Treetops Foundation

Treetops Foundation is a small, closed, single-trustee family foundation (Matthew Bronfman is the sole trustee listed across all available filings, uncompensated) administered out of the Baker Tilly accounting office at 66 Hudson Blvd, New York — not a program office with staff, a grants manager, or a public intake process. The foundation's own record shows no application form, no published funding cycle, and no grants page; the domain listed in public data (treetops.org) actually belongs to an unrelated Texas private school, confirming there is no real public-facing presence to apply through. This is best understood as a personal/family giving vehicle, not an institutional grantmaker soliciting proposals.

Of 117 recorded grants totaling $6.42 million, the overwhelming majority — roughly 80% — went to Jewish-communal and Israel-affinity organizations: the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights ($1.3 million across 3 grants), Park Avenue Synagogue ($1.08 million/4 grants), Hillels: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life ($740,000/3 grants), American Jewish Committee ($605,900/2 grants), Friends of the IDF ($288,000/2 grants), Limmud FSU ($250,000/2 grants), and NYU's Bronfman Center Endowment Fund ($203,600/2 grants) — a direct signal of the trustee's personal affiliations. A second tier (about 11% of dollars) supports elite Northeast independent schools and universities the family or its network is tied to: Williams College ($500,000/2 grants), Taft School, Eaglebrook School, Georgetown, and NYU. A smaller arts/culture bucket (about 9%) includes American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra ($415,820/4 grants) and American Friends of the Canadian Centre for Architecture ($80,000).

For first-time applicants: there is essentially no LOI-to-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline to enter cold. New organizations that have received funding appear to do so through personal, board, or institutional ties to the existing roster (UJA-Federation, synagogues, Bronfman-family-linked institutions) rather than through unsolicited outreach. Organizations should assess fit against the actual giving pattern — not the generic 'Community Development' NTEE label on file — before investing time pursuing this funder.

The foundation's own typical-grant-size record (23 grants sampled) shows a median grant of just $5,000 against an average of $38,046 — a wide gap indicating a small number of very large gifts alongside many small, likely relationship-maintenance gifts (range: $155 to $482,352). Looking at the fuller 117-grant, $6.42 million cumulative dataset, the average per grant rises to $54,872, reflecting multi-year repeat funding to top recipients rather than one-off large checks.

By cause area (based on the top-50 grantee list): Jewish-communal and Israel-affinity organizations account for roughly $5.1 million, or about 80% of all recorded dollars — led by YM & YWHA ($1.3 million), Park Avenue Synagogue ($1.08 million), Hillel ($740,000), American Jewish Committee ($605,900), Friends of the IDF ($288,000), and Limmud FSU ($250,000). Education (elite independent schools and universities) accounts for about $686,000 (~11%), led by Williams College ($500,000). Arts and culture accounts for about $561,000 (~9%), led by American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra ($415,820). Health/medical causes (Mount Sinai, Child Mind Institute, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society) total under $30,000 combined — under 1% of giving — indicating health is not a real priority despite occasional small gifts.

Geographically, 88 of 117 grants (about 75%) went to New York-based organizations, with Washington, DC a distant second (9 grants) and Massachusetts third (6 grants, largely the Eaglebrook/Williams/Taft New England education cluster); California, Connecticut, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, and New Jersey each received one or two grants.

On total giving trend: annual charitable disbursements rose from $1.05 million (FY2019) to $2.06 million (FY2020), $1.43 million (FY2021), $2.26 million (FY2022), and $2.48 million (FY2023) — nearly two-and-a-half times the 2019 level — while total assets fell from $14.44 million (2019) to $7.52 million (2024), a 48% decline. That combination (rising payout, shrinking corpus) is consistent with an intentional spend-down rather than a stable perpetual endowment, a trend future applicants and current grantees should watch.

