The Murray Foundation Inc.

The Murray Foundation Inc. is a small, closely held, multi-generational family foundation ($3.66M in assets as of the FY2025 Form 990-PF) run entirely by Murray family members with no paid program staff: R. Scott Murray (President), W. Stephen Murray (Vice President/Secretary across filings), Elizabeth Murray Hosea and Ellen Murray Kelsey (Directors), with Mary Murray Garrett and M. Timothy Murray also appearing as officers in earlier filings. Administrative and custodial functions run through a JPMorgan private-banking contact ("% Jpmorgan" on IRS records), and the foundation has no dedicated grants portal, no published RFP, and no stated deadline. Aggregator data describes its process as requiring "no special form" for a request — the hallmark of a foundation that runs on relationships and referrals rather than open solicitation.

The visible grant history (34 grants to 18 organizations, $209,000 total, averaging $6,147 each) shows each cause tracks back to a plausible family tie: ophthalmic disease research (Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, $50,000 across 2 grants, Miami), cancer research and patient support (Cancer Research Institute $40,000, First Descents $16,000, Breast Cancer Alliance $4,000, Tampa General Hospital Foundation $10,000), education (Brown University $20,000, Stuart Country Day School $15,000, Princeton National Rowing Association $7,000 combined), and land/water conservation clustered around family recreation geographies — Connecticut (Nature Conservancy-CT, Norwalk River Valley Trail, Ambler Farm), Colorado's Roaring Fork/Aspen Valley (Aspen Valley Land Trust), and national whitewater rivers (American Whitewater, American Whitewater Access).

First-time applicants should treat this as a warm-introduction funder, not a cold-application funder. Just eight states account for all recorded giving (CT 8, NJ 7, FL 5, CO 5, NC 3, NY 2, RI 2, VA 2 grants), and nearly every listed grantee sits inside a known family network — alma maters, hospitals treating family members, or local land trusts near family properties. Most of the 18 recurring recipients received exactly 2 grants in the visible window, indicating the foundation renews existing relationships far more often than it funds new proposals. Organizations without an existing tie to a Murray family member, an eye-disease or cancer-research mission, an Ivy League or elite prep-school education angle, or a CT/FL/NJ/CO conservation footprint should expect a cold approach to have low odds of success.

Annual giving has been volatile but has recently stabilized in a $200,000-$260,000 band. Grants paid by fiscal year: FY2015 $265,000, FY2019 $50,000, FY2020 just $9,000 (a COVID-era collapse), FY2021 $165,000, FY2022 $100,000, FY2023 $200,000, FY2024 $213,739, FY2025 $209,463 (most recent 990-PF, filed 2026-05-07). Total giving (grants plus related expenses) tracked similarly: $42,552 (FY2020) up to $256,576 (FY2023). The step-change came from a $635,489 contribution added to the corpus in FY2022, which combined with a strong FY2023 investment year ($1.72M in net investment income against $1.76M total revenue) to lift total assets from $2.03M (FY2021) to $3.76M (FY2023) and $3.66M (FY2025) — giving capacity has essentially doubled since 2021.

On a per-grant basis, the most recent 990-PF grant list shows 14 grants ranging $500-$40,000, with a $7,500 median and $11,786 average. The broader 34-grant/18-recipient history pulls the average down further to $6,147, with only Bascom Palmer Eye Institute ($50,000 cumulative across 2 grants) and Cancer Research Institute ($40,000 cumulative) crossing $20,000 in total support to any one organization; most recipients receive $2,000-$10,000 per grant.

By cause area, of the $209,000 sampled: eye/vision research and accessibility takes roughly 36% ($75,000: Bascom Palmer Eye Institute x2 plus Learning Ally), cancer research and patient services roughly 33% ($70,000: Cancer Research Institute, First Descents, Breast Cancer Alliance, Tampa General Hospital Foundation), education roughly 20% ($42,000: Brown University, Stuart Country Day School, Princeton National Rowing Association), and land/water conservation roughly 11% ($24,000: Nature Conservancy-CT and -FL, Aspen Valley Land Trust, Norwalk River Valley Trail, American Whitewater, American Whitewater Access, Ambler Farm). Geographically, Connecticut and New Jersey/Florida each account for roughly 40% and 35% of grant count respectively, with a distinct fifth-grant Colorado cluster centered on the Aspen/Roaring Fork Valley.

