to once annually rather than up to four times under the old quarterly system.

The five closest asset-matched peers in the data are all mid-size private trusts/foundations clustered near $12.2M in assets — but they diverge sharply from Hazel Miller in transparency and structure. None of the five publish an accessible grants program comparable to Hazel Miller's: three have no listed website at all, and even De Ramel Foundation's public site does not offer a documented open application process. This makes Hazel Miller unusual among its closest financial peers: an actively grant-making, publicly accessible foundation with a published application form, fixed deadlines, and a 90-day decision commitment, versus what appear to be more closed, relationship- or invitation-driven trusts.

For grant seekers, the practical takeaway is that Hazel Miller is a rare open door at this asset tier — most $12M-asset trusts of this vintage operate quietly through trustee networks, while Hazel Miller runs a structured, calendar-driven public process that any eligible South Snohomish County nonprofit can enter cold.

The foundation's biggest recent development is structural: in November 2025 it announced it would retire its quarterly deadline system in favor of three fixed annual cycles beginning in 2026, each cycle now dedicated to two of its six focus areas (February: Culture & Arts, Civic & Community Services; May: Poverty Alleviation & Hunger, Environment; November: Education & Youth Services, Diversity), a move the foundation said was meant to strengthen its capacity to support South Snohomish County nonprofit and civic organizations. On the giving side, the November 2025 cycle distributed $351,300 across 25 organizations, including the Foundation for Edmonds School District, Washington West Africa Center, Edmonds Waterfront Center, Cascadia Art Museum, and Teachers of Color Foundation. That relationship with the Foundation for Edmonds School District continued into 2026: on March 17, 2026, reporting detailed a fresh $83,075 award split between AP/IB exam fee support for economically disadvantaged students ($26,700) and post-secondary scholarships for graduating seniors ($56,375). The most recent cycle on record, May 2026, awarded $335,553 to 24 nonprofits working on food security, housing stability, education, employment, and environmental awareness. Current board leadership per the foundation's About page is Maria Montalvo (Chair), Shannon Burley (Vice Chair), Whitney Rivera (Secretary), and Pat Shields (Treasurer), with Lara Okoloko, Jenni McCloughan, and Megan Wolfe as additional board members — a lineup that has evolved somewhat from the trustee names captured in the foundation's historical IRS filings (Leigh Bennett, Diana White, Alicia Crank, Richard "Dick" Ellis, Renee McRae among them), consistent with normal nonprofit board rotation rather than any reported turmoil. No leadership scandals, funding freezes, or negative news were found in this research.

Time your application to the right window: under the 2026 restructuring, deadlines fall on the first Friday of January, April, and October, with decisions following in February, May, and November respectively — but each deadline now only accepts two of the six focus areas (Jan deadline → Culture & Arts / Civic & Community; Apr deadline → Poverty & Hunger / Environment; Oct deadline → Education & Youth / Diversity). Applying with an environment-focused project at the January deadline, for instance, would simply miss the window until April. Because the board is entirely volunteer and there's no dedicated program staff (day-to-day administration runs through Foundation Mgmt Group LLC), keep the General Application PDF submission concrete and jargon-free — lead with which of the six focus areas you're applying under and how your organization sits squarely inside the Edmonds School District/South Snohomish County service boundary, since that geographic test is a hard eligibility bar, not a tiebreaker. Submit by email to info@hazelmillerfoundation.org (the foundation's stated preferred channel) and request a read receipt or confirmation reply; if mailing instead, call 206-613-7138 to notify staff the packet is coming. Right-size the request: recent cycle reporting shows individual grants clustering between $1,000 and $25,000, with cycles funding anywhere from 9 to 29 organizations at once — this is a broad-reach funder for small-to-midsize local grants, not a source for large capital gifts. Do not submit a capital request right now: major capital grant allocations (generally $50,000+ for buildings, land, or equipment) are on hold and the foundation has said they may not reconsider capital funding before 2027; reframe capital-adjacent needs as program or operating requests in the meantime. A common mistake to avoid is treating this like a multi-stage funder — there's no LOI stage, so the general application itself needs to fully make the case for impact, budget, and community fit in one pass. Once funded, build in the required post-grant reporting: grantees must submit a short summary of how funds were used, so plan for that deliverable at proposal-writing time rather than as an afterthought. Finally, remember the one-grant-per-focus-area-per-year limit — if your organization runs multiple qualifying programs, apply under the single area that best fits rather than trying to double up within the same annual cycle.