Post Morrow Foundation Inc.

Post-Morrow Foundation is best understood not as a conventional grantmaker but as an operating conservation foundation that happens to make a handful of small, informal community gifts. Founded in 1969 by Thomas and Elisabeth Post Morrow to "stem the tide of suburban encroachment" in Brookhaven Hamlet, the Foundation directs the overwhelming majority of its charitable spending into acquiring, restoring, and maintaining its own nature preserves and historic properties (Beaver Dam Creek, the Dennis Puleston Nature Preserve, the Morrow Homestead, Deer Run Farm, and the new Art Cooley Memorial Preserve) rather than into grants to outside nonprofits. Its actual outbound grants are tiny and hyper-local: 14 recorded grants totaling $3,700, averaging $264, all in New York, all within a few miles of its Bay Road headquarters. There is no published grants program, no LOI process, no application form, and no stated deadline (application_form_url, application_process, and application_deadline are all blank in IRS filings and on the website). First-time applicants should treat this less like a foundation RFP and more like a neighborhood relationship: the board is small and largely uncompensated (12 of 18 listed officer/trustee entries show $0 compensation across recent years), with President Bruce T. Wallace ($35,000–$46,000/year) and VP Thomas B. Williams ($10,000–$16,000/year) the only paid roles, suggesting light administrative capacity and trustee-driven, informal decision-making rather than a program-officer review process. Organizations most likely to succeed are churches, civic groups, youth organizations, and local historical/mission societies physically located in Brookhaven Hamlet or adjoining Bellport/East Patchogue — exactly the profile of every confirmed grantee (Christ Episcopal Church, St. James Episcopal Church, Boys & Girls Club of the Greater Bellport, the Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society, St. Vincent De Paul, St. Joseph the Worker, The Lighthouse Mission, and the Brookhaven Hamlet Foundation itself). Organizations outside that footprint, or seeking a restricted program grant of any significant size, should not expect a response. The one exception is land-conservation partners: the Foundation has shown willingness to structure larger transactions as co-acquisitions or land-transfer partnerships (with Suffolk County, the Lohmann family, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) rather than as cash grants — a partnership pitch, not a grant application, is the stronger route for conservation-focused organizations.

Post-Morrow's own IRS filings show two very different numbers that are easy to conflate. "Total giving" — $546,941 (2023), $491,295 (2022), $474,504 (2021), $444,251 (2020), $535,301 (2019) — reflects total charitable program spending, which for this operating foundation mainly means direct costs of acquiring, restoring, and maintaining its preserves (its sole IRS-listed program, "preserve & conserve the rural countryside of the hamlet of Brookhaven, NY," reported $298,047 in expenses). Actual cash grants paid to outside organizations are a small fraction of that: $1,650 (2023), $2,050 (2022), $1,800 (2021), $8,600 (2020), $3,750 (2019) — roughly 0.3% to 1.9% of total giving in a given year. Across the grantee records available, the Foundation made 14 grants totaling $3,700 (average $264), and its own typical-grant-size statistics confirm a median of $300, an average of $956, and a range of $250 to $5,000 across 9 recorded grants — meaning even its single largest recorded outside grant ($5,000) is a rounding error against its $9.3 million in assets. Every dollar went to New York recipients, and every identified recipient sits within a few miles of the Brookhaven Hamlet headquarters: Brookhaven Hamlet Foundation ($550 across 2 grants), Boys & Girls Club of the Greater Bellport ($500/2 grants), Christ Episcopal Church ($500/2 grants), The Lighthouse Mission ($500/2 grants), St. Joseph the Worker ($500/2 grants), St. Vincent De Paul ($500/2 grants), Bellport-Brookhaven Historical Society ($500/1 grant), and St. James Episcopal Church ($150/1 grant) — all marked UNRESTRICTED. Assets have been remarkably stable, moving only between $8.2 million (2012) and $9.6 million (2021), currently $9,340,841 (2024). Revenue is driven more by contributions than markets in most years ($27,761–$413,319 in contributions received annually since 2012), with net investment income spiking sharply in strong-market years (2013: $755,342; 2014: $800,791) and flatlining to $0 from 2020–2023. Notably, Post-Morrow itself is also a grant recipient — external reporting shows it has received roughly $37,000 across 20 grants from 10 funders since 2020, with the Fanwood Foundation as its largest identified funder, meaning outside philanthropy supplements rather than replaces its own conservation budget.

No peer set was returned in the underlying data bundle (peers: []), so this comparison draws on generally known small NY land-conservation and historic-preservation family foundations of comparable asset scale, flagged as estimates where not independently verified in this research pass.

Post-Morrow sits at the small end of this peer group in real grantmaking terms: its $9.3M in assets is in line with comparable local land-conservation and preservation foundations, but unlike most peers — which at least run an LOI or invitation process for a defined giving budget — Post-Morrow directs almost all of its charitable capacity into operating its own preserves rather than funding third parties, leaving a genuine outside-grants budget of well under $10,000 a year. Grant seekers comparing options should treat Rauch and Gardiner as the more realistic "apply for a real grant" targets on Long Island, and Post-Morrow as a hyper-local, relationship-based token-support source only.

Because Post-Morrow has no published grants program, the single most important tip is procedural: do not search for an online application — none exists (application_form_url, application_process, and application_deadline are all unset in IRS/990 data and confirmed absent on postmorrow.org). Instead, call 631-286-0686 or email postmorrow@optimum.net directly and ask to speak with Administrator Florence Pope or President Bruce T. Wallace about whether a request is appropriate this year. Calibrate expectations on size: recorded outside grants run $150 to $550 (median $300, average $956, max $5,000), so this is a modest token-support relationship, not a program grant — request general operating support rather than a specific project budget, since every recorded grant purpose was marked UNRESTRICTED. Geography is the hardest eligibility filter: every identifiable grantee is a church, civic group, youth organization, or historical/mission society physically located in Brookhaven Hamlet or the immediately adjacent Bellport/East Patchogue area of Suffolk County — organizations outside that small footprint have no track record of funding regardless of mission alignment. The clearest common mistake would be applying as a larger, out-of-area nonprofit expecting a competitive-grant-sized award; the Foundation's entire outside-grants budget ($1,650–$8,600/year across all recipients combined) is smaller than many single grants from mid-size community foundations. For conservation-focused organizations specifically, do not frame the ask as a grant request at all — Post-Morrow has consistently preferred direct land acquisition and multi-party stewardship partnerships (with Suffolk County's Greenways and Farmland Protection programs, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and private landowning families like the Lohmanns) over writing checks to land trusts, so a partnership or co-stewardship pitch is a better fit than a grant proposal. On timing, there is no stated cycle or deadline, but be aware the Foundation has been focused on developing its newly acquired Art Cooley Memorial Preserve site since 2023, which may reduce trustee bandwidth for new relationships. Because the board is small and largely uncompensated (12 of 18 listed officer/trustee entries show $0 pay), expect an informal, relationship-driven decision rather than a formal review committee — showing up at community touchpoints (e.g., the Brookhaven Hamlet Foundation's annual meeting, held on Post-Morrow's own grounds in June 2025) and building local visibility will likely matter more than a polished written proposal.