Margoes Foundation

Margoes Foundation is a small, closely held family foundation — its five-seat board rotates the same names across officer roles (Mark Moskowitz currently Chair/President, plus Holly Williamson, Richard Martinez, Mark Tamayo, Sherry Sarinta, and at times Ann Johnson) — administered day-to-day through Pacific Foundation Service on its IRS filings and, per its current website, through Associate Director Karen Lengler at Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies. With just $5.5 million in assets and roughly $150,000-$350,000 distributed annually, it operates far more like a boutique, relationship-driven funder than an institutional grantmaker, and its own materials confirm that: since the 2024 cycle it has moved to an invitation-only model, explicitly telling prospects not to submit unsolicited full proposals but instead to make contact first.

That gatekeeping is the central strategic fact for applicants. The Foundation's grantee list is heavily concentrated — its two largest relationships, Community Initiatives (fiscal sponsor for the Working Scholars Fund, $150,000 across 3 grants) and Breakthrough Silicon Valley (College Pathways Initiative, $150,000 across 3 grants), together account for 41% of the $735,000 tracked across its top-50 grantee history. That pattern signals a preference for repeat funding of trusted intermediaries over churning through new applicants each cycle. First-time applicants should read this as evidence that a warm introduction or an existing track record with Bay Area college-access peers matters more than a polished cold proposal.

Nearly every dollar-verified grantee (18 of 21 tracked grants) is based in California, and virtually all serve the San Francisco Bay Area specifically — Canal Alliance (Marin), Richmond Promise, Mission Graduates (San Francisco), Breakthrough Silicon Valley. Organizations outside this footprint have essentially no realistic path to funding regardless of program quality.

The Foundation also runs a more defined entry point for newcomers: the Venture Philanthropy Award, a three-year $150,000 commitment ($50,000/year) reserved for early-stage (generally under 3 years old) organizations with a scalable, revenue-generating program model in college access, completion, career development, or mental health. This track has its own selection window rather than depending purely on staff discretion, making it the clearest opening for organizations without a prior relationship.

For any applicant, the practical sequence is: inquire, get invited, then apply — cold outreach with a full proposal is unlikely to convert given the current invitation-only posture.

Margoes Foundation's giving is modest and driven more by investment performance than a fixed payout formula. Grants paid (net of administrative costs) ran $150,000 in FY2019, $150,000 in FY2020, $240,000 in FY2021, $215,000 in FY2022, and $155,000 in FY2023 — a five-year average of about $182,000/year with no clear upward or downward trend. Total giving (which includes program-related administrative costs) followed a similar arc: $244,379 (2019), $248,697 (2020), $349,751 (2021), $322,374 (2022), and $280,550 (2023). The FY2021 peak coincided with a strong investment year ($376,294 in net investment income against $5.83 million in assets); the FY2022 dip followed a weak investment year ($40,336 in net investment income). Total assets have hovered in a narrow band — from $4.56 million (2022) to $5.83 million (2021) — with the current IRS Business Master File listing $5,541,128; this is not a foundation whose grants budget is growing with scale.

Grant size clusters tightly. The Foundation's own typical-grant-size data puts the range at $15,000-$50,000, with a $30,000 median and $34,286 average across 7 recently tracked awards. The fuller top-50 grantee history (21 grants, $735,000 total, $35,000 average) shows individual checks from $10,000 (Mission Graduates, Athletic Scholars Advancement) up to $150,000 in cumulative multi-year support to a single grantee — both Community Initiatives and Breakthrough Silicon Valley received three separate $50,000 grants apiece.

By program area, roughly 85.7% of tracked dollars ($630,000 of $735,000) went to college access/completion and scholarship work — Community Initiatives, Breakthrough Silicon Valley, Catalino Tapia Scholarship Foundation, OneGoal, Bay Area Hybrid College Initiative, Braven, Canal Alliance, Scopa Has A Dream, Richmond Promise, and Mission Graduates. The remaining 14.3% (about $105,000) supported mental-health and independent-living-adjacent work — Foundation For A College Education's mental health/college-success programming, California Clubhouse's young-adult pre-vocational program, and Community Support Network's general operating support. Geographically, 18 of 21 tracked grants (86%) went to California-based organizations, with the remaining 3 tied to Illinois-registered entities — most likely a national fiscal sponsor administering a Bay Area-serving program.

