Rotonda Foundation

Rotonda Foundation is a closed, all-volunteer family foundation controlled by the Meyer/Frank/Macdonald/McQuinn family, registered at 225 W Wacker Dr in Chicago but with a giving footprint that has almost nothing to do with Chicago. Of 100 tracked grants, 47 went to Missouri (concentrated in St. Louis) and 42 to New York (concentrated in the Hudson Valley and NYC), with only scattered gifts to DC (5), IL (2), VT (2), MA (1), and CT (1). That mismatch between headquarters and actual giving geography is the clearest signal here: the trustees' personal ties run to St. Louis and the NY/Hudson Valley corridor, not Chicago. Leadership shifted in August 2024, when Nancy Meyer became President/Director, succeeding Roxanne H. Frank (President/Secretary/Director through May 2024); Daniel H. Meyer, Thomas W. Meyer, and Michael C. McQuinn round out the Vice President/Director slate, with Lauren K. Macdonald as Treasurer. No officer draws compensation. The foundation's own record marks it 'preselected only' with application_instructions listed as none — it does not run an LOI process, portal, or open RFP, and no verifiable public website exists (the address on file resolves to an unrelated Virginia condo association). Nearly every grant in the sample repeats to the same recipients year after year — Madison Square Park Conservancy received four grants totaling $123,000, and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation's BJC Hospice/Evelyn's House program received four totaling $40,000 — which is the signature of loyalty giving to organizations the family already knows, not competitive grantmaking. First-time applicants without a warm connection should not expect to break in through a standard proposal. The realistic path is a board-level or personal introduction: sitting on the same board as a family member, belonging to the same St. Louis Jewish Federation or arts-institution network, or being a grantee's fiscal sponsor already in the family's orbit (Washington University appears twice, once directly and once via a fiscally-sponsored project). Every sampled grant is coded general operating support, so the ask itself should be simple and unrestricted rather than program- or capital-specific. Given the roughly 22% decline in assets between 2021 and 2023, new relationships may take longer to fund at meaningful levels until the endowment stabilizes.

Assets peaked at $15.67M (2021) and $15.65M (2022), then fell to $12.32M (2023) and $12.22M (2024) — a roughly 22% two-year decline driven by a -$2,597,218 total-revenue year in 2023 (net investment income of $546,754 was swamped by asset-sale losses). Despite that, grants paid held remarkably steady: $539,100 (2021), $521,250 (2022), $524,110 (2023), which mechanically pushed the payout rate up from about 3.4% to 4.3% of assets. Zooming out, giving has roughly halved from its mid-2010s level: total giving ran $757K-$1.77M between 2012 and 2015 (including a $1.48M grants-paid year in 2015), compared to $524K-$549K annually from 2019-2023. A one-time $4.45M contribution landed in 2019, the only sizable inflow to the corpus in the last decade; there is no evidence of a comparable infusion since. Grant sizing is modest and consistent: the foundation's own typical-grant-size record shows a $250 minimum, $75,000 maximum, $5,000 median, and $9,627 average across 56 tracked grants; the top-50 grantee list independently shows a $10,434 average per relationship and $1,043,360 total across 100 grants. The single largest relationship is Madison Square Park Conservancy at $123,000 across four grants (avg. ~$30,750/gift); most relationships sit in the $2,000-$20,000 band per grant. By purpose, 100% of the sampled grants are coded 'GENERAL OPERATING SUPPORT/ANNUAL GIFT' — no restricted program grants, capital campaigns, or multi-year pledges appear in the purpose field. By geography and theme, the St. Louis cluster (47 of 100 grants) skews toward Jewish communal organizations (Jewish Federation of St. Louis, National Council of Jewish Women-St. Louis), arts and culture (Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis Symphony, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Jazz St. Louis, Laumeier Sculpture Park), and health/human services (Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation, Moog Center for Deaf Education, Cancer Support Community). The New York cluster (42 of 100 grants) skews toward arts institutions (Madison Square Park Conservancy, MoMA, Studio Museum in Harlem), food security (Food Bank of the Hudson Valley, City Harvest, East Hampton Food Pantry), and reproductive rights/civil liberties (Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Center for Constitutional Rights, Pregnancy Justice).

