Poses Family Foundation

The Poses Family Foundation is a $734 million private family foundation built entirely around personal conviction. Frederic and Nancy Poses established the foundation after raising their son Max, who has learning differences and attended Riverview School — a current PFF grantee receiving over $1 million. This origin story is not incidental: it is the operating logic of the entire portfolio. The foundation's flagship investment, Understood For All Inc (Understood.org), has received more than $58 million in documented grants, making it one of the largest single-organization commitments in recent American philanthropy for learning disabilities.

PFF operates exclusively on an invitation-only basis. There is no application portal, no published RFP, and no LOI process available to the public. The foundation has confirmed it does not accept unsolicited requests. All grantee relationships form through the trustees' personal and professional networks. Frederic Poses (former CEO of American Standard/Trane, now connected to Ascend Performance Materials), R. Bruce Fisher, and Michael Kosnitzky are the decision-makers. Mariner Wealth Advisors, which administers the foundation from Florham Park, NJ, is the operational interface.

Beyond writing checks, PFF provides capacity-building services to grantee-partners: strategic and operational planning, initiative design, talent development, and marketing. This distinguishes them from purely transactional funders. Organizations that can articulate both their current impact and their scaling strategy — and that welcome a more engaged funder relationship — are best positioned.

First-time organizations cannot apply cold. The viable approaches are: (1) joining Philanthropy New York and attending funder-facing working groups, (2) cultivating board members who overlap with active PFF grantees (Whitney Museum, JED Foundation, Partnership for Public Service), and (3) building visibility as a complementary partner to Understood.org's national learning disabilities ecosystem. Multi-year relationships are the norm — virtually every major grantee in the records appears across three or more grant cycles.

Across 621 documented grants totaling $82.9 million, the Poses Family Foundation's giving is dramatically concentrated. Understood For All Inc alone accounts for $58.6 million — approximately 71% of total recorded grants — across four disbursements, including a single $29.8 million grant that represents the largest in the portfolio. Strip out Understood.org and the median grant for the remaining portfolio is roughly $75,000-$150,000, with a mid-tier cluster of multi-year relationships in the $300,000-$1.5 million range.

Annual grantmaking has fluctuated substantially: $11.6M (2011), $29.3M (2019), $32.4M (2020), $35.2M (2021), $14.4M (2022), and $18.9M (2024). The 2020-2021 spike almost certainly reflects multi-year tranches to Understood.org. FY2024's $18.9M against $734M in assets represents a 2.6% payout ratio — slightly below the legal 5% minimum before factoring administrative costs, suggesting the foundation may accelerate disbursements in coming years to maintain compliance.

By focus area, learning disabilities dominates: Understood ($58.6M), Riverview School ($1M+), Shefa School ($900K), Adam J Lewis Academy ($75K), and Understoodorg USA LLC ($326K). Arts and culture is the second-largest documented cluster: Whitney Museum ($2.5M+), Drawing Center ($491K), New Museum ($127.5K), Groove With Me ($630K). Health and mental health includes JED Foundation ($855K across records), Mount Sinai ($450K), NYU Faces ($403K), and Gilda's Club Westchester ($75K). Social services and housing: Project Renewal ($843K), Henry Street Settlement ($75K), Sanctuary for Families ($75K), Job Path ($75K). Civic/policy: Center for European Policy Analysis ($1M), Partnership for Public Service ($933K).

Geographically, New York organizations receive 54% of all grants (339 of 621). New Jersey follows at 7% (43), DC at 5% (32), and Connecticut at 3.5% (22). Texas (18), Massachusetts (17), Florida (14), Georgia (12), and California (34) represent modest national reach, primarily through disability and policy organizations.

The following table compares Poses Family Foundation to four asset-comparable peers, all classified as Philanthropy & Grantmaking foundations in the $720M-$745M asset range:

Among these asset-comparable peers, Poses Family Foundation is the most distinctively mission-driven. Where Tepper and Bainum focus on broadly defined education, PFF has made an extraordinarily concentrated bet on learning and attention issues — a focus unusual in its specificity and personal origin. The Scully Foundation's journalism focus (localnewsmatters.org) shows a similarly personal and sector-concentrated approach. PFF's capacity-building model — where trustees actively co-develop strategy with grantees rather than just funding them — is a differentiator that sets it apart from comparable foundations that function as pure grantmakers. Organizations that fit PFF's focus areas should not treat this as a conventional funder: the relationship is closer to a strategic partner than a check-writer.

No grant announcements or new program launches specific to 2025 or 2026 are publicly documented for the Poses Family Foundation, consistent with its intentionally low public profile. The foundation does not issue press releases or maintain a public-facing grantmaking calendar.

The most recent substantive public coverage dates to a 2019 Philanthropy New York feature on the foundation's public-private partnership model, which highlighted a collaboration with Citi designed to connect people with disabilities to employment and financial services. This partnership approach — convening corporate capital alongside philanthropic dollars — reflects a strategic instinct that likely continues to shape the portfolio.

FY2024 IRS Form 990 data (available via ProPublica) confirms $18.9 million in grants paid against total assets of $734 million, with $56.5 million in total revenue (driven by $22 million in asset sales and $13.5 million in contributions received). Leadership has been stable for multiple years: Frederic Poses and trustees R. Bruce Fisher and Michael Kosnitzky have maintained consistent roles, with Nadine Ellerthorpe serving as Treasurer. No officer received compensation in the most recent filings.

The moderation in grant levels from the 2020-2021 peak ($32-35M/year) to $14-19M in recent years suggests the completion of a major multi-year Understood.org funding cycle and a period of portfolio recalibration. No successor flagship grantee has emerged publicly at comparable scale.

Because the Poses Family Foundation is strictly invitation-only, conventional grant-seeking tactics are not applicable. Every approach must be relational and indirect. The following tips are specific to PFF's documented practices and networks.

Network into trustees, not staff. The three trustees — Frederic Poses, R. Bruce Fisher, and Michael Kosnitzky — are the decision-makers. Research their board affiliations and professional networks. Organizations with board members who have direct relationships with any of the three trustees have a realistic path to an introduction.

Exploit Philanthropy New York membership. PFF is a member of Philanthropy New York (philanthropynewyork.org). Attending their issue-specific briefings on learning disabilities, disability employment, mental health, and arts education puts your organization in the same room as PFF representatives. Committee service is better than event attendance.

Position as a complement to Understood.org, not a competitor. PFF's $58.6M investment in Understood.org defines their flagship theory of change: scalable digital platforms that reach millions of people with learning and attention issues. Organizations that extend this ecosystem — in-school implementation, family services, adult literacy, or employer inclusion — are more attractive than organizations that duplicate what Understood already does.

Lead with capacity-building appetite. PFF explicitly offers strategic planning, talent development, and marketing alongside grants. Framing your needs as "we have a proven model and need help scaling it" aligns with their value-add model. Organizations that say "we just need money" are less interesting to this funder.

Leverage arts-education overlap. Multiple grantees bridge arts access and educational equity: Groove With Me (dance education), Drawing Center, New Museum, The Sylvia Center. If your organization operates at that intersection, foreground it.

NYC footprint matters. 54% of PFF grants go to New York organizations. National organizations with a strong NYC presence should emphasize it. New Jersey organizations (43 grants) are also well-represented given the Florham Park connection.

Timeline: Given the invitation-only structure, this is a 12-24 month relationship-building process, not a proposal submission. First contact should aim for a 30-minute conversation, not a full proposal.