Madrona Foundation

Madrona Foundation is a closed, family-directed private foundation with zero paid staff — it is run entirely by Susanne L. Fish (President/Treasurer/Director) and Brian Fish (Vice President/Secretary/Director), both of whom report $0 officer compensation. This is checkbook philanthropy, not a program-staffed grantmaking operation, and the underlying database flags it as preselected-only: grants overwhelmingly go to organizations the Fish family already knows, not to unsolicited applicants who find the foundation through directories. There is no published LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline, no evidence of site visits, and no RFP has ever been located online. The grantee list reveals a consistent thesis: civil liberties and voting rights (Free Speech For People received $1.375 million in 2020, the largest gift in the foundation's history; Voter Participation Center received $200,000), environmental and nuclear policy (Earthjustice Northwest Office and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility each received $100,000, the latter for a 'Nuclear Abolition Program'), independent journalism (Center for Investigative Reporting, $50,000), Middle East human rights (Just Vision, Mercy Corps' Gaza work), and a cluster of Washington state human-services nonprofits receiving smaller five-figure gifts (NW Harvest, DESC, DAWN, NWIRP, New Beginnings, Lifewire — mostly $5,000-$15,000). Geography is the clearest lever available to an outside applicant: 15 of the 22 tracked grants (68%) went to Washington-based organizations. First-time applicants should not expect a rubric-based review; instead, treat this like reaching an individual major donor. The strongest path in is a warm introduction — through a current or past grantee, a shared board member, or Seattle progressive-advocacy circles — rather than a cold proposal. Given the near-total absence of any public-facing application infrastructure (no grants page, no portal, no listed deadline), grant seekers should budget for a slow, informal, relationship-first cultivation process rather than a standard application cycle, and should independently confirm the foundation is still actively granting before investing significant proposal time, given the sharp falloff in 2024 disbursements.

Across 22 tracked grants totaling $2,371,000, the average grant is $107,773, but this is heavily skewed by outliers — the median grant size is just $10,000, while the average sits at $204,375 and the range runs from $10,000 to $1,375,000 (IRS PF990 typical-grant-size data, 8-grant sample). Strip out the single $1.375 million Free Speech For People gift and the pattern is a foundation writing mostly $5,000-$15,000 checks: 11 of the 19 named grantees in the dataset received $15,000 or less, and eight received exactly $10,000 or less. Only three organizations broke six figures — Free Speech For People ($1.375M), Voter Participation Center ($200,000), and the pair of $100,000 grants to Earthjustice Northwest Office and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility. Annual giving is volatile rather than programmatic. Total giving hit $1,731,193 in 2020 (an election year), then fell sharply to $143,522 (2021) and $154,174 (2022), rebounded to $609,305 in 2023, and — per the most recent available filing — dropped to roughly $9,000 in 2024 against $202,678 in revenue, the steepest single-year decline in the foundation's filing history. Longer-run data (2011-2015) shows a steadier baseline of $255,000-$446,296 in annual giving, suggesting 2020's spike and 2024's near-shutdown are both anomalies bracketing a more typical multi-hundred-thousand-dollar annual program. Total assets have stayed remarkably flat for over a decade — $6,285,388 in 2012 to $10,914,389 in the most recent filing — funded entirely by investment/dividend income (contributions_received is $0 in every year on record), confirming this is a closed corpus with no active fundraising, not a foundation whose grantmaking capacity is growing. Geographically, 68% of known grant dollars and grant count (15 of 22) stayed in Washington state, with the remainder scattered across DC (2), Rhode Island (2), California, New York, and Texas — most likely following the personal and professional network of the Fish family rather than a defined multi-state program.

Madrona Foundation sits in a tight asset-band peer cohort of small, closely-held private foundations all holding roughly $10.9 million in assets and classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking — but annual giving levels for the peer set are not available in this dataset, so the comparison below focuses on structure and public accessibility rather than dollar volume.

All five peers cluster within roughly $10,000 of Madrona's asset base, which suggests this comparison group was built purely on asset size rather than mission similarity — none of the peers has a documented environmental, civil-liberties, or advocacy focus in the data available. Only two of the five peers (Bob Barker Company Foundation, Crow Hill Foundation Trust) maintain a public website at all, and Madrona has neither a verified independent website nor any public grants page, making it slightly less accessible than even this low-transparency peer group; the madrona.org domain associated with this record in the source database actually belongs to an unrelated San Juan Islands environmental nonprofit (the Madrona Institute), not this foundation, and should not be used for outreach.

The most concrete recent data point is financial: per ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer and Cause IQ, the foundation's latest available filing shows $202,678 in revenue (entirely dividend income) but only $9,000 in charitable disbursements — a collapse from $549,000-$609,305 in giving the prior year (2023) and the smallest payout in over a decade of available filings. No news coverage, press releases, or announcements from 2025 or 2026 could be located for the Madrona Foundation specifically — this is consistent with a foundation that has no communications presence, no staff, and no public program to announce. Leadership has been stable and unremarkable: Brian Fish has served as President/officer since taking over leadership around 2008, and Susanne L. Fish, who co-founded the foundation in 2004 alongside Stephen Fish, remains Treasurer and Director. No board transitions, new hires, or governance changes surfaced in any source checked. The foundation's most recent well-documented period of high activity remains 2020, when it disbursed $1.6 million-plus, headlined by the $1.375 million grant to Free Speech For People and $200,000 to Voter Participation Center — both tied to that year's election cycle. Absent new public information, the most useful signal for a prospective applicant is the trend line itself: a foundation that gave under $10,000 total in its latest filing year is either between funding cycles, winding down active grantmaking, or simply had an idiosyncratic low year — any of which warrants a direct inquiry before investing in a full proposal.

There is no formal application process to prepare for — the foundation's own PF990 data lists no application instructions, no grants page, no LOI requirement, and no deadline, and none of the standard foundation directories (Candid, GuideStar, Instrumentl, Cause IQ) surfaced one either. Treat outreach accordingly: 1) Do not spend time searching for a portal or downloadable form — none exists. 2) Lead with mission alignment, not a generic ask: the strongest matches are civil liberties/voting-rights organizations, environmental and nuclear-policy groups, independent investigative journalism outlets, Middle East human-rights organizations, and Washington state human-services nonprofits (domestic violence, homelessness, refugee/immigrant legal aid, food security). 3) Being Seattle- or Washington-based is a real advantage — 68% of known grant dollars and grant count stayed in-state, so a WA mailing address and local program footprint should be foregrounded, not buried. 4) Because the foundation has no staff, a warm introduction matters far more than proposal polish; look for connections through existing grantees such as Earthjustice Northwest, NWIRP, DESC, or DAWN, or through Seattle's progressive-advocacy and civil-liberties networks. 5) If no personal connection exists, a short, direct letter of inquiry (one page) sent to the foundation's mailing address or a phone call to (206) 667-0300 is more appropriate than a full grant proposal — the administrative contact is listed as 'c/o Pmnw LLC,' indicating the foundation's paperwork is handled by an outside accounting/family-office service rather than program staff who could review a lengthy submission. 6) Calibrate the ask: outside of a handful of six-figure gifts to nationally recognized advocacy organizations, the typical historical grant is $5,000-$15,000 (median $10,000) — request accordingly unless your organization has the scale of a Free Speech For People or Voter Participation Center. 7) Given the confirmed drop to roughly $9,000 in total disbursements in the most recent filing year, verify — by phone or brief written inquiry — that the foundation is currently granting before committing significant time to a detailed proposal.