Point Pleasant Foundation

Point Pleasant Foundation is a young, testamentary foundation established from the bequest of Robert Pascal (1934-2021) — a Duke University All-American, founder of United Propane, former Maryland state senator, and Anne Arundel County executive — who left the 950-acre Point Pleasant Farm in Bozman, Maryland along with an endowment to create the foundation (IRS ruling date October 2023). The foundation's public identity centers entirely on operating that property as "a center for wildlife and natural resource education and research," demonstrating sustainable agriculture, forestry, and habitat-management practices in partnership with University of Maryland Extension — it reads far more like an operating foundation running its own program than a conventional grantmaker funding outside nonprofits. That impression is reinforced by the financial record: against $9,571,689 in total assets (FY2024), the foundation reported only $2,855 in grants paid and $3,455 in total giving in FY2023, with no grants data reported for FY2024. There is no evidence in IRS enrichment data or on the foundation's own site of any external grantee, and the site's /programs, /contact, and /education pages all return 404 errors — strong signals that a formal, public-facing grant application process does not yet exist. Grant seekers should treat this as a foundation still in its organizational build-out phase, roughly 2-3 years removed from receiving its founding corpus, rather than an active funder actively soliciting proposals. The organizations most likely to find alignment are research institutions, University of Maryland Extension partners, or wildlife/habitat conservation groups working on Chesapeake Bay or Eastern Shore ecosystems — the kind of partner that could plug into the farm's existing quail-restoration and habitat work rather than request a standalone cash grant. Given the complete absence of a published LOI process, deadline, or portal, the realistic first move is relationship-building: identify staff or board contacts through the University of Maryland Agriculture & Natural Resources Extension directory referenced on the foundation's homepage, and inquire directly and informally about research-partnership or in-kind collaboration opportunities before investing time in a formal written proposal.

The dollar figures available describe a foundation still early in its lifecycle rather than an established grants program. Total assets stood at $9,571,689 in FY2024. FY2023 total revenue was $9,575,144 — nearly identical to total assets — confirming that figure represents the one-time founding bequest (contributions_received: $9,575,144) rather than recurring investment income. FY2024 total revenue fell to $30,280, consistent with modest endowment investment returns in the corpus's first full year. Against that endowment, recorded grantmaking is minimal: $2,855 in grants paid and $3,455 in total giving for FY2023, with net investment income and officer compensation both reported at $0; FY2024 grants and giving figures were not available (not yet filed or not yet made). No individual grantee names, amounts, states, or program-area breakdowns are captured in available data — the platform's grantee tracker shows zero recorded grants for this foundation, meaning there is no historical pattern of median grant size, grant range, or program/geographic distribution to analyze. For context, a private foundation of this asset size is typically expected to distribute roughly 5% of assets annually (roughly $480,000/year here) to maintain its tax status, a payout level nowhere close to reflected in the $2,855-$3,455 giving figures on record — the gap almost certainly reflects spending on internal farm operations, property maintenance, and research programming rather than qualifying distributions to unrelated nonprofits. Grant seekers should not assume any typical grant-size range applies here; instead, watch future Form 990-PF filings for the first year grants_paid rises meaningfully above near-zero, which would signal the foundation has begun (or is scaling) an external grants program.

Point Pleasant Foundation sits squarely among a cluster of small, single-focus Environment-category foundations in the $9-10M asset range, several of which — like Point Pleasant — appear tied to a specific piece of land or family legacy rather than operating broad, open grant programs.

All five peers cluster tightly around $9.1M-$10M in assets, and only Ramser Arboretum has a public-facing website in our data, mirroring Point Pleasant's own thin public footprint. This pattern is typical of recently-established, land-based conservation foundations: substantial endowed assets from a single bequest or gift, but grantmaking infrastructure, staff, and public application processes that take years to develop. Seekers seeking to work with any of these funders should expect direct relationship-building over formal RFP responses, at least in the near term.

The only substantive recent coverage of Point Pleasant Foundation traces to late 2023/early 2024, when local and regional outlets reported on Point Pleasant Farm's role in a research effort to restore northern bobwhite quail populations in Talbot County, Maryland: Talbot Spy published "Unique Talbot Farm Could Help Restore State's Wild Quail Numbers" on December 27, 2023, and WBOC followed on January 2, 2024 with "A New Haven: How a Talbot County Farm Could Restore Quail Population Numbers," including a two-part television segment. Both pieces frame the 950-acre property — a former du Pont hunting preserve and National Audubon Society sanctuary placed under a permanent conservation easement in 2011 — as a demonstration site for habitat restoration research conducted in partnership with University of Maryland Extension. No news, leadership announcements, or grant-award coverage from 2025 or 2026 could be located in web searches; searches for the exact foundation name largely surfaced unrelated organizations sharing the "Point Pleasant" name (a New Jersey school-district education foundation and an LGBTQ+ scholarship nonprofit called Point Foundation), underscoring how little independent press coverage this specific Maryland foundation has generated since its 2023 founding. Given the IRS ruling date of October 2023, the foundation is only in its second or third fiscal year, and its public activity to date centers entirely on its own farm-based conservation research rather than external grant announcements.

There is currently no evidence that Point Pleasant Foundation runs a public grant application process: its website has no /programs, /contact, or /education page (all return 404), IRS enrichment data lists application_instructions as "__none__," and no application_process, deadline, or portal URL is on file. Applicants should treat any outreach as exploratory relationship-building rather than a formal submission. Practical steps: (1) Do not submit a generic LOI or cold proposal — with recorded grants_paid of just $2,855 in FY2023 and no grants captured since, this foundation has no track record of responding to unsolicited requests. (2) Anchor any outreach in the foundation's demonstrated interest — wildlife and natural resource education, sustainable agriculture and forestry demonstration, and Chesapeake Bay/Eastern Shore habitat restoration (its own quail-restoration research is the clearest signal of programmatic priority). (3) Use the University of Maryland Agriculture & Natural Resources Extension network, which the foundation's own homepage links to, as a warmer introduction path than a cold email, since the foundation already partners with Extension on its farm research. (4) Position any request as a research or program partnership tied to Point Pleasant Farm itself (e.g., co-branded habitat research, shared educational programming) rather than as a stand-alone cash grant to an unrelated project — this most closely matches how the foundation appears to be spending money today. (5) Because the foundation reports $0 officer compensation and near-zero investment income in its first filed year, it may not yet have dedicated grants staff; be prepared for a slow or informal response cycle and confirm current contact details independently (e.g., via the foundation's registered agent or the EIN 93-3388518 record) before investing significant proposal-writing time. (6) Revisit this foundation's Form 990-PF filings annually — a jump in grants_paid above the current near-zero baseline would be the clearest signal that a formal external grants program has launched.