Orchard Foundation

Orchard Foundation is a small, closely held family foundation (EIN 04-6660214), governed by trustees Heidi Lehner and Carl P. Lehner, with Brigitte L. Kingsbury serving as Trustee and Executive Director — her compensation was cut from $60,000 to $45,000 between FY2022 and FY2023, tracking the foundation's shrinking asset base. It is administered out of Boston, MA (c/o Breed's Hill Capital), with a phone number and DBA tied to South Portland, Maine. Grant seekers should understand one thing upfront: this is a preselected-giving foundation. Third-party research (Inside Philanthropy) confirms it 'does not accept unsolicited grant requests' — a status that matches the 'preselected only' designation in IRS-derived data. Nearly every grant purpose in its 459-grant, multi-state giving history reads as boilerplate ('to fund charitable mission of charitable organization'), typical of a funder that renews relationships with known grantees rather than running a competitive RFP process.

The clearest path in is relationship, not application. Look at the loyalty pattern in the historical grants: New Hampshire Charitable Foundation received 6 grants totaling $1,145,000, routed through named funds (the 'Community Crisis Action Fund' and 'FBO The Watercress Fund'), suggesting Orchard uses NHCF as a donor-advised giving vehicle. McLean Hospital's Center for Neuroregeneration Research received 4 grants totaling $476,000 for Parkinson's disease research, and Brigham and Women's Hospital's Ann Romney Center received 4 grants totaling $362,500 for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's research. These multi-year, multi-grant relationships — not one-off asks — are how the largest sums move through this foundation.

First-time applicants should calibrate size expectations accordingly: the median individual grant is $3,500 (average $7,919, range $250–$114,500). A first gift from Orchard is far more likely to be a modest, lightly restricted contribution than a transformative award; the six-figure cumulative totals above accrued over years of repeat funding, not from single asks.

Given the family's evident personal stake in neurodegenerative disease research (Parkinson's and Alzheimer's account for two of the four largest cumulative relationships) and in New England conservation and reproductive-rights advocacy, organizations whose missions sit outside those three lanes — plus higher education and a notable Park City, Utah cluster — face a materially steeper climb regardless of proposal quality.

On the most recently filed figures (FY2023): grants paid $1,174,988, total giving $1,281,646, total assets $4,138,178. That is down from a $2,053,787 total-giving peak in FY2021 and a far cry from the $11,560,565 asset base recorded in FY2011 — the corpus has shrunk roughly 64% over twelve years, as annual distributions ($610,790 to $2,082,782 depending on year) have consistently outpaced net investment income in all but the strongest market years (net investment income was $1,557,031 in 2021 versus $418,014 in 2020). This reads as a foundation in gradual spend-down rather than one building an endowment — contributions received were $0 in 8 of the last 10 filed years.

At the individual-grant level (177 grants sampled from the most recent filing), the median award is $3,500 and the average is $7,919, but the range runs from $250 up to $114,500 — a barbell of many small stewardship gifts alongside a handful of large institutional commitments. Across the fuller 459-grant, $5,782,460 historical dataset, the average per-recipient cumulative total is $12,598, inflated by multi-year repeat relationships.

Geographically, Massachusetts dominates with 163 of the tracked grants, followed by New York (74), Maine (44), New Hampshire (40), and a notable Utah cluster (27, centered on Park City Community Foundation) that likely reflects a trustee's personal ties rather than a stated program area. Smaller footprints appear in Washington DC (16), California (15), Vermont (8), Connecticut (7), and Oregon (7).

By program area, three verticals absorb the largest dollars: neurodegenerative-disease research ($838,500 combined to McLean Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital for Parkinson's/Alzheimer's work); environmental and conservation advocacy (Earthjustice $348,000 across 6 grants; Middlebury College's Environment Program plus an athletics endowment $257,500; Conservation Law Foundation, Union of Concerned Scientists, Rainforest Alliance, Maine Conservation Alliance, NH Lakes, and several New England land trusts); and reproductive-rights/women's health (Equality Now $305,000 across 8 grants, Center for Reproductive Rights $105,000, Physicians for Reproductive Health $38,000). Higher education (Middlebury, Hampshire College, MIT, Amherst) and community-foundation pass-throughs (Boston Foundation, Maine Community Foundation, Spartanburg County Foundation) round out the portfolio.