The Murray Foundation is the smallest and least formal of this set by a wide margin — roughly a quarter of the Bean Foundation's asset base and one-eighth of Goodnow's or Albers's, with no published geographic mandate, staff, or grant guidelines of the kind Bean Foundation offers (Bean explicitly serves Manchester/Amherst nonprofits through a stated open-application process). Where Bean, Goodnow, and Albers all publish some form of guidelines or invitation process, Murray operates purely on family-trustee discretion and prior relationships, making it structurally closer to a large-scale personal giving vehicle than to an institutional grantmaker — a pattern reflected in its higher grant-count-to-recipient overlap (most of its 18 recurring recipients get funded repeatedly rather than the pool rotating).

No press coverage, press releases, or public announcements were found for The Murray Foundation Inc. under any of its known identifiers (EIN 13-3421590) — it maintains no functioning public website; the domain listed for it in third-party aggregator data, themurrayfoundation.org, in fact belongs to an unrelated youth-basketball nonprofit in North Liberty, Iowa (Corda Sports Performance Center / Murray Elite Basketball), and grant seekers should disregard that site entirely when researching this funder.

The most concrete recent activity is filing-based. The foundation's FY2025 Form 990-PF (filed May 7, 2026) shows total assets of $3,655,051 and distributions of $209,463, both essentially level with FY2024 ($213,739 in giving) and FY2023 ($200,000-$256,576 depending on the measure used). The larger recent story is the FY2022 capital event: a $635,489 contribution to the corpus — the only contributions_received figure recorded across the financial history reviewed — which, paired with a strong FY2023 investment year (+$1,715,648 net investment income), roughly doubled the foundation's asset base from just over $2M (FY2021) to $3.6-3.8M (FY2023-2025) and restored giving to its historical $200K+ level after bottoming out at only $9,000 in grants paid during FY2020. The FY2025 filing also shows President R. Scott Murray drawing $7,000 in officer compensation for the first time in the record reviewed (all prior years show $0 for every officer) — a minor governance change worth noting for anyone trying to track who is actively steering the foundation today.

There is no portal, downloadable form, LOI template, or stated deadline for this foundation — aggregator data describes its process simply as requiring "no special form," and the foundation's IRS filings list its administrative contact as "% Jpmorgan" (a private-banking relationship manager), not a program officer. In practice this means: (1) Do not search for an online application — the only website associated with the name in public data (themurrayfoundation.org) belongs to a different, unrelated organization, and applying through it will reach the wrong nonprofit. (2) Route any inquiry as a mailed letter to the foundation's registered address (213 Parkview Drive, Franconia, NH 03580), since there is no evidence of email or web intake. (3) Lead with alignment to one of the four demonstrated cause areas — ophthalmic/eye-disease research, cancer research or cancer-patient support, elite/independent-school or collegiate education, or land and water conservation in Connecticut, Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley, or Florida — proposals outside these lanes have no precedent in the visible grant history. (4) Size the ask to the foundation's actual pattern: a $7,500 median grant and a $500-$40,000 range, with only two organizations ever receiving more than $20,000 cumulatively; a first-time request above $25,000 is out of step with everything on record. (5) Expect a relationship, not a competition — nearly every recurring grantee received exactly two grants across the window reviewed, consistent with a board that renews commitments to organizations already known to a trustee (an alma mater, a hospital that treated a family member, a local land trust) rather than reviewing an open applicant pool. The single most common mistake an unaffiliated organization can make with this funder is investing in a polished formal proposal package before securing a personal introduction — build the relationship first (a shared board member, a funded peer organization, or the family's advisory contacts) since the foundation's own filings show no infrastructure for evaluating cold submissions on the merits alone.