Treetops Foundation sits in a cluster of small, asset-matched (~$7.5 million) private foundations classified under the same Philanthropy & Grantmaking NTEE category. None of the five closest asset peers in the data have a public website on file, which is itself telling: foundations at this size, filed through professional administrators (accounting/trust firms), are almost uniformly closed, relationship-driven vehicles rather than open grantmakers.

Unlike its Texas- and North Carolina-based peers, Treetops is distinguishable in the available data mainly by its concentrated, identity-driven giving pattern (roughly 80% to Jewish/Israel-affinity organizations) and its documented spend-down trajectory. None of the listed peers publish grant data granular enough to compare programmatic focus directly, reinforcing that this entire tier of small single-trustee foundations operates outside the standard 'apply here' grantmaking model that most grant-seeker research is built around.

No foundation-specific news, press coverage, or announcements were found for Treetops Foundation (EIN 13-4093466) itself — searches for 'Treetops Foundation' overwhelmingly surface three unrelated organizations that share the name: (1) the NYC Green Fund's 'Treetops' program, administered by City Parks Foundation, which funds mid-size NYC parks/open-space nonprofits (2025 grantees were announced, next cycle expected fall 2026, deadline historically mid-October); (2) Treetops Resort, a Michigan golf/conference destination with a $500K conference-center renovation completed December 2025; and (3) an unrelated 'Treetop Foundation' based in Reno, Nevada. None of these are connected to the Bronfman-trustee family foundation covered in this report, and grant seekers should not mistake outreach to City Parks Foundation or Treetops Resort for outreach to this funder.

The most recent verifiable activity for the actual Treetops Foundation comes from its FY2024 Form 990-PF: total revenue of $1,007,640 (down about 41% from FY2023, driven by lower realized gains on asset sales) against total expenses of $1,056,518, continuing the multi-year pattern of net asset decline (from $14.44 million in 2019 to $7.52 million in 2024). No leadership changes were identified — Matthew Bronfman remains the sole trustee across all years of available filings, and officer compensation has been $0 in every filed year. Given the absence of any public communications channel, the annual 990-PF filing (typically available on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer several months after each fiscal year-end) remains the only reliable source for tracking this foundation's activity going forward.

There is no formal application process for Treetops Foundation to optimize for — accept that starting point before investing time. The foundation has no grants page, no LOI form, no stated deadline, and no staff to contact; its address of record is its accounting firm (Baker Tilly, 66 Hudson Blvd E Ste 2200, New York, NY 10001, (212) 697-6900), which functions as a filing agent, not a program office, and should not be treated as an intake channel for cold proposals.

The realistic path in is relational, not transactional. Every large, repeat recipient in the data — YM & YWHA, Park Avenue Synagogue, Hillel, American Jewish Committee, Friends of the IDF, NYU's Bronfman Center — has an evident tie to trustee Matthew Bronfman's personal, religious, or family network (the Bronfman name itself is attached to NYU's Jewish life center). Organizations without such a connection have essentially no documented path to a first grant. If your organization serves the Jewish community, supports Israel-affinity causes, is a Northeast independent school or university (Williams, Taft, Eaglebrook, Georgetown, NYU pattern), or is a major New York arts/cultural institution, look for a warm introduction: a shared board member, a rabbi or clergy connection, an alumni tie, or a joint program with an organization already on the funded list (e.g., co-programming with UJA-Federation of New York or Hillel International) is far more likely to produce a result than any written proposal.

The most common mistake would be treating this like a typical foundation prospect — building a formal LOI, searching for guidelines, or expecting a response to a general inquiry. None of that infrastructure exists here. A second mistake is confusing this funder with the similarly-named NYC Green Fund 'Treetops' parks grant program (a real, open-application funder with an October deadline) or Treetops Resort — neither is this foundation. Given the ~48% decline in this foundation's asset base since 2019 alongside rising payout, current relationships should also be stewarded carefully (clear annual impact reporting to existing contacts), since the total pool of available future dollars appears to be shrinking even as recent-year disbursements have grown.