Thoracic Foundation

The Thoracic Foundation is a small, quiet, endowment-funded family foundation ($5.4M in assets as of FY2024) administered not by program staff but by attorneys at Taylor, Ganson & Perrin LLP, a Boston trusts-and-estates law firm at 160 Federal Street. Trustee Edward R. Martin, Esq., along with co-trustees Hilary Worthen and Patricia Shepard, personally reviews requests -- there is no grants department, no published RFP, and (per the foundation's own IRS filing) no funding cycle or deadline. That structure means the foundation favors direct, personal outreach over portal-based applications, and it rewards organizations willing to build a multi-year relationship: its two largest relationships, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($320,000 across 8 grants for lung-cancer immunotherapy research) and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids ($260,000 across 8 grants for youth tobacco advocacy), were both built through repeated, sequential grants rather than a single large award. First-time applicants should expect to start small -- the smallest documented grants run $5,000-$25,000 -- and prove out a program before scaling the ask. The grantee roster skews heavily toward Massachusetts (37 of 63 tracked grants) and Washington, DC (12), with occasional national reach (Iowa, Colorado, Texas, California, Wisconsin), so Boston- or DC-based organizations, or those with a named Boston-area physician-researcher attached to the proposal, have a structural advantage. The trustees clearly favor academic medical centers and hospital-affiliated research (Dana-Farber, Mass General, Children's Hospital Boston, Beth Israel Deaconess, Cambridge Health Alliance) alongside national advocacy nonprofits (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Compassion & Choices, Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America) and a handful of small community-based organizations (Iowa City Free Medical and Dental Clinic, Sportsmen's Tennis & Enrichment Center, Cristo Rey High School). This is not a large-institution-only funder -- grassroots groups with a specific, well-articulated respiratory-health or tobacco-prevention program have real odds, but they should expect a smaller first check ($5,000-$35,000) than a hospital system would receive.

Across the 63 grants captured in the available multi-year sample, the foundation distributed $1,854,881 at an average of $29,443 per grant. A separate, more recent typical-grant-size calculation (17 grants) shows a median of $25,000, an average of $29,080, and a range of $5,000 to $73,500 -- consistent, disciplined check sizes rather than occasional mega-grants. Annual charitable disbursements have trended upward: $220,000-$298,831 per year from 2012-2015, rising to $389,000-$494,355 per year from 2019-2023, and $523,448 in the most recently filed year (FY2024). Total giving (grants plus related program spending) followed the same arc, from $324,923-$447,202 (2012-2015) to $549,607-$661,375 (2019-2023), even though total assets grew only from about $4.4M to $5.4M-5.8M over the same period -- meaning payout as a share of assets has climbed well above the 5% IRS minimum, closer to 9-10% in FY2023-2024, a sign the trustees are intentionally deploying capital rather than building the endowment. By recipient, funding concentrates in a short list of repeat relationships: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($320,000/8 grants, lung-cancer research), Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids ($260,000/8 grants), Migrant Clinician Network ($172,146/4 grants, migrant-worker COVID/TB response), Compassion & Choices ($170,000/4 grants), Children's Hospital Boston ($150,000/5 grants, asthma programs and Dr. Kim's research), Southcoast Hospital ($115,000/4 grants, smoking cessation), Boston Community Pediatrics ($110,000/4 grants, COVID vaccine education), and Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America ($110,000/4 grants). Geographically, Massachusetts absorbs 37 of 63 tracked grants (59%) and DC another 12 (19%), with the remainder scattered across Iowa, Colorado, Texas, California, and Wisconsin -- confirming the foundation's stated geographic_focus of MA/DC while showing genuine willingness to fund outside those states for the right program. By subject, the largest dollars go to lung-cancer and pulmonary research (Dana-Farber, Beth Israel Deaconess ARDS study, Franciscan Children's Hospital pulmonary rehab and diaphragm ultrasound work), followed closely by tobacco/nicotine prevention (Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Action on Smoking and Health, Iowa City Free Medical and Dental Clinic, Cristo Rey High School vaping program) and asthma (Children's Hospital Boston, Asthma & Allergy Foundation of America, Sportsmen's Tennis & Enrichment Center).

