Sun Hill Renewal Fund

Sun Hill Renewal Fund is a small, single-director family foundation (Timon Malloy, President) with roughly $5.1M in assets and a 2023 grants budget of just $223,500 spread across 18 grants to 14 organizations. Both the foundation's Form 990 activity coding and its Granted AI record flag it as 'preselected only' — it does not run a public LOI or application process, and its website (sunhillrenewalfund.org) offers no grant guidelines, deadlines, or application form, only a general contact email (sunhillrenewalfund@gmail.com). This is a relationship-driven, not a competitive-RFP, funder. First-time applicants should not expect a proposal review pipeline; instead, the realistic path in is an introduction through one of its existing grantee partners or through the coalition structures it already funds — most visibly the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Group, a formal collaboration among Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper, and Save The Sound that received a combined $97,500 (44% of all 2023 giving) for New York Harbor water-quality work. Organizations already embedded in that coalition, or aligned with its member groups, have the clearest opening. The foundation traces its lineage to the 1935 Tudor Foundation and split off from the Perpetual Kindness Foundation in 2022 — 2023 was its first full year of independent grantmaking, so its patterns are still forming rather than fixed by decades of precedent. Beyond the water-quality coalition, the fund supports a small, high-trust roster: two named endowed scholarships at CUNY City Tech and Juniata College (honoring Aaron and Clara Rabinowitz, tied to the foundation's founding family), civic-participation and voting-rights work in the New York City metro area (League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, NY LCV Education Fund), media-accountability journalism (Media Matters for America, WhoWhatWhy), and a cluster of Vermont community and animal-welfare organizations (Vermont Community Foundation's Flood Relief Fund, Vermont Institute of Natural Science, Lucy Mackenzie Humane Society, Tyson Congregational Church) — likely reflecting a personal or family tie to Vermont. Grant sizes range from $2,500 to $50,000, and most recipients received either a single grant or a repeat two-grant relationship (general support plus a specific project), suggesting the fund favors sustained, multi-year relationships with a small number of trusted partners over broad, one-time giving.

In its first active grantmaking year (FY2023), Sun Hill Renewal Fund paid out $223,500 across 18 grants to 14 organizations, for an average grant of $12,417 and a median grant of roughly $10,000 (the midpoint recipient, Juniata College/NY LCV Education Fund/City Tech tier, sits at $7,500-$10,000). Grant sizes ranged from $2,500 (Plymouth Memory Tree Community Fund; Vermont Institute of Natural Science) up to a single $50,000 grant to League of Conservation Voters Education Fund for its Democracy Program — by far the largest single check the fund wrote, more than 22% of total giving on its own. By program area: Environmental / water-quality giving (NRDC $32,500, Riverkeeper $35,000, Save The Sound $30,000, WNET/Nature $12,500, Vermont Community Foundation flood relief $5,000) totaled roughly $115,000, or about 51% of all giving — the fund's clear top priority. Pro-democracy and civic-participation giving (LCV Education Fund $50,000, NY LCV Education Fund $10,000, Media Matters $10,000, WhoWhatWhy $5,000) totaled $75,000, or about 34%. Educational scholarships (Juniata College $10,000, City Tech Foundation $7,500) totaled $17,500, or about 8%. The remaining ~7% ($16,000) went to a handful of Vermont/community grants under $6,000 each. Geographically, of the 18 grants, 8 went to New York-based organizations, 5 to Vermont, 2 each to Connecticut and Washington DC-based national organizations, and 1 to Pennsylvania — reflecting the fund's New York City headquarters plus an apparent Vermont family connection. On the balance sheet, total assets grew from $3.88M (FY2022) to $4.78M (FY2023, later reported at $5.1M current), while FY2022 shows a one-time $542,557 contribution received and zero grants paid — consistent with 2022 being a foundation-formation/seeding year rather than an active grant year. Net investment income was $190,304 in FY2023 versus $72,963 in FY2022, and the fund reports zero officer compensation across both years, indicating an all-volunteer, low-overhead operation typical of a single-family vehicle rather than a staffed institution.

