Rochford Foundation

Rochford Foundation is a small, founder-directed family foundation (established 2008 by Tim and Carol Rochford) whose real product is a place, not a checkbook: the restored 1901 Burrage Mansion in Redlands, CA, offered free to child-serving nonprofits for enrichment programs, playdays, and events. Its IRS filings mark it as accepting only preselected charitable organizations and not soliciting unsolicited applications for cash grants — a signal grant seekers should take seriously. The trustees, Lloyd T. Rochford and Carol A. Rochford, are unpaid and run the foundation as a hands-on operating philanthropy rather than a pass-through grantmaker; there is no program staff reviewing blind proposals. The one open door is facility access: the website explicitly invites nonprofits serving disadvantaged children to apply to use the Burrage Mansion, with inquiries routed through admin@rochfordfoundation.org rather than a portal. First-time applicants should understand two distinct tracks exist here — a nearly closed cash-grant track (14 grants totaling $118,600 over the tracked period, averaging $8,471, almost entirely to organizations already embedded in the Redlands community) and a more accessible in-kind track (mansion use, volunteer-run workshops like Burrage Buddies, partnerships with Redlands Unified School District). Grantees skew toward organizations the trustees already know personally — Boys & Girls Club ($77,500 across 3 grants), local high schools, Redlands Rotary, Redlands Community Foundation — which points to a relationship-first, not proposal-first, funding model. Realistic relationship progression looks like: informal introduction or referral from an existing Rochford Foundation partner → facility-use conversation or joint event → smaller first-time contribution → repeat, larger support if the partnership proves out (as with Boys & Girls Club's three-grant progression). Organizations outside Redlands/San Bernardino County, or that do not serve children directly, should not expect to break in through a cold application; the one Colorado grant in the data likely reflects a personal trustee connection rather than an open geographic expansion.

On IRS Form 990 data captured for this profile, Rochford Foundation shows 14 tracked grants totaling $118,600, averaging $8,471 per grant, with a wide range from $1,000 (Stater Bros Charities) to $77,500 cumulative across three grants to Boys Girls Club (the single largest relationship, individual awards likely in the $20K-$30K range). The foundation's own typical-grant-size metadata pegs individual awards between $1,000 and $27,500, with a median of just $2,875 and an average of $5,400 — figures that confirm most checks are small, targeted contributions rather than programmatic multi-year grants. Geographically, giving is almost entirely California-concentrated (13 of 14 tracked grants, centered on Redlands/San Bernardino County), with a single outlier grant in Colorado. By recipient type, the pattern is hyper-local and youth/education-skewed: Boys Girls Club ($77,500), Redland Benchwarmers ($13,000), Redlands Community Foundation ($6,600), two local high schools (Redlands East Valley, Redlands High, $9,000 combined), Mansion Memories ($5,000), and smaller four-figure gifts to Summer Olympics, Olive Crest, Redlands Rotary, and Stater Bros Charities. Total assets have declined steadily from $10.04M in FY2014 to $7.67M in FY2024, a roughly 24% erosion over a decade, while total program spending (which IRS filings show as total_giving, encompassing mansion operations and program costs, not just outbound grants) has held in a narrow $535K-$585K band every year from 2019 through 2023. That gap — $535K-$585K in total giving/program spend versus $20K-$107K in actual grants_paid to outside organizations in the same years — is the single most important funding-pattern insight: the large majority of the foundation's annual spend goes to operating the Burrage Mansion itself (maintenance, staffing, Burrage Buddies programming) rather than to cash grants. Revenue is volatile and driven by contributions received, ranging from near-zero ($1 in 2015, $2,571 in 2012) to $2.0M (2014) and $741,500 (2021), reflecting irregular family/trustee funding rather than a diversified donor base or endowment-draw model.

All five peers are asset-matched almost exactly to Rochford Foundation (within a $4,000 band around $7.66-7.67M), which reflects how this comparison set was built — by asset size within the same NTEE Philanthropy & Grantmaking category — rather than by mission similarity, so treat the peer set as a scale benchmark, not a strategic one. What differentiates Rochford Foundation from a typical asset-matched family foundation is that it operates a physical program asset (the Burrage Mansion) rather than functioning purely as a grants pass-through, meaning grant seekers should evaluate it more like a hybrid operating foundation than a peer checkbook funder of similar size.

The most significant documented change at Rochford Foundation is a 2023 leadership transition: founding executive director Ellen Timothy retired on January 1, 2023, after 14 years running the Burrage Mansion program, and was succeeded by Kate Salvesen, a University of Redlands graduate with a background at the Boys Girls Club and on the Redlands Community Hospital board (Redlands Community News, 2023-01-12). Salvesen's stated priorities on taking over were expanding community partnerships, increasing program diversity, and reaching more underserved children — directional signals for how the foundation may deploy its Burrage Mansion facility-use invitations going forward, though there is no evidence of an accompanying shift in cash-grant policy. No 2025 or 2026 press coverage, grant announcements, or new program launches specific to this foundation surfaced in web search as of this report (2026-08-04); search results for 'Rochford Foundation' news are dominated by an unrelated UK government body, the Rochford District Council Community Fund in Essex, England, which grant seekers should be careful not to confuse with this Rancho Mirage/Redlands, CA family foundation. The most recent quantitative data point available is a 2024-fiscal-year figure cited by a third-party database (Instrumentl) of roughly $38,200 in reported grants for that year, broadly consistent with the foundation's historical single-year cash-grant range of $20,000-$107,000. Absent newer public activity, the safest assumption for outreach in 2026 is that the foundation's operating model — facility stewardship plus small, relationship-based local grants under Salvesen's leadership — has continued unchanged since the 2023 transition.

Rochford Foundation checked the IRS box indicating it does not accept unsolicited applications for cash grants and only funds preselected organizations — treat any generic LOI or portal-style proposal as very unlikely to succeed, since no online application form or grants management system exists on its site. The one legitimate, foundation-invited entry point is facility access: the website states nonprofits serving disadvantaged children are invited to apply to use the Burrage Mansion, and the practical path is a direct email to admin@rochfordfoundation.org or a call to 909-793-5251 rather than a written proposal. Because the trustees (Lloyd T. and Carol A. Rochford) are unpaid and personally involved, and because the grantee list is dominated by organizations with an existing Redlands presence (Boys Girls Club, two local high schools, Redlands Rotary, Redlands Community Foundation), the highest-leverage move for an unfamiliar organization is securing a warm introduction through one of these existing partners or through current executive director Kate Salvesen's known network (Boys Girls Club, Redlands Community Hospital) rather than cold outreach. Applicants should be explicitly serving children, ideally ages 6-12, in Redlands or San Bernardino County — the foundation's after-school and enrichment programming (Burrage Buddies) is built around that age band and geography, and organizations outside it (the single Colorado grant appears to be an outlier, likely a personal trustee connection) should not expect a response. A common mistake would be requesting general operating cash support as a first ask; a facility partnership, co-hosted event, or in-kind collaboration is both more aligned with what the foundation actually does and a more realistic first step toward any future cash grant, which the data shows tends to follow an established relationship (e.g., Boys Girls Club's grants totaling $77,500 across three separate awards). There is no disclosed deadline or review cycle, consistent with an ad hoc, relationship-driven decision process rather than a formal grant round — outreach can happen at any time, but expect a slow, personal-relationship-based response rather than a portal confirmation or committee timeline.