Tullie Family Foundation

Tullie Family Foundation is not a grantmaking institution in any conventional sense — it is a family office philanthropic vehicle run entirely by five members of the Tullie family (Thomas Tullie, President/CEO; Judith Tullie, Secretary/Treasurer; and directors Samantha, Jacqueline, and Anna Tullie), all serving without compensation. There is no program staff, no published mission statement, no listed focus areas, and no grants page — the foundation's own domain, tullie.org, resolves to a nearly blank template with no substantive content. IRS filings mark it 'preselected_only,' and the application_instructions field is explicitly empty, which together with the giving pattern below indicates a closed, relationship-driven funder rather than one that reviews unsolicited proposals.

The clearest signal of how giving actually happens is the recipient list: of the $396,560 given away across the foundation's full recorded grant history (25 grants to 23 organizations since inception), 94.8% — $376,000 — went to just three relationships: La Jolla Institute For Allergy & Immunology ($226,000 across two grants), Northwell Health Foundation ($100,000), and Friends Of North Attleboro Monuments ($50,000). These read as sustained personal commitments, not competitively awarded grants. Every recorded grant purpose is coded simply 'GENERAL,' and 13 of the remaining 21 grants are under $500 — sums consistent with a family member's personal end-of-year giving (Sandy Hook Promise Foundation, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, World Central Kitchen, 92nd Street Y) rather than an institutional grant review process.

For a first-time applicant, the realistic takeaway is that there is no LOI-to-proposal-to-site-visit pipeline to enter. The only credible on-ramp is a personal or professional tie to one of the five family members, or to an organization already in their circle — La Jolla Playhouse, San Diego Humane Society, San Diego Jewish Foundation, or Del Mar Community Connections, all clustered in the family's home base of La Jolla, CA. Organizations without such a connection should expect this funder to be effectively inaccessible, and should redirect energy toward foundations in the same NTEE category with actual published programs rather than pursuing Tullie Family Foundation as a cultivation target.

Tullie Family Foundation's total assets stood at $3,004,976 as of its FY2025 Form 990-PF, up from $2,727,795 in FY2023 and just $876,190 in FY2015 — growth funded almost entirely by investment returns rather than new outside contributions (the foundation received just $1 in contributions in FY2023 and $14,929 in FY2022, against net investment income of $206,592 and $200,490 in those same years, respectively). This is a fully self-funded, closed-corpus foundation, not one actively fundraising.

Charitable disbursements have risen steadily alongside the endowment: $33,600 (FY2015) → $70,750 (FY2019) → $106,875 (FY2020) → $85,075 (FY2021) → $152,000 (FY2022) → $137,685 (FY2023) → $192,106 (FY2025, 80.2% of total expenses per ProPublica). That FY2025 figure is the highest annual giving level in the foundation's history.

Grant size is sharply bimodal. Across the full 25-grant lifetime record, the average grant is $15,862, but the median is far lower — a 9-grant sample used for the foundation's typical_grant_size metric shows a median of just $200 against a maximum of $100,000. Three relationships account for 94.8% of all dollars ever given: La Jolla Institute For Allergy & Immunology ($226,000 / 2 grants, 57%), Northwell Health Foundation ($100,000 / 1 grant, 25%), and Friends Of North Attleboro Monuments ($50,000 / 1 grant, 13%). The remaining 21 grants split just $20,560 — 13 of them below $500, and five below $100 (including a $25 gift to 92nd Street Y and a $50 gift processed via Network For Good, a donor-advised giving platform, suggesting some of these are pass-through personal donations rather than foundation-reviewed grants).

Geographically, 12 of 25 grants (48%) went to California organizations — the foundation's home state — with 4 to New York, 3 to Washington, DC, and single grants to Arizona, Connecticut, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Utah, and Washington state. The database's own geographic_focus tag (CA/NY/WA) captures only part of this spread; the actual pattern across nine states looks more like individual family members' personal ties and travel than a stated regional program. There is no program-area breakdown available — every recorded grant purpose is coded 'GENERAL.'

