Mayer-Rothschild Foundation

The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation is a small, Chicago-based family foundation ($10.1M in assets as of its latest filing) run by a four-person, entirely uncompensated family board — President Dr. Debra E. Weese-Mayer, Vice Presidents Jaimie A. Mayer and Jennifer R. Mayer, and Secretary Jonathan R. Mayer. It operates on two distinct tracks that grant seekers should understand as separate doors. The first is its signature initiative, the Designation of Excellence in Person-Centered Long-Term Care, a multi-year, phased research and standards-development program run in partnership with NYU Meyers' Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing (HIGN). This track does not accept unsolicited proposals from individual nursing homes or assisted-living operators; it funds one lead academic partner per cycle to design, validate, and scale a national certification framework, which then engages a small number of long-term-care communities (five, in the most recent phase) as Centers of Excellence. The second track is a smaller, relationship-driven general-support grants program — the sampled IRS data shows 28 grants worth $384,900 to organizations spanning theater (Goodman Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop), senior living and aging services (Sequoia Adult Living, Garden Spot Community, Global Aging Network, Little Brothers of the Elderly), LGBTQ elder services (SAGE), legal aid (Public Interest Law Center), and direct human services (Lakeview Pantry, AIDS Foundation Chicago). The single largest recipient, '4 R Friends' ($125,000 across 4 grants), and repeat multi-year support to Goodman Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop ($62,200 each across 4 grants) suggest durable, personally-connected relationships rather than open competitive review. First-time applicants without an existing relationship to the family or to HIGN should not expect a standard LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline; the most credible entry points are (1) academic/research institutions positioning for the Designation of Excellence RFA cycle, or (2) organizations aligned with aging-in-place, person-centered long-term care, or Chicago-area human services that can find a warm introduction.

Across the 28 sampled grants (total $384,900, average $13,746 per grant), award sizes are bimodal: a cluster of very small general-support gifts ($1,000–$3,500 to Lakeview Pantry, Hilarity for Charity, AIDS Foundation Chicago, Little Brothers of the Elderly) alongside a handful of much larger, repeated commitments — 4 R Friends at $125,000 total, and $62,200 each to Goodman Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop, all paid across 4 separate grants (suggesting ~$15,000–$31,000 per installment on an annual or semi-annual cadence). Two one-time institutional gifts of $30,000 each went to senior-living communities (Sequoia Adult Living, Garden Spot Community), and a $25,000 one-time grant went to Public Interest Law Center. Geographically, the sampled grantees concentrate in California (9), Illinois (7, the foundation's home state), New York (5), D.C. (3), Louisiana (2), and Pennsylvania (2) — a national footprint with a home-state anchor, not a locally-restricted funder. On the finance side, IRS Form 990-PF data shows total assets growing steadily from $4.57M (FY2019) to $8.95M (FY2023), while total giving has been volatile: $212,614 (FY2019) → $217,431 (FY2020) → $595,287 (FY2021) → $636,147 (FY2022) → $562,514 (FY2023). Note that 'grants paid' (a narrower cash line reported in the same filings, $81,000–$147,500/year) runs well below 'total giving,' implying a meaningful share of the foundation's giving flows through program-related or in-kind channels tied to the Designation of Excellence initiative rather than through direct cash grants captured in the sampled grantee list. Contributions received have also grown ($783K–$1.44M/year in 2019–2023), indicating the family continues actively funding the foundation rather than drawing down a fixed endowment.

The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation sits within a cohort of similarly-sized health-focused family foundations, most with assets in the $9M–$11M range but far smaller total annual giving footprints on record.

Mayer-Rothschild's asset base places it squarely mid-pack among these health-category peers, but it is unusual in publishing a formal, named RFA process (the Designation of Excellence) rather than operating as a purely closed family vehicle — most of the listed peers disclose no public application information at all. This makes Mayer-Rothschild comparatively more accessible to academic and research institutions specifically, even though its general-support track remains as closed as its peers'.

The most substantive recent activity centers on the Designation of Excellence in Person-Centered Long-Term Care, now in a later multi-year phase (described publicly as 'Year Three' and 'Phase 3: Testing and Validation') that seeks a single lead academic partner to work with five long-term-care communities nationally as Centers of Excellence, building on validation work begun after the program's first cohort. The program's first award cycle, announced via press release on 2020-12-23, named the University of Maine Center on Aging and The Cedars (a Portland, Maine senior-living community) as inaugural co-awardees tasked with developing shared systems, tools, and measures for identifying superior person-centered care practices — a partnership consistent with the foundation's IRS-filed program description of an 'Award Distribution University of Maine' and a $250,000 program expense line for 'Award Distribution New York University Rory Meyers School of Nursing' (NYU Meyers houses HIGN, the foundation's implementation partner). Other listed program expenses in the same filing period include $30,000 each to Beatitudes, Bethel New Life, and The New Jewish Home — all aging-services/long-term-care organizations — suggesting the foundation runs smaller, targeted program grants to care communities in parallel with its flagship national initiative. In FY2023, total giving was $562,514 against $8.95M in assets, and the foundation has had no reported change in its all-family, uncompensated leadership team (Weese-Mayer, the two Mayer VPs, and Mayer as Secretary) in the available records. No major leadership transitions, new program launches outside the Designation of Excellence track, or public controversies turned up in web searches for 2025–2026.

Because Mayer-Rothschild runs two distinct funding tracks, tailor the approach to which one fits: For the Designation of Excellence program, only academic/research institutions with geriatric-care, nursing, or gerontology research capacity should apply as the 'lead academic partner' — individual nursing homes and assisted-living operators are not the direct applicant but instead become the five 'Centers of Excellence' engaged by the winning academic partner. Route inquiries to nursing.LTC@nyu.edu (the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing at NYU Meyers, the foundation's implementation partner), not to the foundation's Chicago mailing address — the RFA and program administration are run out of NYU. Review the foundation's own published RFA documents (available as PDFs on mayerrothschild.org, e.g., the February 2020 RFA and the 2024 program brochure) closely: prior cycles required an organizational self-assessment survey, a resident survey, and a customized quality-improvement plan, so proposals should speak fluently to person-centered care metrics, quality-improvement methodology, and multi-year validation design rather than a one-off pilot. For the smaller general-support track, the sampled grantee list (theater companies, senior-living communities, LGBTQ elder services, food pantries, legal aid) suggests personal or geographic ties to the Weese-Mayer/Mayer family matter more than a cold competitive process — a warm introduction through a board member, or clear alignment with Chicago civic/cultural life or aging services, is the most realistic path in. A common mistake would be treating this as an open, portal-based funder: there is no public online grant portal for general support, and no application deadline is published in IRS filings (the 990-PF lists 'application_instructions: none' for the general grants line). Emphasize measurable outcomes tied to resident quality of life and person-centered care language throughout, since that vocabulary — not generic 'senior services' framing — is what recurs across every program document and award description the foundation has published.