Palm Foundation

Palm Foundation is a closed, single-family philanthropic vehicle, not a program-driven grantmaker. It was established around 1993-1994 by Gregory K. Palm, who spent 27 years (1992-2019) as Executive Vice President and co-General Counsel of Goldman Sachs, together with his wife Susan Rose Palm; their daughters Katherine Palm and Jennifer Palm now also serve as uncompensated trustees, making this a second-generation family board. Its mailing address routes through the Goldman Sachs Partner Office — the same administrative infrastructure used by other GS-executive family foundations such as the Richard A. and Susan P. Friedman Family Foundation (also founded in 1993). This is the defining fact for any prospective applicant: Palm Foundation has no staff, no public grants program, no listed application form, and no deadline anywhere in its own IRS filings.

Two flows dominate its giving. Roughly 87% of the $4,335,414 tracked across its 26 most recent grants ($3,779,414) moved to Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund — a donor-advised fund, not an operating charity — meaning the ultimate recipients of most Palm Foundation dollars are not disclosed on its own 990 and are effectively invisible to outside grantseekers. The remaining roughly 13% ($556,000) went directly to eight named institutions, nearly all tied to personal relationships: Williams College (6 grants, $280,000), The Buckley School (5 grants, $50,000 — Gregory Palm serves on Buckley's board as secretary), Middlesex School (4 grants, $105,000), plus one-off gifts to St. Francis Preparatory School, Archbishop Molloy High School, St. Paul's School, a parish playgroup, and Women for Women International.

For grant seekers: this is not a foundation to approach cold. The realistic paths in are (1) being an institution where a Palm family member already sits on the board or has a documented affinity connection, (2) being a donor-advised-fund grantee recommended by the Palms through Fidelity Charitable — a route initiated by the family, not by an applicant, or (3) building a multi-year personal relationship with the family or their Goldman Sachs Partner Office advisors before any ask. First-time applicants without an existing tie should expect no response; the platform's 'accepting applications' flag reflects a system default, not confirmed practice — nothing in the foundation's own filings or verified web presence describes an open process.

Assets have grown steadily from $6.8M (FY2011) to $10.85M (FY2023) to $11.5M in the most recent filing, driven almost entirely by investment returns — net investment income was $770,402 in FY2023 and $492,390 in FY2022, dwarfing the $0 in direct contributions received in every year on record except a single $20,000 gift in FY2012. As a non-operating private foundation, Palm Foundation must pay out roughly 5% of assets annually; recent-year total giving was $853,978 (FY2023), $896,393 (FY2022, the recent peak), $710,453 (FY2021), and $636,926 (FY2020) — giving has generally tracked asset growth and swung with investment income rather than a stated program budget.

Grant size: across the 26 grants captured in the platform's top-recipient data, the average is $166,747 and the foundation's own 990-PF reports a median 'typical grant size' of $36,250, with a stated range of $10,000 to $607,500. That wide spread reflects two very different grant types: large lump transfers to Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund (up to $607,500 in a single grant, aggregating to $2,715,000 across 4 grants, plus another $1,064,414 across 2 grants under 'Fidelity Charitable - See Attached List') and much smaller five-figure-or-less gifts to schools and civic groups ($1,000-$50,000 each).

Geographically, by grant count: Massachusetts leads with 10 of 26 grants (Williams College in Williamstown, Middlesex School in Concord), New York has 8 (The Buckley School, Fidelity Charitable's NY presence, a parish playgroup), Ohio has 6 (likely tied to a family connection outside the core NY/MA cluster), with single grants in New Hampshire (St. Paul's School) and DC (Women for Women International). By stated purpose, essentially all direct (non-DAF) grants are coded 'General Charitable Purposes' in the 990 — the foundation does not use programmatic categories like education, health, or arts in its own filings, another sign that giving follows relationships rather than a published funding thesis.

