Marsal Family Foundation

The Marsal Family Foundation is a closed, relationship-driven vehicle for Bryan and Kathleen Marsal's personal philanthropy, run out of Alvarez & Marsal's corporate offices at 600 Madison Ave with only three directors: Bryan Marsal (Alvarez & Marsal co-founder and Co-CEO), Kathleen Marsal (former VP/Director of Taxes at Citibank), and Antonio Alvarez. It does not accept unsolicited requests and has no public application, LOI, or RFP process — every funder database that tracks it (Instrumentl, Grantable, Hinchilla, Grantmakers.io) independently confirms this. Grantee selection follows the family's personal and professional network: their alma mater (University of Michigan, which received a five-installment $10.2M+ commitment tied to a publicly announced $50 million pledge that renamed the School of Education in their honor in 2023), their firm's own charitable arm (Alvarez & Marsal Foundation, $1M across two grants), and a cluster of New York-area institutions (Columbia University Medical Center, Hospital for Special Surgery, Burke Rehabilitation, Millbrook School, Bedford Historical Society, Westchester Land Trust) that reflect where the family lives and has personal ties. There is no revolving annual competition — 129 of 230 tracked grants (56%) went to New York recipients and 21 to Michigan, with the rest scattered thinly across a dozen other states. For an organization with no prior connection to the Marsals, Alvarez & Marsal, or the University of Michigan community, the realistic strategy is not to apply but to get introduced: through a shared board member, an Alvarez & Marsal partner, a University of Michigan development officer, or leadership at an existing grantee (Gladney Fund, Burke Rehabilitation, COPD Foundation). Once a relationship exists, funding tends to recur — Millbrook School, Lasalle School, Center for Discovery, Bethania Kids, and Westchester Land Trust each received five separate grants in the tracked window, suggesting the foundation renews modest annual commitments to organizations it already trusts rather than making large first-time gifts to strangers. First-time or one-off large grants (Complete Play Ground $500,000, Have Faith Hatt Mission $200,000) appear to correspond to specific capital projects or causes that caught the family's direct personal attention.

Across the 230 grants captured in available filings, the foundation distributed $18,031,814 at an average of $78,399 per grant — but that average is misleading because of one dominant outlier. The University of Michigan alone received 5 grants totaling $10,207,000 (57% of all tracked dollars), installments on the 2023 $50 million naming gift for the Marsal Family School of Education. Strip that out and the remaining $7.8M across 225 grants averages closer to $35,000, and the bulk of individual checks are far smaller: the next tier — Gladney Fund ($2,253,600/5 grants), Alvarez & Marsal Foundation ($1,000,000/2 grants), Burke Rehabilitation ($900,000/4 grants), and Columbia University Medical Center ($805,000/5 grants) — accounts for another $5M, and everything below that falls off sharply into $5,000-$200,000 territory. The true median grant among recurring, non-flagship recipients sits in the $16,000-$25,000 range (e.g., Leukemia & Lymphoma Society $10,000/grant, Bates College $10,000/grant, Planned Parenthood $3,300/grant), with many small annual gifts of $1,000-$5,000 to local NY-area causes (Bedford Historical Society, Westchester Land Trust, Our Companions Animal Rescue). By program area, education dominates (University of Michigan, Michigan Tech, Millbrook School, Cardigan Mountain School, Bates College, Ignite, LaSalle School), followed by health/medical (Columbia Medical Center, Burke Rehabilitation, Hospital for Special Surgery, COPD Foundation, Northbrook Behavioral Health, Center for Discovery) and family/adoption services (Gladney Fund, National Council for Adoption). Smaller allocations go to human services and food security (Gleaners Community Food Bank, Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, Forgotten Harvest, Food Bank for NYC), animal welfare/land conservation, and the arts (New Group, four grants). Total giving has been highly volatile: $2.14M (FY2019) → $1.97M (FY2020) → $2.42M (FY2021) → $2.83M (FY2022) → a jump to $8.28M (FY2023) → $6.6M (FY2024, per public reporting), tracking the multi-year UM pledge rather than organic program growth. Total assets fell from $10.56M (FY2022) to $8.50M (FY2024) as the foundation paid down pledge obligations faster than it received new contributions.

