Realty Gift Fund

Realty Gift Fund (RGF) is not a conventional grantmaking foundation, and grant seekers should not approach it as one. Its mission is to accept gifts of real estate of any kind and condition, fix or remediate the properties, sell them, and pass 100% of net proceeds to nonprofits — but the *donor*, not RGF, names the beneficiary organization in the Donation Agreement at the outset. There is no open application, LOI, or proposal review process; RGF's own grants page and FAQs contain no eligibility criteria or submission instructions, and the foundation's data record confirms no application form URL or deadline exists. The real point of leverage for a nonprofit is not RGF's program staff but RGF's *donor pipeline*: individuals who hold appreciated, encumbered, tenant-occupied, or distressed real estate and are weighing a charitable exit. Organizations most likely to benefit are those with major-gift or planned-giving relationships with real estate owners — colleges, hospitals, arts institutions, and community foundations with legacy donor bases — who can introduce a supporter to RGF and ask that the nonprofit be named directly as beneficiary rather than defaulting to a donor-advised fund. The grantee list bears this out: recipients span food banks (Houston Food Bank, $409,183), performing arts (San Francisco Conservatory of Music, $1,209,400; Lyric Opera of Chicago, $72,435), animal welfare (Berkeley Humane Society, $1,053,911), higher education (Rice University, Boston University, University of Rochester), conservation (The Nature Conservancy, $26,262; Cornell Lab of Ornithology, $26,262), and human services — a donor-driven mix with no discernible RGF thematic filter. First-time prospects should understand the relationship runs through the donor and their advisor (attorney, CPA, wealth manager), not through a grant committee. Co-founders Jay Grab (CEO) and Bruce Geiss (COO), both with 35 years in commercial real estate, and board members including Rachel Kelly (30+ years in Santa Fe nonprofit work) are the right people to engage when a mutual donor connection exists — cold outreach without a donor prospect in hand is unlikely to produce a grant.

Across the 47 grants in RGF's available record, total distributed giving is $17,904,931 at an average of $380,956 — but that average is skewed heavily by pass-through gifts to donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsors, which is the single largest destination category. Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund received $5,734,084 across 2 grants and Fidelity Charitable a further $3,092,438; American Endowment Foundation and American Endowment Fund together received $3,019,161; Vanguard Charitable received $505,541. Combined, DAF sponsors absorbed roughly $12.35M — about 69% of total recorded dollars — money that is not available to outside charities through RGF and instead awaits onward distribution by the DAF account holder. Excluding DAF sponsors, direct grants to 42 operating nonprofits totaled roughly $5.55M, ranging from $850 (Tam High Foundation) to $1,209,400 (San Francisco Conservatory of Music), with a heavy cluster in the $5,000-$30,000 band (roughly half of direct grants) and a handful of six-figure-plus outliers (Berkeley Humane Society $1,053,911; Newport Beach Public Library Foundation $1,000,000; Recovery Empowerment Network of Maricopa County $483,939; National Christian Charitable Foundation $459,234). Year-over-year, RGF's scale has grown sharply and unevenly: grants paid rose from just $125,000 in FY2019 to $1,526,910 (FY2020), $4,428,603 (FY2021), a peak of $9,751,267 (FY2022), then $7,608,137 (FY2023) — a pattern consistent with lumpy, large-property-driven giving rather than a steady annual budget. FY2024 total revenue spiked to $20,802,312 (assets grew to $13,112,338) with grants_paid not yet reported in the most recent filing, suggesting a large distribution is likely still working through the pipeline. Geographically, direct grants concentrate where RGF's donor base sits: California (14 grants), New Mexico (8, RGF's home state), New York (5), Massachusetts (4), Ohio and Virginia (3 each).

RGF is grouped by NTEE classification (C34, Land Resources Conservation) alongside land-conservation peers of similar asset size, but this is a taxonomy artifact rather than a functional similarity — RGF is a real estate conversion intermediary, not a conservation grantmaker, and its beneficiaries span every cause area a donor chooses.

On paper RGF sits squarely in the middle of this $12-14M asset peer band, but its FY2022-2023 annual giving ($7.6M-$9.75M) dwarfs what a typical $13M land-conservation foundation would distribute, because RGF's payout is driven by episodic real estate sales rather than a steady percentage-of-assets spend-down. None of the listed peers publish an open grant application either — like RGF, they operate on invitation or existing relationships — but unlike RGF, their peer foundations at least have a defined program focus (land/conservation) that a mission-aligned applicant could target; RGF's beneficiary list is set entirely by individual donor choice.

Web research turned up limited recent news specific to RGF's grantmaking; the organization does not appear to issue press releases about individual grants. The most concrete recent development found is the addition of Trevor Kusiak as Transaction Coordinator, bringing six years of contract and transaction experience from Sotheby's International Realty — a hire that points to RGF scaling its real estate processing capacity (deed transfers, closings, property management) rather than any shift in grantmaking focus. Financially, the most notable recent signal is internal to the data: FY2024 total revenue nearly tripled to $20,802,312 and total assets grew to $13,112,338 from $7,766,369 the prior year, indicating one or more sizable real estate gifts closed in 2024. Because RGF typically sells and remediates properties before distributing net proceeds, the FY2024 990 does not yet show a grants_paid figure — meaning a large wave of downstream grants (likely into FY2025-2026) may not yet be publicly reflected in available data. Leadership has been stable: co-founders Jay Grab (CEO) and Bruce Geiss (COO) have run the organization since its 2001 ruling date (IRS ruling month 2001-01), and no leadership transition was found in web research. No major new program announcements, partnerships, or controversies surfaced in the searches conducted.

There is no proposal, LOI, or portal to submit to RGF directly — application_instructions in RGF's own data record are explicitly blank, and its grants and FAQ pages confirm nonprofits are not the applicants in this relationship; donors are. The actionable path for a development office is to identify supporters (or prospects) who hold real estate that is difficult to sell conventionally — inherited property, tenant-occupied buildings, land with environmental issues, debt-encumbered parcels, or property requiring repair — and introduce RGF as the mechanism that lets that supporter convert the asset into a gift at no out-of-pocket cost beyond a qualified appraisal. When making that introduction, be explicit with the donor and their advisor that the Donation Agreement should name your organization directly as the beneficiary of net proceeds, rather than defaulting to a donor-advised fund; RGF's own grant history shows roughly two-thirds of aggregate dollars land in DAF sponsors (Fidelity Charitable, American Endowment Foundation, Vanguard Charitable) rather than operating charities, which represents money a well-positioned nonprofit could otherwise capture directly. Timing matters: RGF recommends donors initiate contact by November 15 to complete a gift within the same tax year, and the full cycle from first contact to sale proceeds can run several months (21-45 days to deed transfer, then 10-60 days to sale closing), so this is a mid-to-long-cycle major-gift strategy, not a quick-turnaround grant application. A common mistake is treating RGF like a foundation with a mailbox for unsolicited requests — cold outreach to Jay Grab or Bruce Geiss without a donor prospect already in hand is unlikely to produce anything, since RGF has no discretionary pool of its own to award. If your organization already has donors with DAF accounts at Fidelity Charitable, American Endowment Foundation, or Vanguard Charitable, it is worth submitting standard grant recommendation requests through those sponsors directly, since RGF has historically routed substantial proceeds into exactly those accounts. Finally, reassure hesitant real estate donors and their advisors that your organization, once named, has zero transactional burden — no paperwork, no signature, no cost — which is RGF's core value proposition and worth repeating in donor conversations.