Sun Hill Renewal Fund sits in a cluster of similarly-sized single-family foundations classified under Philanthropy & Grantmaking, most holding roughly $5.1M in assets — a common range for family foundations that split off from a larger parent trust or endowment. None of these peers, including Sun Hill, disclose formal open-application processes; all appear to operate on a preselected/invited basis typical of small family philanthropy.

Sun Hill stands out among this peer set as the only one with a publicly documented grant history (via its own website's Projects page) and a named, coordinated coalition strategy — funding NRDC, Riverkeeper, and Save The Sound together as members of the same CSO Group rather than funding overlapping causes independently. That transparency, modest as it is, makes Sun Hill easier to research and pitch a warm introduction to than most of its peers, even though the underlying access model (preselected, relationship-based) is the same across the group.

Public information on Sun Hill Renewal Fund's activity is thin outside its own IRS filings and website. The most recent confirmed grantmaking data is FY2023 — the fund's first full year of giving after being spun out of the Perpetual Kindness Foundation in 2022 (itself a descendant of the 1935 Tudor Foundation, established by Aaron Rabinowitz, whose name is honored in two of the fund's current scholarship grants at Juniata College and CUNY City Tech). No FY2024 or FY2025 Form 990 data, press coverage, or grant announcements were found in web searches conducted September 2026 — normal for a foundation of this size, which files no press releases and maintains no news section on its site. Leadership has been stable and minimal: Timon Malloy is listed as sole director/President as of the most recent filing, with zero officer compensation reported in both FY2022 and FY2023, consistent with an unstaffed, family-run structure. The one dated, specific 2023 activity worth flagging to prospective applicants is the Vermont Flood Relief Fund grant to the Vermont Community Foundation — a $5,000 rapid-response grant tied to the catastrophic July 2023 Vermont flooding, alongside a related $5,000 flood-damage grant to Tyson Congregational Church in Vermont. This shows the fund is willing to make timely, responsive grants outside its three named standing programs when a disaster hits a region it has ties to (Vermont), which is useful context for any Vermont-based organization approaching the fund after a future emergency. Absent any 2024-2026 filings or news, prospective applicants should treat FY2023 as the most current reliable picture of the fund's behavior and reach out directly (sunhillrenewalfund@gmail.com) to confirm current-year priorities before assuming continuity.

Sun Hill Renewal Fund has no public RFP, LOI portal, application form, or stated deadline — its own 990 filing and Granted AI classification both mark it 'preselected only,' and its website's About and Projects pages confirm there is no submission process to describe. Do not spend time hunting for an online form; none exists. The single actionable channel is the general contact address, sunhillrenewalfund@gmail.com, and any outreach there should assume it reaches sole director Timon Malloy directly given the foundation's all-volunteer, zero-compensation structure. Given the fund paid out $223,500 in FY2023 versus $0 in FY2022, budget-year timing matters less here than relationship timing — there is no evidence of a fixed cycle, so a well-timed, specific introduction is more likely to land than trying to guess a deadline. The strongest alignment language mirrors the fund's own program names and its demonstrated behavior, not generic grant-speak: reference the 'Regional Air and Water Quality Program for the New York metropolitan area' by name if working in that space, frame civic-participation work around 'nonpartisan' voter registration and 'Democracy Program'-style language (mirroring LCV Education Fund's successful $50,000 grant), and note any scholarship proposal's tie-in to the Rabinowitz family name if seeking educational funding, since both current scholarship grants explicitly honor Aaron and Clara Rabinowitz. The most common mistake would be treating this like an open, competitive funder — cold, generic LOIs are unlikely to get traction given the fund's demonstrated preference for coalition partners (NRDC/Riverkeeper/Save The Sound funded together) and multi-year repeat relationships over one-off new grantees. The most promising relationship-building approach for an environmental organization is to join or partner with the existing CSO Group coalition rather than approach independently; for a Vermont-based organization, the flood-relief grants to Vermont Community Foundation and Tyson Congregational Church suggest responsiveness to place-based emergencies in that state specifically. Because the fund is small and undiversified in staff, a single well-crafted, personal email describing concrete outcomes and explicit alignment with one of its four programs (Environmental, Educational Scholarship, Fellows, or Associate Members) is more likely to be read and acted on than a formal, generic proposal packet.