Orchard Foundation is markedly smaller and less accessible than the other New England conservation- and family-oriented funders it most resembles by mission. All three peers below publish an open application path; Orchard does not.

Orchard's asset base is roughly 4% the size of Sewall's and 10% of Davis Conservation's, yet its annual giving is closest in dollar terms to Davis Conservation's — meaning Orchard is distributing a much larger share of a much smaller corpus, consistent with the spend-down pattern in its financials. Unlike all three peers, which run recognizable application or LOI processes that grant seekers can act on directly, Orchard offers no such entry point; relationship access, not proposal quality, is the binding constraint for this funder specifically.

No foundation-specific news coverage, press releases, or leadership announcements surfaced in web searches for recent activity. The 'Orchard Foundation' name is heavily overloaded — it is shared with a venture-backed real-estate marketplace company, a UK charity providing security training to humanitarian organizations, a Fruit Tree Planting Foundation grant program, and several other unrelated funds — which crowds out any organic coverage of this small family foundation. Notably, the website commonly associated with this entity in aggregator listings, orchard-foundation.org.uk, actually belongs to that unrelated UK security-training charity (Charity Commission #1216432, based in London); grant seekers should disregard it and any application guidance drawn from it.

The most recent verifiable activity is the FY2023 Form 990-PF, the latest filing available: $1,174,988 in grants paid, executive director compensation reduced from $60,000 to $45,000 (a roughly 25% cut), and total assets down to $4,138,178 — continuing a decline from $4,946,631 in FY2022 and $5,698,203 in FY2019. That multi-year contraction, combined with $0 in new outside contributions in most filed years, suggests a foundation quietly winding down its original corpus rather than expanding programming. No new program announcements, leadership transitions, or major gifts beyond the long-established recipient list (New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, McLean Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Earthjustice, Equality Now) were identified in either the filings or web search.

Because this foundation does not run an open RFP and does not publish an application form or portal, a cold LOI is unlikely to succeed — Inside Philanthropy's characterization ('does not accept unsolicited grant requests... only supports pre-selected organizations') matches the database's own preselected-only flag. Do not lead with a generic cold email or proposal packet.

The strongest entry points, based on where real money has actually gone: (1) neurodegenerative-disease research programs at major New England academic medical centers — two of the foundation's four largest relationships (McLean Hospital, Brigham and Women's) sit here, both funding Parkinson's/Alzheimer's work; (2) New England or New York environmental advocacy and conservation groups with a policy, legal, or administrative-process orientation — Earthjustice, Conservation Law Foundation, and Union of Concerned Scientists all fit this profile, versus grassroots direct-service environmental groups, which are less represented; (3) reproductive-rights and women's health organizations with national reach, such as Equality Now and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

If your organization already has a relationship with New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, Maine Community Foundation, or the Boston Foundation, it is worth asking whether Orchard-linked donor-advised funds (the 'Watercress Fund,' the 'Community Crisis Action Fund') could serve as an indirect channel — these pass-through vehicles account for the single largest cumulative relationship in the giving history, at $1,145,000.

Keep dollar expectations modest for any first ask: the median individual grant is $3,500. The largest six-figure totals accumulated through 4 to 8 separate grants over multiple years, so position an initial request as the potential start of an ongoing relationship rather than a one-time capital ask, unless your organization is already a Tier 1 institutional partner.

Route any outreach to Trustee and Executive Director Brigitte L. Kingsbury, c/o Breed's Hill Capital, 1 Post Office Square Suite 2400, Boston, MA — never through orchard-foundation.org.uk, which belongs to an unrelated UK organization and will not reach this funder. Confusing the two wastes an outreach cycle and can signal weak due diligence to anyone who later checks your research. Finally, given the declining asset base (down roughly 11% year-over-year into FY2023, and 64% since FY2011), do not assume grant sizes will grow even within an existing relationship — budget for flat or shrinking awards.