Richard Schmid Fine Art Foundation

The Richard Schmid Fine Art Foundation (RSFAF) is fundamentally an operating/legacy foundation, not a traditional grantmaker soliciting applications. Its IRS-stated purpose is preserving the artwork, archive, and teaching legacy of the late painter Richard Schmid through Stove Prairie Press publishing, curated exhibitions, and educational programming — not distributing funds to outside nonprofits. This shows in the numbers: across the two most recent filed years in our database (FY2022 and FY2023), grants_paid to external organizations was $0, despite $160,655 and $381,250 respectively in reported "total giving," which reflects internal program-service spending (press operations, archive stewardship), not checks written to grantees. Web research surfaced exactly one confirmed outside disbursement — a $2,000 gift to Walpole, NH's Art After School program in June 2025 — made in connection with the foundation's own community paint-out event, not through any application process. There is no LOI, no grants portal, and no "How to Apply" page on richardschmidfoundation.org; the platform's own application_instructions field for this record is empty. Governance is a nine-person, mostly-unpaid board led by President Nancy Guzik ($24,000 compensation), with Secretary Bettina Schmid (a family surname, suggesting estate/family involvement), Treasurer Beth Geiler, and five directors — notably including recognized representational and plein-air painters Michelle Dunaway and Kristen Thies, who anchor the foundation firmly in the Schmid painting tradition. First-time applicants should recalibrate expectations accordingly: this is not a fit for a cold proposal or a competitive grant cycle. The realistic path in is hyperlocal and relationship-based — Walpole-area youth arts-education programs, or organizations able to co-host or partner on the foundation's own recurring events (like the Putney Painters & Friends Paint-Out), stand the only demonstrated chance of receiving support. National organizations, non-arts causes, or anyone expecting a standard RFP process should deprioritize this funder.

RSFAF's financials show a foundation still in its formation phase, not an active grantmaking pattern with a computable median or range. Total assets grew from $5,578,184 (FY2022) to $5,818,868 (FY2023), up 4.3%. Total revenue swung sharply: $5,715,922 in FY2022 — driven almost entirely by $5,575,097 in contributions received, consistent with the initial funding of the trust following the foundation's May 2022 IRS ruling — down to $1,460,073 in FY2023 ($1,135,581 in contributions plus $15,477 in net investment income), a 74.5% year-over-year decline as the initial funding event passed. "Total giving" rose 137%, from $160,655 to $381,250, but this line is program-service expense (Stove Prairie Press publishing operations cost $160,291 in FY2023 alone), not third-party grants — grants_paid is recorded as exactly $0 in both filed years. Officer compensation nearly quadrupled over the same period, from $24,000 to $92,000, indicating the foundation added or increased pay for working officers as it moved from setup to active operations. No breakdown by program area or geography beyond the two IRS-listed activities (Stove Prairie Press publishing/media, and art preservation/exhibition/archive stewardship) is available, because no grant-level data exists to analyze. The one real-world outside disbursement identified via web research — the $2,000 gift to Walpole's Art After School program in June 2025 — falls in FY2025, outside our two most recent filed years, and at $2,000 is roughly 0.5% the size of the foundation's reported annual "giving" figure, underscoring how small and incidental external funding is relative to the foundation's core self-directed programming.

RSFAF sits in a narrow cohort of small, single-artist or single-institution legacy foundations classified under Arts & Culture (NTEE A51) with near-identical asset bases in the $5.6M-$5.8M range. None of the five closest peers by asset size have a public website on file, and none have recorded grantee data in this database either — a pattern consistent with RSFAF's own profile of a young, narrowly-scoped legacy vehicle rather than a public-facing grantmaker.

All six organizations cluster within a $40,000 asset band and share a defining trait: they exist primarily to steward a specific artist's or institution's legacy rather than to run open, competitive grant programs. Grant seekers should treat this entire peer set the same way as RSFAF itself — as low-probability targets for unsolicited applications, and higher-probability targets only for narrowly aligned partnership or exhibition proposals.

The clearest recent signal is the foundation's second annual "Putney Painters & Friends" Paint-Out, held Saturday, June 14, 2025, 10am-4pm on Walpole Common — confirming this has become a recurring, calendar-anchored community event rather than a one-off. At that event, RSFAF presented a $2,000 donation to support the Art After School program at St. John's Parish Hall, and committed 10% of proceeds from all painting sales that evening to Art After School programming at both St. John's Parish Hall and River Valley Church in Walpole. No 2026 news, leadership changes, or new program announcements turned up in web search as of this research. Board composition (Nancy Guzik as President; Penelope Adams, VP; Bettina Schmid, Secretary; Beth Geiler, Treasurer; directors Carol Arnold, Michelle Dunaway, Lori Larue, Kristen Thies, Madeline Ullrich) matches the most recent filing data with no reported turnover. Given the foundation's IRS ruling date of May 2022, it is only a few years old, and its activity to date — studio tours, plein-air events, Zoom art demonstrations, a book club, and the Stove Prairie Press publishing operation — remains concentrated on building out Richard Schmid's educational and archival legacy rather than scaling external grantmaking. The Paint-Out being in its "second annual" iteration as of June 2025 suggests a third edition is likely in June 2026, which would be the next concrete opportunity for a local partnership.

There is no formal grant application process to optimize for — no portal, no LOI, no published deadline, and no listed program officer. Adjust strategy accordingly. First, target the only demonstrated recipient profile: youth or community arts-education programs physically located in or near Walpole, NH (precedent: Art After School at St. John's Parish Hall and River Valley Church). Organizations outside fine-art/painting education, or outside New England, have no documented precedent of support and should not expect a response to a cold request. Second, propose a partnership, not a grant — the one confirmed gift was structured as a direct donation plus a percentage-of-event-sales arrangement tied to the foundation's own Paint-Out, not a standalone check against a submitted budget; framing a request as co-hosting or benefiting from an existing RSFAF event is far more likely to succeed than requesting unrestricted funding. Third, time outreach to the annual cycle — the Paint-Out has run in June for two consecutive years (2024 and 2025); reach out by March or April to be considered for a June 2026 edition. Fourth, use the foundation's own language: reference Richard Schmid's stated principle of "high excellence" in art and teaching, since the board includes working representational/plein-air painters (Michelle Dunaway, Kristen Thies) who will recognize generic arts-funding boilerplate as a poor fit. Fifth, keep any ask small and concrete — the only known gift was $2,000, roughly 0.5% of the foundation's reported annual giving figure, so requests should be modest and specific rather than modeled on the foundation's larger asset base. Sixth, route outreach through the customer-service contact at richardschmidfoundation.org or by mail to PO Box 999, Walpole, NH 03608, and expect no formal acknowledgment system — a follow-up phone call to (603) 499-3555 after 4-6 weeks is reasonable. Do not resubmit repeatedly if there is no response; with $0 in externally disbursed grants recorded across the two most recent filed 990-PF years, this foundation's bandwidth for outside funding requests is genuinely limited.