Hollister House Garden Inc.

Hollister House Garden Inc. is not a viable target for a grant application, and grant seekers should not spend time preparing a proposal to it. Public records (IRS Form 990-PF filings reviewed via ProPublica and philanthropy.org) and the organization's own website confirm it is a private operating foundation — the entity that houses a 12-acre English-style public garden in Washington, Connecticut, founded by garden designer George Schoellkopf, who pledged the property plus a minimum $2 million endowment in 2005 with facilitation from The Garden Conservancy. Operating foundations under IRC 4942(j)(3) spend the bulk of their income directly on their own charitable activity — in this case, maintaining the garden, running the Barn Talks lecture series, hosting the annual Garden Study Weekend symposium, art workshops, and horticultural education — rather than distributing grants to outside 501(c)(3)s. The DB record's "is_grantmaker: true" flag and $408,687 in FY2023 "total giving" reflect this direct program spending, not third-party grants; the foundation's own grants-paid figure is $0. There is no application form, LOI process, grants page, or program officer, and none was found on the live site (hollisterhousegarden.org) or in web search. If an organization's actual goal is partnership rather than funding — e.g., co-programming a lecture, joining a garden tour, or cross-promoting horticultural education — the more productive path is a direct relationship pitch to the Executive Director/Board via the general office line (860-868-2200) or Office@Hollisterhousegarden.org, positioned as a collaboration rather than a funding request. Notably, Hollister House Garden is itself a grant recipient: philanthropy.org's donor data shows it received $58,000 across 29 grants from 14 funders between 2020-2024 (Donor Advised Charitable Giving, Morgan Stanley GIFT, Non Nobis Solum Foundation, The Buchanan Family Foundation, and others), which may be useful competitive intelligence for organizations building similar small-garden/horticultural nonprofit funder lists rather than for approaching Hollister House itself.

Hollister House Garden Inc. reports $0 in grants paid to external organizations in every year reviewed (2018-2025), confirming it does not operate a subgrant or donation program for outside nonprofits. Its FY2023 Form 990-PF instead shows $408,687 in total giving/expenses, of which $393,924 (96.4%) was classified as "charitable disbursements" — spending on its own garden operations and public education programming, not grants to third parties. That charitable-disbursement figure dropped to effectively $0 reported in the FY2024 and FY2025 filings even as total expenses held near $445-449K, implying reclassification toward operating/capital costs rather than a change in mission. Total assets have grown steadily: $5.03M (FY2018) to $6.38M (FY2025), a 27% increase over seven years, driven substantially by investment gains — asset sales made up 66% of FY2025's $978,729 in revenue, versus contributions of just $187,320 in FY2023. Officer compensation is minimal ($2,500 in FY2023), consistent with a small, largely volunteer-governed operating foundation rather than a staffed grantmaking institution. On the receiving side, the organization's own funders gave in a $50-$15,000 range (median roughly $2,000) across 29 grants from 14 funders in 2020-2024, dominated by donor-advised funds and small family foundations — useful context for understanding the scale this entity typically transacts at, but not evidence of any outbound grantmaking capacity. In short: there is no median grant size, program-area breakdown, or geographic distribution to report because Hollister House Garden makes no grants.

The DB-matched peers below share Hollister House Garden's asset scale (~$6.3-6.5M) and Arts & Culture NTEE classification, but differ sharply on whether they actually fund outside organizations — several appear to be operating entities themselves rather than active grantmakers, which is a common pattern in this asset tier.

Of this peer set, only the Peter Bullough Foundation has a discoverable, live grants website and is worth independent research as an actual funding prospect; the Three Affiliated Tribes Museum, like Hollister House, appears to be an operating institution (a museum) rather than a grantmaker, reinforcing that a meaningful share of $6-6.5M "Arts & Culture" foundations in this bracket are self-operating nonprofits, not open funding sources. Grant seekers building a prospect list from this asset tier should verify grantmaking activity (grants-paid > $0 in 990 filings) before investing outreach time, rather than assuming NTEE classification implies an open grants program.

Hollister House Garden marked its 20th anniversary as an educational public garden during the 2025 season (open April 16-October 11, 2025), continuing its established programming mix of Wednesday/Friday/Saturday public visiting hours, the Barn Talks lecture series, art and photography workshops, and horticulture/garden-design classes. On September 7, 2025, the garden hosted a paid fundraising tour pairing its grounds with three other private Litchfield County, Connecticut gardens — a recurring format used to diversify revenue beyond membership and the core endowment. No leadership changes, new program launches, or notable large grants (given or received) surfaced in search coverage for 2025-2026; the organization's public communications remain focused on visitor programming and event promotion rather than philanthropic announcements. Financially, the most notable recent development is on the balance-sheet side: net assets rose from $5.74M (FY2022) to an estimated $6.38M (FY2025), with FY2024 and FY2025 revenue ($913K and $979K) roughly triple FY2022-2023 levels, driven mainly by investment/asset-sale gains rather than new contributions or grant income. Reported charitable disbursements fell from $393,924 in FY2023 to effectively $0 in the two most recent filings reviewed, which — absent any public explanation — should be read as a filing/classification shift toward capital and operating costs rather than a change in the garden's day-to-day activity, since public programming continued uninterrupted through the 2025 season.

There is no application process to document: Hollister House Garden Inc. has no grants portal, LOI form, deadline, or program officer, and it paid $0 in external grants in every fiscal year reviewed (2018-2025). Do not submit a proposal here — it will not be reviewed by any grants staff, because none exists for this purpose. For organizations still interested in a relationship with Hollister House Garden — for example, horticultural nonprofits, garden museums, or arts/education groups seeking co-programming, event partnership, or visibility (not funding) — the most realistic entry point is a direct, personal outreach to the office (860-868-2200 or Office@Hollisterhousegarden.org) proposing a specific collaboration such as a joint lecture in the Barn Talks series, inclusion in the annual garden-tour fundraiser, or cross-promotion around the Garden Study Weekend symposium; frame the ask around shared horticultural-education mission rather than financial support. A common mistake to avoid: treating the IRS 990-PF "private foundation" classification or the platform's Arts & Culture / is_grantmaker flag as evidence of an open grants program — for operating foundations like this one, that classification reflects tax status and asset structure, not grantmaking behavior, and cold LOIs sent on that assumption will go unanswered. Organizations that actually need funding in the horticulture/public-garden space should instead study Hollister House's own funder list (Non Nobis Solum Foundation, Wenden Foundation, Santomero Family Foundation, The Buchanan Family Foundation, and Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust among them) as a peer-benchmark prospect list, since those are the funders actively writing checks in this exact niche and asset range.