Thrive Collective Foundation

Thrive Collective Foundation is the IRS/Foundation Source legal name (EIN 82-4322488, administered from 501 Silverside Rd, Wilmington, DE) for what operates publicly as the Shared Future Foundation — a family foundation led by Dr. Sara Selznick (President) and David Selznick (Secretary/Treasurer). This is critical for applicants to understand: the website listed in most databases for this foundation (thrivecollective.org) actually belongs to an unrelated New York City arts-and-mentoring nonprofit; the foundation's real public-facing site is sharedfuturefdn.org, based in Delray Beach, FL.

The giving philosophy is explicitly place-based and relationship-driven, not a competitive grants program. The foundation describes its approach as the "Common Ground Model": study a community's history, identify its existing assets and leaders, and invest directly in people, places, and community-led projects rather than solicit proposals broadly. In practice, this has meant anchoring around one flagship partnership — the West Atlantic Redevelopment Coalition (WARC) and the "We Are Home" affordable-homeownership initiative in Delray Beach's West Settlers Historic District ("The Set") — which alone accounts for $1,055,000 of the $1,231,000 in grants captured across 12 recipients in this platform's dataset (85.7% of tracked giving).

First-time applicants should recognize there is no LOI-to-full-proposal pipeline, no site-visit cadence, and no public deadline calendar (`funding_cycle`, `application_form_url`, and `application_deadline` are all unset in IRS/Foundation Source records, and `preselected_only` is flagged true). This is consistent with a closed family foundation that identifies grantees through its own community-organizing process rather than through applications. The realistic entry point is not a cold proposal to the foundation directly but a working relationship with its delivery partners — WARC (chaired by Chuck Ridley) and the Delray Beach Community Development Corporation — or direct, low-friction outreach to hello@sharedfuturefdn.org that reads as a community introduction rather than a formal grant request. Smaller, non-anchor grantees in the dataset (Soil & Soul, Sunflower Creative Arts, Community Greening Corp, Campout For Kids) suggest the foundation does fund modest community programs alongside its flagship housing work, but always within the same tight Palm Beach County geography.

Giving is a barbell: one large, multi-year anchor commitment plus a long tail of small community grants. Across the 12 grants captured in this platform's dataset (total $1,231,000, average $102,583), West Atlantic Redevelopment Coalition Inc received 3 grants totaling $1,055,000 (roughly $350,000 per grant), tied to the "We Are Home" housing project. Every other recipient received far smaller amounts: Soil & Soul Inc ($95,000, 1 grant), Emanuel Jackson Sr Project Inc ($35,000 across 4 grants, ~$8,750 each), Florida Atlantic University Foundation ($25,000, designated to the "Henderson School's Technology Fund"), Campout For Kids ($10,000), Sunflower Creative Arts Inc ($8,500), and Community Greening Corp ($2,500) — the smallest tracked grant. Geographically, 11 of 12 known grants stayed in Florida, with a single outlier in Illinois.

Total annual giving (Form 990-PF `total_giving`) has grown sharply: $88,185 (FY2019), $38,185 (FY2020), $423,508 (FY2021), $464,787 (FY2022), and $750,010 (FY2023, with $581,000 in grants paid that year). FY2024 total giving is not yet reported, but revenue jumped to $1,505,620, suggesting continued or increased capacity. This growth tracks two large capital infusions rather than new annual fundraising: $7,600,000 in contributions received in FY2020 and $5,000,000 in FY2021, which built total assets from just $239,042 (FY2019) to $12,753,859 (FY2024). Assets have been essentially flat since 2021 ($12.1M-$12.75M across FY2022-FY2024) with no further large contributions reported, meaning current-year giving is now funded from investment income and required minimum distribution off a roughly $12.75M endowment — the FY2023 $750,010 in total giving is close to the ~5% federal private-foundation payout minimum on that asset base. Grant purposes are overwhelmingly "General & Unrestricted" (7 of 12 grants), with only the FAU Foundation grant carrying a named restriction, indicating a strong institutional preference for flexible, trust-based funding over tightly scoped program grants.

