Kindle Hill Foundation

Kindle Hill Foundation (EIN 82-3263014, Gwynedd Valley, PA) is an unusual entry in a grant-seeker's prospect list, and applicants need to understand that before investing time. Every public-facing asset — kindlehill.org, its media page, its donation FAQ — describes a direct-service operation: equine-assisted learning, equine-assisted therapy, and First Responder Equine-Assisted Training for police, firefighters, EMS, and SWAT teams operating out of two barns near Blue Bell, PA. There is no grants page, no RFP, no LOI process, and no portal anywhere in the public record. Granted's own database confirms this: the application_instructions field is literally empty, and there is no grants_page_url or application_form_url on file. The strong working theory, supported by the matching contact (Saly Glassman, listed as both the foundation's president and the operating charity's point of contact at saly@kindlehill.org), is that this private foundation exists primarily to capitalize and fund its own affiliated operating charity of a nearly identical name (Kindle Hill Foundation Charity, EIN 88-1644015) rather than to make competitive grants to unrelated third-party nonprofits. The board is tiny and entirely uncompensated — Saly Glassman (President), Ira Berman (Secretary/Treasurer), Suzanne Smith (Director), and Peg Collins (Board Member) — with $0 officer compensation in every fiscal year on file (2018-2023), a hallmark of a family/insider foundation rather than a staffed institutional grantmaker. For outside nonprofits, this means the realistic path is not a cold proposal but a warm, personal introduction grounded in genuine programmatic overlap — specifically equine-assisted therapy, PTSD treatment, or first-responder mental health in the Greater Philadelphia/Montgomery County, PA corridor. Organizations with no connection to that niche or geography should treat this foundation as a very low-probability prospect. Those that do have overlap should approach it the way one would approach a family foundation: build a relationship first (a site visit, a volunteer connection, or an introduction through a shared first-responder or equine-therapy network), and only then raise the subject of funding, rather than submitting an unsolicited written proposal into what appears to be a closed process.

The financial record shows a foundation whose story is asset accumulation, not distribution. Total assets grew from $407,081 in fiscal year 2018 to $10,103,687 in fiscal year 2023 — a roughly 24-fold increase in five years — driven almost entirely by large episodic contributions rather than investment growth: $60,000 (2018), $611,260 (2019), $8,108,261 (2020), $1,281,319 (2021), $725,000 (2022), and $300,000 (2023). That single $8.1 million infusion in 2020 is the defining event in the foundation's history and roughly matches the scale of a major individual or family gift rather than a diversified donor base. Against that, total giving (all forms of disbursement reported on the 990) has stayed relatively flat and modest: $85,528 (2018), $553,418 (2019), $436,679 (2020), $188,935 (2021), $428,885 (2022), and $363,790 (2023) — a range of roughly $86K to $553K with no clear upward trend despite the asset base growing more than twentyfold. In four of the six years on record, the foundation gave less than it received in new contributions, meaning it is still net-accumulating capital rather than paying out at a rate proportional to its size. The one data point suggesting individual-level disbursement is FY2023, which reports 175 grants against $363,790 in total giving — implying an average disbursement near $2,079 per grant, a figure far more consistent with subsidized client fees or program scholarships than institutional grants to nonprofit organizations. Officer compensation was $0 in every year on file, confirming an all-volunteer governance structure with no grants staff. No program-area or geographic breakdown of giving is available in Granted's database (the grantee list and matched public grants are both empty for this record), and no third-party source (CauseIQ, Charity Navigator, GuideStar) surfaced a usable grants list during this research — Charity Navigator explicitly notes the organization lacks sufficient public 990 data for a full financial review. Net: this looks far more like a capital-building vehicle for the founder's own program than a discretionary grants budget for outside applicants.

Kindle Hill sits in the middle of its five closest asset-matched peers, all categorized under the Health NTEE code with assets between roughly $9.4M and $11.3M. Annual giving and application posture for the peer set were not available in Granted's database and were outside the scope of this foundation's own web research, so those columns are marked accordingly rather than estimated.

Kindle Hill is the only foundation in this peer group for which Granted has verified giving-level financial detail, which itself is telling: several of these peers (Colorado Health Institute, a policy research institute; Pfizer Patient Assistance Foundation, a large pharmaceutical patient-assistance vehicle) are structurally very different organizations despite similar asset size, underscoring that asset-based peer grouping alone doesn't guarantee comparable grantmaking behavior. Applicants should not assume Kindle Hill's peers are more accessible without independently verifying each one's actual application process.

Confirmed recent activity is thin. The clearest dated data point is the operating charity's Guidestar/Candid Platinum Seal of Transparency, achieved in 2024 — the highest self-reported transparency tier Candid offers, suggesting an effort to look more credible to funders and corporate sponsors even as no formal outside grants program has surfaced. Media coverage found in this research, including an NBC10 Philadelphia segment on Kindle Hill training police officers in horse-based de-escalation tactics and a program overview hosted by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF), documents the foundation's flagship First Responder Equine-Assisted Training work, but none of it carries a clear 2025 or 2026 date — most appears to originate from 2022-2023 press cycles. No leadership changes were found: Saly Glassman remains President and the public point of contact, alongside Ira Berman (Secretary/Treasurer), Suzanne Smith (Director), and Peg Collins (Board Member), the same four names across every year of governance data in Granted's database. No new program announcements, RFPs, or grant-cycle openings were found in 2025-2026 search results. The most significant financial event remains the roughly $8.1 million contribution received in fiscal year 2020, which is now four to five years in the past but still defines the foundation's balance sheet; there is no public indication that this capital event triggered a new or expanded grants program for outside organizations. In the absence of fresher news, the most reliable read on "recent" activity is that the foundation continues steady, quiet operation of its own equine-therapy and first-responder programming rather than any visible shift in grantmaking posture.

Treat this as a relationship-first, not a proposal-first, funder — there is no evidence anywhere in Granted's database or in web research of an open call, LOI process, portal, or downloadable application form. The single most useful move is a direct, personal email to Saly Glassman (saly@kindlehill.org), the President, rather than searching for a grants department, since none appears to exist; the foundation's listed phone number in Granted's data is (215) 990-7718, while the operating charity's site lists (908) 291-3770 for general inquiries — try the foundation number first and be explicit that you are inquiring about foundation giving, not client services, since the same contact fields both. Do not confuse the charity's "free 15-minute consultation" offer with a grant-application intake — that consultation is for prospective equine-therapy clients, not nonprofit grant seekers, and using it to pitch a funding request would likely misfire. Given the tiny, all-volunteer, four-person board and $0 officer compensation across every year on record, any successful approach almost certainly runs through a warm introduction — a shared connection in the Montgomery County/Greater Philadelphia nonprofit community, a mutual contact in the first-responder wellness or equine-therapy field, or a referral through a partner organization like NLEOMF, which already hosts Kindle Hill's program materials. Lead with precise mission alignment: the foundation's own language centers on equine-assisted learning and therapy, PTSD and trauma recovery, and first-responder-specific wellness (police, fire, EMS, SWAT) — proposals or introductions framed around unrelated health issues are unlikely to land regardless of quality. Because total annual giving has ranged only $86K-$553K over the last six fiscal years against $10.1M in assets, and because the FY2023 detail (175 disbursements averaging roughly $2,079 each) points toward individual client subsidies rather than institutional nonprofit grants, applicants should calibrate expectations toward a small, in-kind, or partnership-style relationship rather than a large discretionary grant. Given all of this, organizations should not invest in a full formal proposal without first securing some direct signal of interest from Glassman or another board member — an unsolicited written proposal into a channel with no documented review process is unlikely to be read as one.