The Duffield Family Foundation

Maddie's Fund — the operating name of The Duffield Family Foundation — functions less like a traditional private foundation and more like an active field-builder for American animal welfare. Founded in 1994 by PeopleSoft billionaire Dave Duffield and his wife Cheryl as a tribute to their Miniature Schnauzer Maddie, the foundation has distributed more than $301 million to reshape how shelters, veterinary schools, and community organizations serve animals and the people who love them.

The giving philosophy is openly collaborative. Maddie's Fund does not simply write checks; it convenes, challenges, and catalyzes. The foundation runs Community Conversations (weekly Monday Zoom calls open to any animal welfare professional), sponsors national conferences, hosts Maddie's Pet Forum and Maddie's University as free professional development platforms, and co-designs grant challenges with peer organizations like ASPCA, Best Friends Animal Society, and PEDIGREE Foundation. This architecture means that relationship-building with Maddie's Fund happens continuously — not just at application time.

The grant portfolio is explicitly tiered. Community Conversations participants can win up to $10,000 each month with minimal friction. Annual Challenge Grants (typically $5K–$10K) focus on a rotating theme — recent cycles have addressed Return to Home, foster expansion, and Open Arms inclusivity. BIPOC-Led Operating Support Grants ($5K–$50K) target leadership diversity. Multi-year Partnership Grants ($200K–$1.5M) are reserved for organizations with demonstrated capacity, national reach, or strong research infrastructure.

For first-time applicants, the fastest path to a relationship is participation — join a Community Conversations call, contribute to the Maddie's Pet Forum, and attend conferences Maddie's Fund sponsors. Larger proposals take longer to mature. The foundation strongly favors organizations that frame problems at a systemic level and use the language of community-centered care, equity, and collaboration. The board under Chairman Amy Zeifang and Executive Leader Mary Ippoliti-Smith has shown consistent appetite for multi-site, collaborative proposals that produce national learning — not single-shelter operational support.

Annual giving at Maddie's Fund has ranged from $13.4 million (FY2019) to $38.4 million (FY2013), with the most recent available years settling around $16.2 million (FY2022 and FY2023) and $19.4 million (FY2021). The FY2020 peak of $23 million coincided with aggressive challenge grant activity and COVID-related emergency funding. Total foundation assets have held remarkably steady between $258 million and $297 million across the decade, sustained almost entirely by net investment income ($9M–$34M annually) — outside contributions are negligible (under $10,000 in most recent years).

The most recent program breakdown reveals a clear concentration: National Partnerships absorbed $4.48 million (35 new grants approved), Research Grants $2.12 million (25 new grants), Education Grants $1.03 million (3 new grants), and the No Place Like Home Challenge distributed $97,000 across 55 participating organizations.

Across 1,328 historical grants in the database, the median grant is $7,500 and the average is $37,120 — a wide spread that reflects the bimodal distribution between small challenge/community grants and large multi-year institutional investments. The largest single grants in the record exceed $1 million: a $4.6 million Cornell shelter medicine program grant in 2024, a $2 million WisCARES grant in 2025, and a $1.92 million Pima County partnership in 2025. The smallest grants are under $10,000, distributed through monthly Community Conversations.

Geographically, California dominates the historical grant count (214 of 1,328 recorded grants), followed by Texas (110), New York (82), Florida (63), and Wisconsin (56) — reflecting the density of professional animal welfare infrastructure in those states rather than geographic bias. The foundation explicitly funds nationally and has supported grantees across all 50 states.

Top institutional recipients by cumulative amount: Best Friends Animal Society ($5.6M, 20 grants), University of Tennessee ($5.25M, 9 grants), Austin Pets Alive ($4.9M, 16 grants), Humane Society of the United States ($3.79M, 18 grants), and CARE ($3.2M combined across two entries, 16 grants).

The database peer set groups Maddie's Fund with similar-asset foundations under NTEE Major Category B (Education), reflecting its NTEE code B99. Direct animal welfare peers — PetSmart Charities, Petco Love, ASPCA — operate at different scales or structures. The table below compares Maddie's Fund to its closest asset-size peers in the bundle.

