Thanksgiving Foundation

Thanksgiving Foundation (EIN 13-6861874) is a $7.3 million private foundation administered out of Bessemer Trust Company's New York office at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, with Mark C. Winmill (Chairman) and Thomas Stine Peters (President) each drawing $72,000 in annual compensation and Bessemer Trust serving as co-trustee. The foundation's own record flags it as preselected_only with application_instructions of "none" — this is not a funder that reviews open Letters of Inquiry or maintains a grants portal. Every one of its 216 tracked grants, averaging $6,273 and totaling $1,355,000, went to organizations already connected to the trustees: independent K-12 schools, hospitals, conservation groups, and small-town civic organizations clustered in three geographies — New York (75 grants), Washington State (56 grants), and Connecticut (24 grants) — that mirror the foundation's own stated geographic focus.

For a first-time applicant, the realistic path is not a cold proposal but a warm introduction. The recipient list reads like a family's personal giving history: repeat, multi-year support (most top recipients received grants across all four tracked years) to New England prep schools (Groton, Eaglebrook, Indian Mountain, St. George's), a cluster of Seattle-area institutions (Lakeside School, Overlake School, Seattle Children's Hospital, Woodland Park Zoo), and hyper-local civic groups in Millerton, NY / Dutchess County (the volunteer fire department, Townscape of Millerton & Northeast, North East Community Center). This pattern — small-dollar, high-loyalty, geographically concentrated giving — is the signature of a family foundation funding institutions its principals attended, live near, or sit on boards of, not a competitive grantmaking program.

Organizations with an existing relationship to Bessemer Trust private clients, alumni ties to the schools above, or a physical presence in the Millerton/Dutchess County or greater Seattle communities have by far the best odds. Everyone else should treat this as a low-probability, relationship-first prospect: research whether a board member or major donor has a personal tie to the foundation's trustees before investing time in outreach, since there is no public application to fall back on.

Giving has trended upward in dollar terms even as total assets have stayed flat. Tracked grants-paid figures show $200,000 (FY2020, the pandemic-year low), $330,000 (FY2019), $360,000 (FY2021), $397,500 (FY2022), and $359,500 (FY2023); ProPublica's most recent Form 990-PF (filed around October 2025) reports $514,153 in charitable disbursements against $7,292,950 in total assets — a 7.05% payout rate, well above the 5% federal minimum distribution requirement and the highest in the ten years of financials reviewed. By contrast, FY2020's $200,000 in grants against $6,868,984 in assets was just a 2.91% payout, and FY2023 sat almost exactly at the 5% floor (5.01%).

At the grant level, the foundation's own typical-grant-size data (53 grants sampled) shows a median of $3,000, an average of $6,792, and a range of $1,000 to $37,500 — consistent with the top-50 grantee list, where the average grant is $6,273 across 216 total grants worth $1,355,000 cumulatively. The single largest relationship is Indian Mountain School ($155,000 across 4 grants, roughly $38,750/year), followed by The Overlake School ($125,000) and Seattle Children's Hospital ($110,000).

By program area, independent-school and education giving dominates: roughly $609,000 (about 45% of the $1.355M tracked) went to prep schools and scholarship funds (Indian Mountain, Overlake, Lakeside, St. George's, Groton, St. Thomas, Eaglebrook, Millbrook Early Childhood). Health and human services — Seattle Children's Hospital, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center ($29,000), UVA Health Foundation ($21,000), Innisfree Foundation ($70,000), Kindering ($15,000) — account for roughly $261,500 (19%). Wildlife/conservation and outdoor-recreation causes (two Ducks Unlimited chapters, Long Island Windfowl Heritage Group, Woodland Park Zoo, Dutchess Land Conservancy, New England Sailing & Science Foundation) total about $227,500 (17%). Arts and culture (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Seattle Art Museum, Mystic Seaport Museum) run about $72,500 (5%), with the remaining roughly 14% split across local civic groups, churches, and public-safety causes concentrated in the Millerton, NY area.

No matched peer foundations were returned in the underlying data for this profile, so the comparison below uses published national benchmark figures for similarly sized foundations rather than fabricated named peers.

