The Teddy Foundation

The Teddy Foundation is a small, closely held private foundation (EIN 51-6511786, ruling date July 1999) administered through Wilmington Trust Company's Delaware corporate trust office rather than run by dedicated program staff. Granted's data lists a single uncompensated trustee, Elise Donaldson Bulger, and the foundation's alternate legal name on file — "Donaldson Jeffries Judith Et Al Tte" — points to a family trust origin tied to a Donaldson/Jeffries family member. Every marker in the record (no grants page, no application form URL, no public contact email, and a `preselected_only` flag in Granted's own foundation data) indicates this is a closed, relationship-driven funder that renews gifts to an established list rather than soliciting or reviewing open applications. Across 21 recorded gifts, every single one is classified "OPERATIONAL" (general operating support) — there is no evidence of project, capital, or program-restricted grants. First-time applicants should not expect an RFP, portal, or published deadline; none exists in any source checked, and the foundation's own domain (theteddy.org) did not even resolve at the time of this research. The giving pattern is also geographically bifurcated in a way that strongly suggests personal ties rather than a stated mission: 15 of 21 grants (71%) go to Sonoma and Marin County, California nonprofits — youth development (Boys & Girls Clubs) and community arts (Healdsburg Performing Arts Theater) — while the remaining six go to wildlife and animal-welfare organizations clustered around the Yellowstone ecosystem in Wyoming and Montana (Powell, WY and the Yellowstone/Marin animal-rescue network). Nine identifiable organizations account for the entire grantee history, most receiving repeat gifts of the same or similar size 2-3 times. For a realistic shot, an organization needs to sit squarely in one of these two clusters and, ideally, have an existing personal or board-level connection to the family or to a current grantee — cold outreach to a foundation with no public intake process has essentially no track record of succeeding here.

Total giving has ranged from a high of $404,924 (FY2011) to $282,282-$345,409 in the most recently disclosed years (FY2021: $332,688 giving / $261,577 grants paid; FY2022: $384,470 / $312,437; FY2023: $345,409 / $282,282), with FY2024 revenue of $290,648 against expenses of $337,502 — a deficit year funded by drawing on the corpus. Total assets have slid slowly from $4.99M (2011) and $4.73M (2019) to $4.33M currently, consistent with a foundation that periodically distributes more than its investment income generates. Granted's typical-grant-size sample (7 grants) shows a range of $5,000-$104,682, a median of $10,000, and an average of $37,097; the fuller 21-grant history shows a similar $42,122 average and $884,556 cumulative total. The single largest relationship is Healdsburg Performing Arts Theater at $280,000 across 3 grants (~$93,000 per gift, the highest average of any recipient), followed by Boys & Girls Clubs of Sonoma-Marin at $264,874 across 2 grants and a related $104,682 single gift to Boys & Girls Club of Central Sonoma County in FY2024 — together showing a strong, sustained commitment to Sonoma County youth development (roughly $470,000 of the $884,556 total, or 53%, to just these two related grantee families). Animal welfare and wildlife recipients receive smaller but steady recurring increments: Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary $115,000 across 3 grants (~$38,000/year), Marine Mammal Center and Powell Animal Shelter $40,000 each across 3 grants (~$13,300/year), Bird Rescue Center $25,000 across 3 grants (~$8,300/year), and the two Forgotten Felines chapters $10,000 and $5,000 respectively. By state, California receives 15 of 21 grants (71%), with Montana and Wyoming at 3 each (14% apiece). There are zero program-area or capital grants recorded — 100% of disclosed gifts are general operating support, and there is no indication the foundation has ever funded outside these two clusters.

Granted classifies all five peers in the same "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE bucket with nearly identical asset bases (~$4.33M) — a size-matched cohort rather than a mission-matched one, and none of the peers list a public website, so their giving levels and application processes cannot be independently verified. The Teddy Foundation stands out within this peer set as unusually transparent about its actual grant recipients through IRS Form 990-PF filings, even though it has no public-facing grantmaking infrastructure (no site, portal, or listed contact) — a pattern typical of small, single-family or single-trustee foundations administered by a bank trust department rather than run as an active grantmaking program.

The most recent disclosed filing (FY2024, per CauseIQ's summary of the Form 990-PF) shows seven grants totaling within the foundation's normal range, led by Boys and Girls Clubs of Sonoma-Marin at $103,819 — its largest single gift to that organization in the record — and Healdsburg Performing Arts Theater at $95,000, with Marine Mammal Stranding Center receiving $10,000. That year's total expenses ($337,502) exceeded total revenue ($290,648) by about $47,000, consistent with the decade-long trend of the asset base slowly shrinking (from $4.99M in 2011 to $4.33M currently) as the foundation distributes more than its investment income covers in most years. No leadership changes were found; Elise Donaldson Bulger remains the sole listed, uncompensated trustee. No press releases, program announcements, social media presence, or news coverage of the foundation were located for 2025 or 2026 in any search performed for this report, and the foundation's website domain (theteddy.org) failed to resolve at the time of research — indicating the organization has no active public communications function. In the absence of any other recent activity, the clearest signal of the foundation's current behavior remains its FY2024 grant list itself: continued, stable support for the same Sonoma County youth-and-arts cluster and the Yellowstone-area wildlife cluster that has defined its giving since at least 2011.

There is no formal application to submit here — Granted's own data flags this foundation as `preselected_only`, and no grants page, application form, or public contact email exists in any source checked, including the foundation's own (non-resolving) website domain. The realistic path in is a short letter of introduction, not a grant application: address it to the Trustee c/o Wilmington Trust Company, 1100 North Market Street, Wilmington, DE 19890, and consider calling the trust office at (302) 651-1942 first to confirm whether any intake process exists for this specific named trust before sending anything. Fit matters more than polish: every one of the 21 recorded grants falls into one of two clusters — Sonoma/Marin County, California youth development and community arts, or Yellowstone-corridor (WY/MT) wildlife and animal-welfare rescue work — so an organization outside those two program areas and two geographies has no precedent of ever being funded. Keep any ask modest and unrestricted: outside of the two anchor relationships (Healdsburg Performing Arts Theater and the Sonoma-Marin Boys & Girls Clubs, both funded above $100,000 cumulatively after years of repeat gifts), typical first-year-observable gift sizes cluster in the $5,000-$40,000 band, and 100% of disclosed grants are general operating support rather than project or capital funding — do not lead with a capital campaign or a restricted program pitch. The single biggest mistake an applicant can make is treating this like an active RFP funder and investing time in a full formal proposal; the far better use of effort is identifying whether your organization already has a board member, donor, or staff connection to the family behind the trust or to one of the nine existing grantees, since the giving list has shown almost no turnover across more than a decade of filings. If you do send a letter of introduction, reference the foundation's EIN (51-6511786) and its documented ~$300,000-$345,000 annual giving level to show you understand how it actually operates, and plan to check the next Form 990-PF (via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer) each fall to see whether your outreach had any effect before following up again.