Margoes sits at the small end of Bay Area college-access funders — a fraction of the size of the largest players in the space but focused on the same core disciplines. The figures below for peer foundations are approximate, publicly reported ranges (Candid/foundation-directory data) rather than figures pulled from this platform's verified financials, and should be treated as directional context, not exact comparisons.

Margoes is roughly two to three orders of magnitude smaller than Crankstart, ECMC, or College Futures, which explains why it behaves like a relationship-first micro-funder rather than running open RFP infrastructure. Its closest peer by scale and mechanism is the Winkler Family Foundation — another Bay Area family foundation of comparable size that also relies on invitation rather than open competition. For grant seekers, the practical takeaway is that Margoes rewards deep, durable partnerships (as with Community Initiatives and Breakthrough Silicon Valley) rather than broad annual competitions, unlike its larger statewide and national peers.

Margoes Foundation's most recent Form 990-PF was filed September 12, 2025, its latest publicly available financial disclosure. Beyond routine tax filings, the clearest recent development is procedural rather than programmatic: as of the 2024 grant cycle, the Foundation shifted to an invitation-only application process, stating on its site that it is not accepting unsolicited proposals and that prospective applicants should first submit an inquiry through its contact page. This is a meaningful tightening from any earlier open-LOI posture and is the single most important operational change grant seekers should plan around.

The Foundation's Venture Philanthropy Award — a three-year, $150,000 commitment paid in $50,000 annual installments to early-stage organizations — is running its 2024-2026 cohort; the Foundation's own materials indicate a new VP Award application window was expected to be announced in 2025, though this platform's research could not independently confirm a cohort has since opened as of August 2026.

No board leadership changes were identified. The same small, rotating slate — Mark Moskowitz (currently Chair/President, previously Treasurer/CFO), Holly Williamson, Richard Martinez, Mark Tamayo, and Sherry Sarinta, joined at times by Ann Johnson — has governed the Foundation across the filings reviewed, with officer compensation reported at $0 every year from 2011 through 2023, consistent with an all-volunteer, family-style board. Day-to-day grants administration now appears to run through Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies (Associate Director Karen Lengler is the listed website contact), a Bay Area philanthropy-services consultancy, while Pacific Foundation Service remains named as the Foundation's "care of" administrator on its IRS record. Grant seekers should use the website contact channel rather than guessing at a direct staff email, since the administrative point of contact has evidently shifted over time.

Do not send a full unsolicited proposal — Margoes Foundation has explicitly said it is not reviewing them as of the 2024 cycle. The correct first move is a brief inquiry through the website's contact page or directly to Associate Director Karen Lengler (karen.lengler@thirdplateau.com, 415-837-5408), describing the program, its fit with the Foundation's four funded disciplines (college access, college completion, career development, or mental health/wellness), and the population served. Only after that screen will the Foundation invite a formal application through its online grants management portal.

Timing matters: the Foundation states it reviews proposals twice a year, with a historical pattern of a February intake and May decisions — but confirm current-cycle dates directly with staff rather than assuming this holds every year, since the Foundation's public materials are sparse on this point.

Size the ask realistically. With grants paid ranging $150,000-$240,000 across the last five fiscal years and a typical individual grant of $15,000-$50,000 (median $30,000), a request materially above $50,000 is out of step with what Margoes actually funds in a single check — Community Initiatives and Breakthrough Silicon Valley reached $150,000 in total support only by stacking three separate annual grants, not through one large award.

Be explicit about Bay Area service delivery — every substantively verified grantee operates in California, mostly within the immediate SF Bay Area (Marin, Oakland, Richmond, San Francisco, Silicon Valley). National organizations without a distinct, locally embedded Bay Area program are a weak fit.

If the organization is newer (roughly under three years old) and has a scalable, revenue-generating model, lead with the Venture Philanthropy Award rather than a general request — it is a defined three-year, $150,000 commitment aimed specifically at earlier-stage groups, and it comes with its own selection window rather than depending on ad hoc staff discretion.

Expect the Foundation to probe four things in any follow-up conversation: social impact evidence, program differentiation, management/staffing stability, and scalability or risk. Prepare concise, evidence-backed answers to each rather than a generic narrative. Finally, respect the explicit exclusions — no funding for individuals, annual appeals or galas, sectarian religious purposes, deficit coverage, or conferences/events — and note that grants are typically one year at a time, renewable at the Foundation's discretion rather than guaranteed multi-year support outside the VP Award.