Sills Family Foundation

Sills Family Foundation is a small, family-governed private foundation (EIN 52-1790278) based in Richmond, Vermont, administered through Bondy & Schloss and run entirely by Sills family members: Arthur Sills (President, $10,000 compensation), Peter Sills (Vice President, $10,000), Larry Sills (Director, uncompensated), and Deborah Sills Iarussi (Secretary, $70,000 — clearly the officer handling day-to-day administration). With zero staff and $11.05M in assets (FY2024), this is a boutique operation, not an institution with program officers to court individually.

The foundation runs a strict gatekeeping model: it does not accept unsolicited full proposals and states plainly that a full proposal submitted without a prior accepted Letter of Inquiry will not be reviewed. The one opening for outsiders is the LOI, submitted through an online form (never email) after reading the Grantmaking Guidelines in full. This means the real strategic question for an applicant isn't "how do I write a killer proposal" — it's "how do I earn an invitation." First-time applicants should treat the LOI as the whole pitch: a tight, single-page case for fit against the foundation's four stated priorities (early childhood education, environmental justice, arts and culture, and families in crisis, with emphasis on criminal-justice-impacted families and refugees/migrants/asylees).

The grantee data shows a two-tier pattern: a handful of very large gifts routed to philanthropic intermediaries (Boston Foundation received $7.95M across 4 grants; The Philanthropic Initiative received $2.405M in one grant) that function as donor-advised or pass-through vehicles rather than direct program support, alongside a long tail of $1,000-$40,000 grants to frontline nonprofits, heavily concentrated in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn Ballet, Brooklyn Public Library) plus a cluster of Vermont community organizations near the foundation's home base. Direct-service applicants should expect to compete in that second tier, not the first — realistic sizing is $10,000-$25,000 for a one-year general operating grant, with capacity-building or rapid-response add-ons reserved for organizations that have already proven out as grantees.

Sills Family Foundation's own typical-grant-size data (17 tracked awards) shows a median of $20,000 against a wide range of $5,000 to $1,943,847 — the top end reflecting the intermediary-style mega-gifts, not typical program grants. The broader grantee dataset (38 grants, $13,417,505 total, $353,092 average) is dominated by two outliers: Boston Foundation ($7,951,705 across 4 grants) and The Philanthropic Initiative ($2,405,000). Strip those two out and roughly $3.06M is spread across the remaining ~33 direct grantees, still skewed upward by Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences ($2,000,000/3 grants) and Brooklyn Museum ($750,000/3 grants) — after which the bulk of grants cluster tightly between $1,000 and $40,000, matching the website's stated $10,000-$25,000 typical band.

Geographically, the DB stats show New York with 23 grantees (61% of count), Vermont with 6 (16%), Massachusetts with 5 (13% — almost entirely the two large intermediary grants), California with 2, and DC and New Jersey with 1 each. This is notably broader than the foundation's own stated geographic focus of "metro New York City and California" — Vermont (home-state courtesy grants near Richmond, e.g., Ward Brook Center) and Massachusetts (intermediary vehicles) both receive meaningful dollars that the published guidelines don't mention.

Annual giving has moved with investment performance rather than a fixed payout target: total giving rose from $1,134,584 (2012) to a peak of $3,373,284 (2022, net investment income $2,322,333), then fell to $1,965,426 in 2023 as net investment income dropped to $1,431,800 — a roughly 38% swing tracking the market, not a stated strategy shift. The foundation's own recent-grants page reports 2025 giving of $1,255,000 across 67 organizations (average award ~$18,731), confirming the lower, more-distributed pattern has persisted rather than rebounding to the 2021-2022 peak. Program-area tagging in the underlying data is generic ("Charitable Giving" on nearly every line), but recipient names show arts and culture organizations (Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Ballet, Public Theater, Manhattan Theater, Creative Art Works, Groundswell, Songcatchers, Community Word Project) making up close to 40% of the named direct grantees, a heavier tilt toward arts than the guidelines' stated priority ordering would suggest.

Sills is the smallest of this peer set by a wide margin — roughly 1/13th the assets of Achelis and Bodman and a small fraction of Pinkerton's scale — yet it mirrors the same gatekeeping architecture (LOI first, invitation-heavy, no cold full proposals) common among established NYC-area family and legacy foundations. Its $10,000-$25,000 typical award sits below Achelis and Bodman's $25,000-$100,000 band and Van Ameringen's $25,000-$250,000 band, positioning Sills as a smaller or complementary funder best approached for seed-level or general-operating support rather than as an organization's anchor funder.

There is no evidence of press coverage, leadership changes, or new program launches for Sills Family Foundation in 2025-2026 — this remains a low-public-profile, all-family-governed operation with no communications staff. The most concrete recent signal is the foundation's own recent-grants disclosure: 67 organizations funded in 2025 for a combined $1,255,000, continuing the lower giving level established after 2022's peak rather than a return to the $3M+ annual payouts seen in 2021 and 2022. A Form 990-PF was filed November 15, 2025, indicating the foundation continues normal annual compliance and operations under the same board (Arthur Sills, Peter Sills, Larry Sills, and Deborah Sills Iarussi).

The underlying driver of the funding contraction is financial rather than strategic: net investment income fell from $2,322,333 in 2022 to $1,431,800 in 2023 (total assets essentially flat at ~$11.05-11.2M across both years), and grants paid fell correspondingly from $3,147,600 (2022) to $1,764,458 (2023). No changes to stated funding priorities, geographic focus, or the invitation-only/LOI application model were found across the foundation's site or in web research — the four priorities (early childhood education, environmental justice, arts and culture, families in crisis) and the NYC-metro/California geographic framing appear unchanged from prior years. Applicants should read the 2025 pullback as a market-driven belt-tightening, likely to make the foundation modestly more selective in the near term rather than as a sign of a pending strategic pivot.

Do not submit a full proposal cold — the foundation states explicitly that any proposal not preceded by an accepted Letter of Inquiry will not be reviewed. The only entry point is the online LOI form; the guidelines explicitly warn applicants not to send the LOI by email, so use the web form on sillsfamilyfoundation.org even if a program contact's email surfaces elsewhere.

The LOI's need summary is capped at 1,500 characters including spaces — tighter than most funders' LOI fields. Lead with the single sharpest sentence possible: which population you serve, which systemic issue (poverty, racism, marginalization) your program addresses, and the specific dollar amount requested. Use the foundation's own language from its Guidelines page — "families and communities to overcome obstacles created by poverty, racism and other forms of marginalization" — and explicitly name which of the four priorities you fall under (early childhood education, environmental justice, arts and culture, or families in crisis, especially organizations serving those affected by incarceration, or refugees/migrants/asylees).

Size the ask realistically: the modal grant is $10,000-$25,000 for one year of general operating support, not a capital campaign or a multi-year commitment. Capacity-building and rapid-response grants exist but are reserved for organizations that are already grantees, so a first-time LOI should ask for straightforward general support.

Geography matters more than the published guidelines suggest: the current grantee list is heavily Brooklyn-weighted (Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, Brooklyn Ballet, Brooklyn Public Library all appear), and Vermont-based organizations near the foundation's Richmond home base also receive support — despite the guidelines naming only "metro New York City and California" (with environmental justice work allowed to be national). California-based applicants should lead with an explicit environmental justice framing given how the geographic exception is worded.

No deadline or review-cycle calendar is published; the foundation says LOIs are accepted "at any time." Given giving levels have run roughly 40% below the 2021-2022 peak through 2023-2025, expect more competition for a shrinking pool of dollars than in flush years, and don't expect a fast turnaround given the all-volunteer, no-staff board structure.