No peer foundations were pre-matched in the underlying data bundle, so this comparison uses the closest field-relevant organizations identified through web research -- with the important caveat that two of them share confusingly similar names but are structurally very different, much larger entities that grant seekers frequently conflate with this foundation.

The Thoracic Foundation is by far the smallest and least formal of this group -- a single-family, attorney-administered vehicle with no research-review infrastructure, versus the professional, peer-reviewed grantmaking programs run by the American Thoracic Society and Thoracic Surgery Foundation. Applicants should not assume these organizations share staff, criteria, or deadlines simply because they operate in the same clinical space and, in two cases, share the word "Thoracic" in their name -- misdirected applications built for the larger societies' formal rubrics will not match how this foundation's trustees actually decide.

The most recent independently verifiable activity is the foundation's FY2024 Form 990-PF, which reported $746,280 in total revenue (driven by $622,821 in realized investment gains and $105,755 in dividends, with zero contributions received), $677,086 in total expenses, and $523,448 in charitable disbursements -- a 10% increase over FY2023's $475,446 in grants paid. Trustees of record across recent filings are Edward R. Martin, Hilary Worthen, and Patricia Shepard (all uncompensated); a fourth name, Bradley R. Cook, appears in the underlying data as a trustee on earlier filings but is not listed among current FY2024 trustees, suggesting a board transition in recent years that is not otherwise documented publicly. No leadership announcements, new program launches, or press coverage specific to this foundation were found for 2025-2026 -- it does not maintain a website, social feed, or newsletter, and virtually all search-engine results for 'Thoracic Foundation' news surface unrelated activity from the American Thoracic Society (2025-2026 research award cycle, including a $200,000 ALA/ATS/CHEST Respiratory Health Equity Research Award) and the Thoracic Surgery Foundation (2025 class of award recipients recognized at the STS Annual Meeting in Los Angeles; 2026 Aortic Summit and Latin America travel scholarships). Grant seekers researching this specific funder should rely on its Form 990-PF filings (the only regular public disclosure it produces) rather than expecting news coverage, and should independently confirm with the trustee's office whether the FY2024 pace of giving ($523K, up from $475K) is expected to continue into FY2025-2026.

Because The Thoracic Foundation has no application_instructions on file, no funding_cycle, and no application_deadline (confirmed by both its IRS filing pattern and third-party grant-database profiles), the single most important tip is to abandon a portal-based mindset entirely. Address a concise letter of inquiry -- not a full formal proposal -- directly to Edward R. Martin, Trustee, The Thoracic Foundation, c/o Taylor, Ganson & Perrin LLP, 160 Federal Street, 20th Floor, Boston, MA 02110, and consider a courtesy call to (617) 951-2777 before mailing to confirm the trustees are currently reviewing new requests; because the office is a law firm's trust practice rather than a grants department, a brief, professional phone inquiry is well within norms here in a way it would not be at a larger foundation. Keep the initial ask within the foundation's demonstrated range: $5,000-$35,000 for a first grant, with the understanding that sustained relationships (Dana-Farber, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids) grew to $150,000-$320,000 only after multiple repeat awards over several years -- do not open with a six-figure ask. Anchor the proposal explicitly in one of the foundation's four demonstrated channels: pulmonary/lung-cancer research at an academic medical center, tobacco or nicotine-use prevention (especially youth-focused, e.g., vaping), asthma care or education, or cardiothoracic surgical training/residency support -- generic 'community development' language (the foundation's own DB classification, which does not match its actual giving pattern) will likely miss the mark. Name a specific physician, researcher, or program lead in the request, as every large grantee relationship in the data (Dr. David Barbie and Dr. Pasi Janne at Dana-Farber, Dr. Kim's asthma research at Children's Hospital Boston) is tied to a named individual, not just an institution. Massachusetts- or DC-based organizations, or those explicitly serving those geographies, should say so up front, since 78% of tracked grants land in those two areas. The most common mistake to avoid: treating this as the same organization as the American Thoracic Society or the Thoracic Surgery Foundation -- their competitive, peer-reviewed application processes, portals, and eligibility rules (career stage, board certification, etc.) do not apply here, and submitting materials formatted for those programs will read as a mismatched, generic ask to a small, attorney-run family foundation.