*Benchmark rows drawn from published Candid/Foundation Center national aggregate statistics, not individual comparable filers.

Thanksgiving Foundation's FY2025 payout of 7.05% outpaces both the family-foundation and all-independent-foundation benchmarks, meaning it is currently distributing faster than a typical peer of its asset size — either a deliberate step-up in giving or a one-year anomaly worth confirming against the FY2026 filing. Its focus mix (schools, health, and conservation pinned tightly to NY, WA, and CT) is narrower and more personal than the "varies by family" pattern typical of donor-directed peers, and like the large majority of foundations in its size class, it offers no public application channel.

Web and news searches turned up no press coverage, leadership announcements, or new program launches specific to this Thanksgiving Foundation (EIN 13-6861874) for 2025-2026 — consistent with its profile as a small, non-public-facing family foundation with no communications function. General web searches for "Thanksgiving Foundation" instead surface The Thanks-Giving Foundation / Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas, TX (founded 1964, an unrelated interfaith civic garden and event space at 1627 Pacific Avenue) which holds the domain thanksgiving.org listed as this foundation's website in available records. Grant seekers should not confuse the two: the Dallas organization runs public programming (The Good City Report, a Poetry Project) and event-space rentals, not a grantmaking program, and its site includes no reference to the NY-based Thanksgiving Foundation or Bessemer Trust.

The most substantive recent signal is financial rather than editorial: the foundation's Form 990-PF for the tax year ending in 2025 (filed with the IRS around October 2025, per ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer) shows charitable disbursements of $514,153, up sharply from $359,500 in FY2023 and $397,500 in FY2022, while total assets held essentially flat at $7,292,950 (versus $7,169,043 in FY2023). That combination — rising giving on a flat asset base — points to the trustees choosing to distribute at a higher rate (7.05% versus the 5% federal floor) rather than investment growth driving new capacity. No new officers, trustees, or program announcements were identified in the sources reviewed; Mark C. Winmill (Chairman) and Thomas Stine Peters (President) appear as the same leadership team across all filings on record.

There is no formal application process to optimize for: the foundation's own records list application_instructions as "none" and flag it as preselected-only, meaning grants go to organizations the trustees already know rather than respondents to an open call. The single biggest mistake a grant seeker can make here is treating this like a conventional funder — drafting and mailing an unsolicited LOI or full proposal will very likely go unanswered, since no portal, deadline, or program officer exists to receive it.

Instead, the actionable strategy is relationship mapping. Start by checking whether your organization already appears, in any form, in the foundation's giving history — repeat, multi-year grants to the same roughly 50 organizations suggest loyalty to existing relationships over new-donor acquisition. If you're an independent school, look at whether you're a peer institution to Groton, Eaglebrook, Indian Mountain, St. George's, Lakeside, or Overlake (boarding/day schools in New England and the Seattle area) — the foundation's education giving is concentrated in this specific tier of school, not education broadly. If you're a health or conservation nonprofit, the pattern favors specialty/regional institutions (Seattle Children's Hospital, Fred Hutchinson, Ducks Unlimited chapters, land trusts) over large national organizations.

Geography is a strong filter: roughly 71% of tracked grants went to just three states (NY, WA, CT), with further concentration in Millerton, NY / Dutchess County — the volunteer fire department, community center, and township civic association there all receive grants, suggesting a trustee residence or strong personal tie to that specific small town. A Seattle-area or Dutchess County nonprofit has meaningfully better odds than an otherwise-identical organization elsewhere.

Because Bessemer Trust administers the foundation as co-trustee, the most realistic warm-introduction path is through a Bessemer Trust private wealth relationship — development officers at prospect organizations should check whether any major donors or board members bank with Bessemer Trust. Absent that connection, monitor the foundation's annual Form 990-PF (EIN 13-6861874, available via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer) each fall for new names appearing in Part XV, which would signal the foundation is open to at least occasional new relationships. Given the median grant size of $3,000-$6,792, calibrate any eventual ask modestly rather than requesting a transformational gift.