All five peers sit within about $4,000 of Marsal's $8.50M in total assets and share the same broad IRS 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' classification, but none have a public grants database entry as developed as Marsal's, and only Rhimes Family Foundation maintains a public-facing website at all. This is typical for foundations in this asset band ($8-9M): they are usually single-family vehicles administered by an accountant or corporate office (Marsal's is administered through Alvarez & Marsal; several peers show no listed website), funding a small, fixed circle of personal and institutional relationships rather than running an open competitive process. Marsal stands out from this peer set mainly in scale of disbursement relative to assets — its FY2023-24 giving exceeded total assets in some years, a sign of active pledge-funding (the UM gift) rather than steady-state endowment payout.

The single most consequential event in the foundation's recent history is the 2023 announcement that Bryan and Kathleen Marsal pledged $50 million to the University of Michigan, resulting in the renaming of the School of Education as the Marsal Family School of Education (announced February 22, 2023, per Forbes and University of Michigan's giving office). The foundation's 990-PF filings show this being paid out over multiple years rather than as a single check — five tracked grants to the University of Michigan sum to $10,207,000, and the foundation's total disbursements spiked from $2.83M (FY2022) to $8.28M (FY2023) coincident with the start of pledge payments. The relationship with Michigan remains active and visible: the Marsal Family School of Education announced its 2025-26 Alumni Award recipients (Emerging Leader and Distinguished Alumni categories) in the school's ongoing programming, and the school was ranked among U.S. News & World Report's 2026 best education schools — evidence the family's engagement with the school continues well past the initial naming gift. On the foundation's own filings side, the most recent Form 990-PF (fiscal year 2024) was filed November 17, 2025, showing total assets of $8.5M (down from $10.4M in FY2023) and disbursements of roughly $6.6M across an estimated 60-98 grantees, continuing the elevated post-2023 giving pace but below the FY2023 peak. No other public announcements, leadership changes, or new program launches surfaced in web research beyond the University of Michigan relationship and routine annual 990-PF filings; there is no dedicated foundation press office or website generating independent news.

There is no application to submit to this foundation in the conventional sense — this is the single most important fact for any grant seeker to internalize. Every independent funder-tracking source (Instrumentl, Grantable, Hinchilla, Grantmakers.io) confirms the foundation gives exclusively to preselected/known organizations and does not review unsolicited proposals, LOIs, or RFP responses. Do not submit a cold application through a generic contact form; there is no portal, no posted deadline, and no board review cycle to target. Instead, the realistic path is relationship access: identify whether anyone on your board, leadership team, or major-donor list has a connection to Bryan Marsal, Kathleen Marsal, or Antonio Alvarez, to Alvarez & Marsal (the global restructuring/consulting firm, headquartered at the same 600 Madison Ave address as the foundation), or to the University of Michigan's Marsal Family School of Education. Because the foundation's giving clusters heavily around New York (56% of tracked grants) and Michigan (9%), organizations physically located in or serving those regions — particularly Westchester County, NYC medical institutions, and Ann Arbor/University of Michigan-affiliated programs — have a structurally better fit than out-of-region applicants with no other connection. The grantee pattern also shows the foundation renews commitments to organizations it already trusts (Millbrook School, Lasalle School, Center for Discovery, Bethania Kids, and Westchester Land Trust each appear in five separate grant years), so a realistic first ask, if a connection exists, is a modest one-time or small annual gift ($1,000-$25,000) rather than a large capital request — six-figure and seven-figure gifts (University of Michigan, Gladney Fund, Alvarez & Marsal Foundation, Burke Rehabilitation) all went to institutions with a pre-existing, often decades-long personal tie to the family or the firm. A common mistake would be treating this as an open family foundation prospect and spending LOI-writing time on it; that effort is better spent identifying and cultivating the human connection first, since the foundation's own conduct (no website, no public contact for grants, administration through the firm's corporate office) signals it does not want to be found by cold outreach.