Rotonda sits at the small end of the family-foundation spectrum in dollar terms but behaves exactly like its peer type: closed application process, general-operating-support grants, and a giving pattern anchored to family geography rather than the foundation's legal domicile. The one true structural contrast in this table is Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, a $100M+ public community foundation with open, published grant cycles — useful as a geographic overlap for NY-side applicants who strike out with Rotonda, but not a like-for-like peer given its very different scale and governance. Staenberg Family Foundation is the closest thematic and geographic match (Jewish/arts/St. Louis) but its detailed financials could not be independently confirmed in this research and should be verified directly before relying on them.

The most concrete recent development is internal: Nancy Meyer became President/Director as of August 2024, succeeding Roxanne H. Frank, who had led as President/Secretary/Director through May 2024. This surfaces only in 990-derived filing data — no press release, foundation announcement, or news coverage of the transition was found. No new program, initiative, or strategic announcement was located for 2025 or 2026. The foundation's FY2024 filing shows total revenue of $605,250 (61.8% dividends, 36.5% asset sales) against total expenses of $719,297, a net loss of roughly $114,047, and total assets essentially flat at $12.19M-$12.22M after the sharper 2023 decline. Charitable disbursements were $554,670, or 77.1% of expenses, consistent with prior years' payout behavior. Beyond the leadership change, there is no evidence of new grantee relationships being announced publicly, no site-visit program, and no discoverable social media or newsletter. The rotonda.org domain listed as the foundation's website in public records resolves to an unrelated Virginia condominium association, reinforcing that this is a low-visibility, non-media-facing philanthropy that operates entirely through personal networks rather than public communications.

There is no formal application to optimize — application_instructions is listed as 'none,' there is no application_form_url, no grants_page_url, and no verifiable working website, so the standard grant-writing playbook (polished LOI, portal submission, deadline tracking) does not apply here. The single highest-leverage move is finding a warm introduction: check whether anyone on your board, major-donor list, or volunteer leadership has a personal or institutional tie to Nancy Meyer, Daniel H. Meyer, Thomas W. Meyer, Michael C. McQuinn, Lauren K. Macdonald, or former President Roxanne H. Frank. Because every sampled grant is general operating support, don't lead with a restricted program pitch — frame the ask around organizational stability and continuity, which is exactly what the foundation has funded for its existing relationships. Calibrate the ask size to the relationship stage: first gifts in this dataset commonly land in the $2,000-$10,000 range, while long-standing relationships (Madison Square Park Conservancy, Barnes-Jewish Hospital Foundation) have grown to $10,000-$40,000 cumulative across multiple years — this reads as a foundation that starts small and builds trust before scaling a gift, not one that makes large first-time awards. A common mistake would be treating this like a competitive open funder: sending an unsolicited proposal to the Chicago address with no prior relationship is a low-probability, last-resort tactic given the 'preselected only' designation and the complete absence of a public review process. If you are St. Louis-based, the highest-probability entry points mirror existing grantees — Jewish Federation of St. Louis network, Washington University, Saint Louis Art Museum, and similar arts/culture or Jewish-communal institutions where a shared board member or major donor is plausible. If you are NY/Hudson-Valley-based, look to arts institutions (comparable to Madison Square Park Conservancy or Bard College) or food-security organizations (comparable to Food Bank of the Hudson Valley or City Harvest) for the same kind of network overlap. Given the roughly 22% asset decline between 2021 and 2023 and a payout rate that has already risen to about 4.3% of assets, expect the family to be somewhat conservative about adding brand-new relationships until the portfolio stabilizes — timing outreach to a period of market recovery may improve receptiveness. Finally, since no officer is compensated and there is no program staff, expect slow, informal response times, and be prepared to follow up through the personal contact rather than a general inquiry channel.