Palm Foundation sits squarely in a recognizable cluster: small, family-controlled private foundations administered out of the Goldman Sachs Partner Office by retired or active GS executives. Two verifiable examples confirm the pattern. The Richard A. and Susan P. Friedman Family Foundation — also founded in March 1993, also Goldman Sachs Partner Office-administered — reported $9,435,299 in assets and $657,700 in giving in its most recent filing, nearly matching Palm's scale and cadence. The much smaller Green Family Foundation (also administered c/o Goldman Sachs & Co.) shows how far this model can shrink: $265,126 in assets and just $7,975 in disbursements in its most recent filing. None of these foundations publish a grants program, application form, or stated focus area in public filings — they exist as tax-efficient personal giving vehicles, not competitive grantmakers.

The comparison underscores that Palm Foundation is not an outlier for its type — it is a representative, mid-sized example of the Goldman Sachs Partner Office family-foundation cohort, all of which trade transparency and open application processes for administrative simplicity and personal control over giving.

No independent press coverage of Palm Foundation grantmaking was found for 2025 or 2026 — searches for 'Palm Foundation' grants and news surfaced only unrelated organizations sharing the name, including Palm Health Foundation of Palm Beach County, FL, the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties, and Palmstreet's unrelated seller 'Foundation Program.' This is expected for a foundation with no communications staff and no public grants program.

One important data-quality note for anyone researching this funder further: the website on file, palm-foundation.org, does NOT belong to this organization. It is the site of an unrelated Nigerian nonprofit — the 'PALM' (Professor Akinlawon Ladipo Mabogunje) Foundation, based in Ibadan, Nigeria, honoring a late geographer and urban thinker, with its own lecture series, prizes, and scholarship programs. The coincidental acronym match appears to have caused a data-linking error; grant seekers should disregard that site entirely when researching the actual New York-based Palm Foundation (EIN 13-3748059).

The most recent verifiable activity is financial: the latest available filing (per ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer) shows $1,678,115 in revenue, $722,500 in total expenses, $687,500 in grants paid, and net assets of $11,549,591 — consistent with the foundation's decade-long pattern of steady, investment-income-funded giving with no expansion, contraction, or public program announcement. Gregory Palm, who retired from Goldman Sachs' General Counsel role in 2019, continues to hold an active board post (secretary) at The Buckley School in Manhattan, which likely explains that school's recurring five-figure grants (5 grants totaling $50,000 in the tracked data).

Because Palm Foundation runs no public program, useful 'application tips' here mean guidance on how realistic it is to reach this funder at all, and how to maximize the low odds:

• Do not cold-apply. There is no listed application form, portal, deadline, or LOI process in the foundation's own 990-PF filings (application process, application form URL, and application deadline fields are all blank in IRS data), and no grants page exists on any verified Palm Foundation web presence.
• The strongest path in is institutional affinity already in evidence: Williams College, The Buckley School, and Middlesex School have each received multiple grants across years, suggesting standing relationships (alumni ties, board service, or family attendance) rather than one-off responsiveness to proposals. An organization with a genuine, documented connection to a Palm family member — via board service, alumni network, or personal introduction — has a plausible opening; anyone else effectively does not.
• Route through Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund with caution: the majority of this foundation's dollars ($3,779,414 of $4,335,414 tracked) move into a Fidelity donor-advised fund rather than directly to charities. Organizations already known to Fidelity Charitable as DAF grant recipients, or that maintain warm relationships with DAF donors generally, have a channel here that bypasses any formal Palm Foundation process — but it is initiated by the Palms, not by an applicant.
• If you do have a genuine connection, keep outreach personal and low-friction: a short note or introduction through a shared board, school, or Goldman Sachs Partner Office advisor is far more likely to register than a formal grant proposal, since the foundation's own paperwork shows no staff to process one.
• Avoid palm-foundation.org entirely — it is not this foundation's site (see Recent Activity above); any 'application' cues found there belong to an unrelated Nigerian nonprofit.
• Set realistic expectations: if a relationship-based ask succeeds, expect it to land in the $10,000-$105,000 range typical of the foundation's direct (non-DAF) grants to date, rather than the $600K+ sums that only appear in its Fidelity Charitable transfers.
• Timing: giving has generally tracked calendar-year investment performance (the FY2022 giving high of $896,393 followed a strong-revenue year), so this is not a foundation with a stated fiscal calendar for proposals — there is no evidence of seasonal review cycles because there is no formal review process to begin with.