These five peers were matched almost entirely on asset size — all five sit within $1,500 of Tullie's $3,004,976 in total assets (a striking $3,004,611–$3,005,167 band), and all share the same 'Philanthropy & Grantmaking' NTEE classification, but none has a listed website in the database, versus Tullie's placeholder domain. That makes Tullie marginally more discoverable than its peer set, but functionally identical in practice: none of the six organizations in this comparison offers a public application pathway, published mission statement, or program guidelines. This is a common profile for foundations in the $3M asset range with this NTEE code — small, family-run, IRS-compliant giving vehicles that exist primarily to formalize a family's personal charitable giving rather than to run a competitive grant program. Absent audited program data for the peer group, the most useful comparison point is behavioral: Tullie's own grant history — 94.8% of dollars concentrated in three personal relationships — is the likely template for how each peer distributes its roughly $150,000–$200,000-per-year giving capacity, based on typical payout ratios for foundations of this size.

No independent news coverage, press releases, or announcements specific to Tullie Family Foundation (EIN 47-1883617, La Jolla, CA) were found in web searches conducted in September 2026. Search results for 'Tullie Family Foundation news' and 'funding priorities' were dominated by unrelated organizations with similar names — most notably the much larger Tull Family Foundation (Pittsburgh, founded by Thomas and Alba Tull, with over $11M in reported annual giving, active baseball/softball equipment grants and education programs) and the Tull Charitable Foundation (Atlanta, which is launching new 'Rebuild Grants' in 2026 and awarded five two-year, $100,000-per-year Climate Solutions & Equity grants in 2025-26). None of that activity belongs to this foundation, and grant seekers should not attribute it to Tullie Family Foundation.

The only verified recent activity is what the foundation's own IRS filings show: FY2025 total revenue of $627,207 (nearly triple FY2023's $220,406, driven by investment gains) and charitable disbursements of $192,106 — the highest giving level since the foundation's formation (ruling date March 2016). The foundation's website, tullie.org, was last checked by internal enrichment on 2026-03-24 and remains a bare template with no mission, program, or contact content beyond what appears in IRS filings. Leadership has shown no turnover across all available data: Thomas Tullie (President/CEO) and Judith Tullie (Secretary/Treasurer) continue to lead alongside directors Samantha, Jacqueline, and Anna Tullie, the same five names recorded in every filing year reviewed.

There is no formal application process, so the standard grant-writing playbook does not apply here — the most valuable 'tip' is knowing when not to spend effort:

• Do not submit an unsolicited LOI or proposal. There is no portal, no listed grants email, and the foundation's own application_instructions field is explicitly blank; its records are flagged 'preselected_only.'
• The only public contact points are a phone number, (858) 558-9200, and a mailing address at 4225 Executive Square, Ste 1150, La Jolla, CA — a shared office-suite address typical of a wealth-management or family-office building, reinforcing that this is a personal vehicle rather than a staffed foundation.
• If pursuing this funder at all, the highest-probability path is a warm, personal connection to one of the five Tullie family members, or to an organization already in their circle: La Jolla Institute for Immunology, La Jolla Playhouse, Northwell Health Foundation (NY), San Diego Humane Society, San Diego Jewish Foundation, or Del Mar Community Connections. Sharing a board member, donor, or advisor with one of those organizations is far more realistic than a cold approach.
• Do not confuse this foundation with the much larger, similarly named Tull Family Foundation (Pittsburgh, founded by Thomas and Alba Tull, active baseball/softball equipment and education grants) or the Tull Charitable Foundation (Atlanta, running Climate Solutions & Equity Grants and a new 2026 Rebuild Grants program) — those are separate organizations with genuinely open programs, and search engines frequently conflate all of them.
• A common mistake is treating a database's generic 'accepting_applications' flag or a foundation-directory listing as an invitation to apply — the foundation's own near-blank website and all-volunteer, zero-compensation officer structure indicate no capacity to review outside proposals.
• There is no stated fiscal deadline or cycle; 990-PF filings show disbursements spread across the fiscal year, consistent with ad hoc, relationship-driven giving rather than a formal review cycle.
• If a genuine connection does materialize, keep any request modest and general-operating: 21 of 25 recorded grants were under $2,000 and every recorded grant purpose is coded 'GENERAL' (unrestricted). Six-figure gifts appear reserved for a small number of deep, sustained personal relationships, not for proposals.