Marilyn And Marshall Butler Foundation

The Marilyn and Marshall Butler Foundation (EIN 13-3591664, ruling year 1990) is a small family trust with a Prescott, Arizona mailing address, administered care of JP Morgan Chase Bank. Its five trustees (Marilyn, Lawrence, Michael, Hillary and Eliot Butler) serve without compensation. Its record is flagged as giving to preselected organizations only, and it has no published application process, mission statement, grants page or contact email. Our records list no accepting-applications procedure, only a bank-managed phone number, (866) 888-5157.

What this means for first-time applicants

• Treat it as invitation-only. Nothing we found suggests an LOI, full-proposal or site-visit pipeline. Unsolicited proposals are unlikely to be read.
• Relationships come first. The grantee list reflects the family's personal commitments. The largest gifts went to Ascendigo Autism Services ($25,500 plus $10,000) and Cate School (three gifts totaling $50,000). Others went to UJA-Federation of New York ($10,000) and Tanger Hillel at Brooklyn College ($12,000 across two gifts). Aspen-area groups such as Aspen Education Foundation, Aspen Youth Center, Challenge Aspen, Aspen Community Foundation and Aspen Animal Shelter also appear.
• Geography is geared to the family. Of 267 recorded grants, New York received 104, Colorado 29, DC 23, California and Virginia 15 each, Georgia 12, Maryland 11, Texas 9, Florida 8 and South Dakota 5.
• Likely themes. Autism and disability services, Jewish community life, education, environment and conservation, hunger relief and health charities.

The butlerfamilyfoundation.org address in our database actually leads to the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation of St. Paul, MN, a different funder with a Grant Interface portal. Do not use that portal for this foundation. A reasonable approach is a short, respectful introduction through a mutual contact, or a written inquiry to the trustee mailing address, before assuming any funding is available.

Scale. The foundation reported total assets of $2,715,078 at fiscal year 2025, up from $2,639,539 in 2024 and $2,609,039 in 2023. Grants paid in 2025 were $108,686, a payout of about 4.0% of assets. Revenue in 2025 was $223,485, including $194,162 of net investment income. Contributions received have been near zero since 2021 (just $250 that year), so grantmaking depends on investment returns on the existing corpus.

Giving trend (grants paid, from filings)

• 2013: $155,275
• 2014: $145,504
• 2015: $142,323
• 2019: $112,740
• 2020: $121,654
• 2021: $168,470
• 2022: $133,750
• 2023: $160,560
• 2025: $108,686

Some years also report higher total giving figures, such as $213,639 in 2021 and $196,494 in 2023. These likely include amounts beyond grants paid, so the two measures should not be compared directly.

Grant size. Across 267 recorded grants totaling $242,436, the average is $908. Our typical-grant analysis of 169 grants shows a median of just $100, an average of $997, a minimum of $25 and a maximum of $25,000. Most gifts are small and charitable in the donor-advised sense, at $1,000-$2,500. Only about a dozen recipients received $5,000 or more.

Concentration. The top gifts went to Ascendigo Autism Services ($35,500 total), Cate School ($50,000), UJA-Federation of NY ($10,000), Tanger Hillel ($12,000), Aspen Education Foundation ($6,000), Autism Speaks ($10,000 across two gifts), Friendship Circle ($6,800) and Best Buddies ($5,000). A single filing year can list 90-130 individual grants.

Purpose. All recorded grants are coded general purpose. No restricted program grants, capital campaigns or multi-year commitments appear. Geography is led by New York (about 39% of grants by count), then Colorado (11%) and DC (9%). Dollar-weighted shares were not computed.

Our database returned no peer foundations for this funder, and web searches surfaced only similarly named, unrelated foundations. The comparison below is therefore limited to figures we could verify. Financial data for the others was not retrieved, so those cells are marked as not reviewed rather than estimated.

The listed foundations share only a surname with this funder, and none is a true peer by structure. The key difference is access: the others publish deadlines and portals, while this trust does not. Applicants who need an open process should target the J.E. & Z.B. Butler Foundation if they serve people with disabilities in New York or Massachusetts, which overlaps with this foundation's autism-related giving. Verify each funder's eligibility directly before applying.

We found no news, press releases, leadership announcements or new program launches for this foundation in 2025-2026. Searches for the full legal name returned only unrelated Butler-named funders and one third-party filing aggregator.

What the filings show

• 2025: 93 grants totaling $108,686 per the aggregator, down from 127 grants worth $121,133 in 2024. Assets reached $2,715,078 and revenue $223,485.
• Trustees: The same five family trustees (Marilyn, Lawrence, Michael, Hillary and Eliot Butler) appear throughout the filing history, with no compensation. No leadership change is documented.
• Multi-year recipients: The aggregator lists Ascendigo Autism Services at roughly $137,000 across six grants and Cate School at about $100,000 over the 2018-2025 span. Cate School received three recorded gifts of $25,000 in our data.
• Record freshness: Our database record was last verified on 2026-10-20. The foundation's most recent filing we hold is for fiscal year 2025. The 2024 filing in our database lacks grant detail.

Anyone researching this funder should read the latest Form 990-PF directly, since it lists every grant and the trustees' stated policy on unsolicited requests. If the foundation has a website, we could not confirm it, because the address on file resolves to a different Butler family foundation in Minnesota.

Because the foundation is flagged preselected-only and publishes no process, the best advice is about whether and how to approach at all.

• Check the 990-PF first. Part XV of the Form 990-PF states whether the foundation accepts unsolicited requests. For this funder, our data says it does not. Pull the latest filing from ProPublica or the IRS before spending effort.
• Do not apply through the wrong portal. The Grant Interface login on butlerfamilyfoundation.org belongs to the Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation in St. Paul, MN. Submitting there will not reach these trustees.
• Start with a relationship, not a proposal. The grantee list tracks the family's own affiliations: Cate School, Aspen civic groups, New York Jewish institutions and autism charities. If you are connected to one of these communities, ask a current grantee or donor to make an introduction.
• Ask small. The median grant is about $100 and the average is $908. Gifts of $1,000-$2,500 are the norm, with few above $5,000. A request for $50,000 or more would be far outside observed behavior. A realistic first ask is $1,000-$2,500 in general operating support.
• Align your language with their patterns. Emphasize direct service to individuals and families, including autism and disability inclusion, youth programs, hunger relief, environmental conservation and education.
• Keep outreach brief. A one-page letter to the trustees, sent by mail to the bank-managed address (PO Box 11270, Prescott, AZ 86304), is more appropriate than an email campaign. We hold no public email address.
• Timing. No cycle is published. Giving appears spread through the year, and the foundation made 93 grants in 2025, so a year-end or fall approach is as plausible as any.
• Common mistake. Treating this as a competitive grantmaker. Expect no feedback, and do not count on its support in your budget.