Among similar-asset private foundations, Maddie's Fund is the most accessible: it maintains multiple concurrent open-application grant tracks while peers of this size typically operate by invitation or within narrow geographic footprints. Maddie's Fund also has the highest public engagement infrastructure — weekly Zoom calls, forums, university partnerships — that create ongoing touchpoints well outside formal grant cycles. Its payout rate of approximately 6% of assets annually leaves capacity for giving to scale when investment returns improve, and the 30-year sustained focus on a single sector means deep institutional knowledge that informs grantee selection more precisely than generalist peers.

Maddie's Fund has been unusually active in 2024–2025 with both large institutional grants and broad-reach challenge programs running simultaneously.

The two largest recent grants signal continued commitment to multi-year community veterinary access: a three-year, $1,920,000 partnership grant to Friends of Pima Animal Care Center and the Humane Society of Southern Arizona (announced August 2025) to build regional collaboration and expand affordable veterinary care; and a $2,000,000 grant to WisCARES at UW-Madison (2025) to expand its community clinic and shelter medicine training program — extending a relationship that has now generated more than $2.3 million across 22 cumulative grants.

In 2024, the foundation marked its 30th anniversary by surprising 10 animal welfare organizations with unannounced $30,000 grants ($300,000 total) and simultaneously ran the Open Arms Challenge, distributing $500,000 to 107 organizations focused on reducing adoption barriers across income, housing, and demographic lines. The Foster 50 Challenge, co-launched with PEDIGREE Foundation, directed $100,000 toward shelter foster programs and generated nearly 9,000 net-new fosters in its first year.

On the operational side, the foundation confirmed that its Animal Protection Program portal opened December 1, 2025 for a February 2026 grant cycle. Mary Ippoliti-Smith continues as Executive Leader (most recent compensation $246,593) and Amy Zeifang as Chairman ($123,546). No leadership transitions have been reported.

Start with Community Conversations before anything else. The weekly Monday Zoom calls (free, open to any U.S. animal welfare professional) award up to $10,000 each month to participating organizations. This is how Maddie's Fund observes organizations informally — how staff communicate, whether the work aligns with current priorities, whether leadership understands the community-centered model the foundation champions. Winning a Community Conversations grant is also proof of eligibility and reporting competence for larger applications.

Match your scale to the right program. Challenge Grants ($5K–$10K) are theme-based and announced annually — subscribe to Maddie's Fund email updates to catch each cycle's opening. The BIPOC-Led Operating Support Grant ($5K–$50K) is explicitly for organizations with BIPOC executive leadership serving dogs, cats, and their people. Partnership and Research Grants ($50K–$1.5M+) require demonstrated capacity, a clear multi-site or research design, and usually a pre-existing relationship with program staff.

Hard eligibility requirements to verify first: (1) Your 501(c)3 determination letter is current. (2) Annual outcome statistics are publicly posted on your website. (3) If you operate a shelter, your Live Release Rate or equivalent benchmark — and the calculation formula — must be displayed publicly. (4) All reports from prior Maddie's Fund grants are submitted and accepted. Missing any of these creates an automatic disqualification.

Language that resonates: Use 'community-centered,' 'keeping pets and people together,' 'access to care,' 'equity and inclusion,' 'live outcomes,' and 'collaboration.' Avoid framing proposals around shelter capacity alone — the foundation has explicitly moved beyond shelter-centric metrics.

University and research applicants: Cap indirect costs at 10%. Structure deliverables around measurable outcomes — trained residents, published protocols, clinic visits, courses deployed — rather than overhead and infrastructure.

Timing for the main cycle: The application portal (maddiesfund2.my.site.com) opened December 1, 2025 for the February 2026 review cycle. Email grantsteam@maddiesfund.org or call (925) 310-5450 to confirm eligibility and get staff guidance before portal submission.

Post-award obligations: Grant recipients must publicly thank Maddie's Fund by name on social media and in donor recognition materials. Build this into your communications calendar before accepting a grant — failure to comply affects future eligibility.