The Hermitage Foundation

The Hermitage Foundation is a small, single-trustee private non-operating foundation (EIN 36-7129458, Naples, FL; incorporated 1996) governed solely by trustee Annick Deubler, with an area code (312 — Chicago) on file that points to the family's likely Illinois roots rather than its current Florida address. Every dollar of grant activity captured in this record — five grants totaling $3,003,000, averaging $600,600 each — went to one recipient, Beacon Fund, an Illinois-based organization, for general/unrestricted operating support. There is no second, third, or occasional grantee in the data: this reads as a dedicated-vehicle foundation built to fund one long-term charitable partner, not a competitive grantmaking program soliciting the public. Consistent with that pattern, the foundation has no public website, no listed grants page, no application form, no published deadline, and its own database record carries the literal value "__none__" for application instructions. First-time applicants should treat this foundation less like an open funder and more like a family-directed pass-through: the realistic path to funding is a pre-existing relationship with Annick Deubler, Beacon Fund, or the Deubler/Chicago philanthropic and business network (LinkedIn ties the trustee's name to the Deublin Company, a Chicago-area manufacturer) — not an unsolicited LOI. Organizations whose mission substantially overlaps with Beacon Fund's own program area have the only plausible indirect entry point: understanding what Beacon Fund does and whether this foundation might be a source of matching or complementary support to a shared cause. Absent that kind of alignment or connection, grant seekers should expect this foundation to be effectively closed to cold outreach, and should redirect effort toward peer foundations in the same asset tier that maintain an actual public program. The registered "accepting_applications: true" flag in directory data should not be read as evidence of an open cycle; it is unconfirmed by any independent source found in this research and is contradicted by the total absence of application infrastructure.

Total assets have held steady at roughly $13.0M-$13.2M every year since 2019 (FY2023: $13,200,788; FY2024: $13,067,306), following a $10,000,000 contribution received in FY2019 that lifted the corpus from just $2.9M in 2015. Grants paid tell a clear before/after story: $135,000 (2011) rising gradually to $171,000 (2015), then $165,000 (2019) and $220,000 (2020) as the new capital was absorbed, before jumping to $643,000 (2021), $720,000 (2022), $700,000 (2023), and $652,242 in disbursements for FY2024. That post-2019 range of roughly $643K-$720K/year equates to about 5.0%-5.5% of the asset base — squarely the mandatory minimum-distribution requirement for a non-operating private foundation ("is_operating": false in every filing year), suggesting payout is driven by IRS compliance rather than a discretionary grantmaking strategy. Recipient concentration is total: the only grantee on record, Beacon Fund (Illinois), received all 5 tracked grants for a combined $3,003,000 (average $600,600 per grant), 100% coded "GENERAL FUND" (unrestricted operating support) and 100% geographically concentrated in Illinois — a striking mismatch with the foundation's Naples, FL address and its NTEE-classified focus area of "Education." Net investment income has consistently funded nearly all of total revenue (e.g., $1,146,263 of $1,202,766 in FY2023; $490,134 of $557,717 in FY2022), meaning the foundation runs on its endowment's returns rather than fresh contributions — the 2019 gift appears to have been a one-time capitalization event, not a recurring inflow. Officer/trustee compensation is $0 in every filing year, reinforcing the read of a lean, cost-free family vehicle rather than a staffed grantmaking operation.

All five peers were matched purely on near-identical asset size (within $20K of each other, all around $13.06M-$13.07M) and shared NTEE classification (Philanthropy & Grantmaking) — not on a confirmed shared program focus, so this table should be read as "foundations of similar scale and structural type" rather than direct programmatic competitors. Shuff Foundation is the only peer with any public web presence, which alone makes it worth a quick comparison check, but none of the five peers have confirmed open, competitive application processes either; the pattern across this entire asset tier skews toward small, closed, single-family vehicles rather than publicly accessible grant programs.

No foundation-specific news, leadership changes, or program announcements were found for 2025-2026; every news search for "The Hermitage Foundation" returned unrelated organizations (the Heritage Foundation think tank's 2025-2026 "Heritage 2.0" policy push, the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Sarasota, Andrew Jackson's Hermitage in Nashville, and the Hermitage Foundation UK). The most recent verifiable activity is the Form 990-PF filed December 1, 2024, covering fiscal year 2024, which shows $566,048 in revenue, $705,772 in expenses, $13,067,306 in total assets, and $652,242 in charitable disbursements — a continuation of the payout level established in 2021-2023 rather than a new initiative. CauseIQ's profile flags the foundation's status as "partially liquidated," a designation worth monitoring, since it can precede either a wind-down and final distribution or simply reflect routine asset drawdown language on the filing. Trustee Annick Deubler remains the sole listed officer with no compensation across every year in the record, and no successor or additional trustee has been added in any filing reviewed. Grant seekers should not expect a new open cycle to appear soon; the most likely "news" that would matter here is a future 990-PF showing a grantee other than Beacon Fund, which has not occurred in any year captured in this data.

There is no confirmed, publicly documented application process for this foundation — no website, no LOI portal, no listed deadline, and its own database record stores "__none__" for application instructions. Given that every tracked grant dollar (5 grants, $3,003,000 total) has gone to a single recipient, Beacon Fund (IL), for general operating support, a cold proposal from an unconnected organization has a very low likelihood of being reviewed at all, let alone funded — this is not a case of a competitive program with unclear criteria, but most likely a closed, relationship-based giving vehicle. Do not rely on the "accepting applications" flag sometimes shown in grant directories for this foundation; it is not corroborated by any independent source found here. Do not submit inquiries through thehermitage.org — that domain belongs to an unrelated historic house museum in Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ, not this foundation. The single highest-value action for a genuinely aligned organization is to research Beacon Fund directly: if your mission overlaps with Beacon Fund's program area, or if your board has any tie to Beacon Fund, to trustee Annick Deubler, or to the Chicago business network associated with her (LinkedIn ties her name to the Deublin Company), that connection — not a written proposal — is the realistic way in. If no such connection exists, a very short, personally addressed letter of inquiry (one page, mailed to the Naples address on file, since no email is published) introducing your organization and asking whether the foundation considers requests outside its current grantee is a reasonable low-cost try, but should be treated as a long shot, not a core strategy. The most common mistake would be investing significant proposal-writing time here expecting a standard review process; that time is better spent on peer foundations in the same asset tier with confirmed public programs (see peer_comparison), or engaged directly with Beacon Fund's own funding relationships if your work aligns with its mission.