All five peers sit within roughly $12.7M-$12.8M in assets and share the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE classification with no public website on file — the profile of small, single-family foundations that make giving decisions privately rather than through public programs. Thrive Collective Foundation stands out from this peer set only because its officers' community work (as "Shared Future Foundation") produced independent local news coverage; the underlying grantmaking mechanics — no portal, no published guidelines, concentrated relationship-based giving — are consistent with the peer group, not an exception to it. Applicants should not expect this foundation to behave more like a public charity or community foundation than its near-identical peers do.

The most substantive recent activity tied to this foundation is not framed publicly under the "Thrive Collective Foundation" name at all, but under "Shared Future Foundation," the operating brand led by Dr. Sara Selznick. Local Palm Beach County outlets (WPTV, CBS12) have covered the "We Are Home" project, a partnership between Shared Future Foundation, the Delray Beach Community Development Corporation, Pulte Homes, and the West Atlantic Redevelopment Coalition (chaired by Chuck Ridley) to build capped-price ($220,000) homes for legacy families — households earning $60,000-$124,000 — in Delray Beach's historically Black West Settlers Historic District ("The Set"). As of the most recent coverage available, three homes have been completed and five more are in permitting, with families receiving mortgage-qualification assistance through the CDC before pairing with Pulte's workforce-housing program.

CauseIQ's organizational profile for EIN 82-4322488 reports the foundation has granted more than $2.28 million locally as of late 2025 — meaningfully more than the $1,231,000 across 12 grants captured in this platform's dataset, indicating the tracked grant history is a partial (likely earlier-years) sample and that giving has continued to scale since. No leadership changes, new program launches, or public statements from Sara or David Selznick specific to the "Thrive Collective Foundation" legal name were found; all discoverable public activity runs through the Shared Future Foundation identity and the West Atlantic Redevelopment Coalition/CDC partnership.

This is not a funder to approach with a conventional cold proposal — there is no grants portal, published LOI process, deadline calendar, or public guidelines document anywhere in Foundation Source's records or on sharedfuturefdn.org (`application_form_url`, `application_deadline`, and `funding_cycle` are all unset, and the foundation is flagged `preselected_only`). Sending an unsolicited full proposal packet is likely to go unread; the foundation's own description of its process — the "Common Ground Model" — is about the foundation studying a community and choosing partners, not about organizations applying to it.

The highest-leverage move for a values-aligned organization is to build a relationship inside the Delray Beach ecosystem the foundation already funds: West Atlantic Redevelopment Coalition and the Delray Beach Community Development Corporation are its two closest working partners, and both are visible, contactable community organizations (unlike the foundation itself). Being known to, or endorsed by, either group is a far stronger signal than any written proposal. For direct contact, hello@sharedfuturefdn.org is the foundation's listed public email — a short, personal introduction describing shared community ties and asset-based work in "The Set" or greater Delray Beach will land better than formal grant-application language.

When framing an ask, mirror the foundation's own vocabulary and demonstrated preferences: request general operating or unrestricted support (7 of 12 known grants carried no restriction) rather than a narrowly scoped program budget; emphasize community-led leadership, historical/cultural preservation, and closing the racial wealth gap through legacy housing and land — the explicit themes on sharedfuturefdn.org — rather than generic capacity-building language. Geographic discipline matters most of all: 11 of 12 known grants stayed within Florida, and the foundation's entire public narrative is anchored to one specific neighborhood. An organization operating outside Palm Beach County, FL should not expect to be a fit regardless of proposal quality. Given the foundation distributes roughly $400,000-$750,000 a year against one dominant multi-year commitment (WARC), expect limited bandwidth for entirely new relationships and plan for a long cultivation timeline rather than a single-cycle ask.