Riggs Foundation Inc.

Riggs Foundation Inc. reads as a young, closely-held family foundation rather than an institutional grantmaker with an open RFP process. It was granted tax-exempt status in July 2023, has filed only two Form 990-PFs (FY2024, FY2025), and carries no public mission statement, no program list, no listed program officer, and no grants portal. Its four trustee/officers are Gail Stonisch (President & Treasurer, uncompensated, also the entity's registered agent), John P Riggs III (Trustee/Treasurer, $48,000 compensation), Mary Abigail V Riggs (Trustee/Secretary, $48,000 compensation), and Patrick N Riggs (Vice President/Secretary, uncompensated) — a structure that signals trustee-directed, relationship-based giving, not a competitive application process. The foundation's own IRS-linked record lists application_instructions as effectively unpublished ("no filing on record"), consistent with the near-total absence of a public footprint: its listed website, riggs.org, returned a connection refusal when checked on 2026-08-27, and no social media, press, or grantee testimonials surfaced anywhere in web search. With $306,941 in charitable disbursements in the most recent filing year against $5,605,702 in net assets — a roughly 5.5% payout rate, just above the IRS-mandated 5% minimum distribution floor for private foundations — this looks like a lean, low-overhead vehicle built to satisfy minimum distribution requirements while directing modest capital to causes already known to the Riggs family, plausibly tied to their Rochester, NY, mailing address (43 East Blvd, per Florida Sunbiz filings) and/or their Ocean Ridge, FL, base. Cold, unsolicited applicants should treat this as a very low-probability target. The realistic path in is a warm introduction — a shared civic, alumni, or nonprofit-board connection to Rochester, NY, or Palm Beach County, FL, or a direct relationship with one of the four named trustees. Any outreach should stay short, personal, and low-friction (a brief letter of interest, not a full grant proposal) until a trustee signals genuine interest. Organizations without an existing tie to the family should not expect a response, and should not invest significant proposal-writing effort absent one.

The only verifiable financial data comes from Riggs Foundation Inc.'s most recent Form 990-PF (FY2025, via ProPublica): total revenue of $638,233 (48.3% from contributions received, roughly $308K; 31.7% from sales of assets, roughly $202K; 11.7% from dividends, roughly $75K; 8.4% from interest, roughly $54K), against total expenses of $418,135. Charitable disbursements were $306,941, or 73.4% of total spending, against net assets of $5,605,702 — a payout ratio of about 5.5%, sitting just above the federal 5% minimum distribution requirement private foundations must meet to avoid excise penalties. Officer compensation totaled $96,000 (23.0% of spending), split evenly between two of the four trustees ($48,000 each to John P Riggs III and Mary Abigail V Riggs), with the other two trustees uncompensated. No itemized grantee list, program-area breakdown, or geographic distribution was available in the dataset pulled for this report (zero grantee records on file, zero prior-year financial history), and this report's database record shows no matched grantees or historical financials beyond the current-year IRS Business Master File snapshot. One discrepancy worth flagging: the IRS Business Master File lists a lifetime/prior income_amount of $6,254,279, which does not match the $638,233 in FY2025 Form 990-PF revenue — likely reflecting a one-time contribution, asset transfer, or different reporting period from an earlier or later filing year, and should be verified against the full 990-PF PDF before being cited. Because no grant-size range or grantee count is published, applicants cannot infer a typical award amount with confidence; however, given roughly $307,000 in total annual charitable disbursements, even a small handful of grants in the $10,000–$50,000 range would exhaust a full year's payout, suggesting the foundation supports a narrow, low-volume slate of recipients per cycle rather than a broad grants program.

Riggs Foundation Inc. sits in a cluster of similarly-sized, closely-held private foundations, all classified under NTEE Philanthropy & Grantmaking and all clustered tightly around $5.6 million in assets — a size band typical of single-family giving vehicles rather than institutional funders.

All five peer entities share Riggs Foundation Inc.'s defining trait: no public website, no published mission, and no documented application process — this asset tier (roughly $5.6M) is dominated by family foundations and trusts that distribute the IRS-required minimum with minimal administrative overhead and no outward-facing grantmaking infrastructure. Riggs Foundation Inc. is distinguished only by having at least a nominal (if currently unreachable) web presence at riggs.org, which none of its listed peers appear to have at all.

No news coverage, press releases, or grant announcements specific to Riggs Foundation Inc. (EIN 93-2254549, Ocean Ridge, FL) were found in this research pass. Search results for "Riggs Foundation" consistently surface unrelated organizations sharing the name — most prominently a Sheridan, Wyoming-based "The Riggs Foundation" (EIN 86-2829605) that awarded roughly $19,000 across 16 grantees in its most recent filing year, largely to rodeo, arts, and animal-welfare causes in Wyoming, North Carolina, and Michigan; a separate Dallas, TX "Riggs Family Foundation" (EIN 75-2765743); and the well-known Austen Riggs Center, a psychiatric treatment and research institution in Stockbridge, MA. None of these are affiliated with the Ocean Ridge entity that is the subject of this report, and grant seekers should take care not to conflate them. The most concrete recent activity on record for the correct entity is administrative: it received its IRS tax-exempt ruling in July 2023 and has since filed two Form 990-PF returns (FY2024 and FY2025), with leadership unchanged across both — Gail Stonisch as President/Treasurer and registered agent, John P Riggs III and Mary Abigail V Riggs as compensated trustees ($48,000 each), and Patrick N Riggs as Vice President/Secretary. Its listed website, riggs.org, was unreachable (connection refused) as of this research on 2026-08-27, which itself is a notable and recent data point — grant seekers should confirm whether the domain is temporarily down or was never the foundation's actual site before relying on it.

Because Riggs Foundation Inc. publishes no mission statement, no funding guidelines, no application form, and no grants portal, standard proposal-writing advice does not apply here — the operative strategy is relationship discovery, not proposal polish. First, pull the foundation's full Form 990-PF filings (FY2024 and FY2025) from ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer or the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and read Part XV/Schedule of Grants Paid in full; this dataset did not return an itemized grantee list, and that schedule is the only reliable way to identify actual past recipients, typical award size, and any recognizable pattern (geography, cause area, or repeat relationships) before making contact. Second, do not rely on riggs.org as a live channel — it returned a connection error during this research and should be independently re-verified; if it is down, the only confirmed contact points are the foundation's registered address (4545 Coquina Rd, Ocean Ridge, FL 33435-7359) and its listed contact, "% Gail Stonisch." Third, look for an existing tie before writing anything: the trustees' documented geographic anchors are Rochester, NY (mailing address on file with Florida's Division of Corporations) and Ocean Ridge/Palm Beach County, FL — organizations with board members, alumni networks, or program footprints in either location have the best odds of a response. Fourth, keep any outreach to a single concise letter of inquiry (one to two pages: organizational mission, specific need, budget context, 501(c)(3) status) rather than a full unsolicited proposal — closely-held family foundations at this asset size ($5.6M) rarely have staff to process lengthy applications, and an over-formal submission can read as a mismatch for how the foundation actually operates. Fifth, size any request modestly: total annual charitable disbursements were roughly $307,000 in the most recent filing year, so a request in the low five to low six figures is proportionate, while anything approaching that full annual payout is unrealistic for a first-time, unsolicited contact. Finally, do not expect — or repeatedly chase — a response; the absence of a public program suggests giving is directed by the trustees to organizations they already know, and cold outreach without a warm connection is unlikely to be prioritized.