OVERVIEW: The Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund supports arts and health, cultural access, youth sports and mental health, Jewish life and civic engagement. Grantmaking is centered on New York City, although its Play to Thrive initiative also serves Northern New Jersey and its Jewish Life program supports selected work in Israel.
IP TAKE: Named IP’s 2022 Arts Funder of the Year, the Illumination Fund is a sophisticated but difficult cold prospect. It develops initiatives through research, long-term partnerships and conversations with leaders in its fields of interest. This funder takes a strictly proactive approach to funding and does not accept unsolicited applications.
The Illumination Fund supports major institutions and public systems alongside community-based organizations and nonprofits serving people who face barriers to cultural, civic, health and recreational opportunities. A cold proposal is unlikely to go far. The best route is a program-specific introduction from someone the fund already trusts: a current grantee, public-agency partner, co-funder, field-building organization, coalition leader or well-connected board member. Before seeking an introduction, study the fund’s strategies and grantee database. Be ready to explain the gap your organization fills, whom it serves, what makes its approach distinctive and why the work is timely.
The Fund’s emphasis on cohorts, collaboration and long-term partnerships suggests that organizations willing to share learning and strengthen a wider ecosystem may have an edge over one-off projects. The strongest prospects offer a clear equity lens, a distinctive model, credible partnerships and the ability to contribute to a broader field or network. It has occasionally run targeted competitions, including a 2021 Arts & Mental Health RFP, so watch its news page. Since 2007, the fund and an affiliated donor-advised fund have awarded more than $110 million, although no separate DAF application process is publicly available.
PROFILE: Philanthropist Laurie M. Tisch established the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund in 2007, building on decades of board service, institution-building and civic engagement. Its mission is to improve access and opportunity for New Yorkers and foster healthy, vibrant communities. The fund says it applies an equity lens to its grantmaking, with particular attention to disparities associated with neighborhood, race, ethnicity and income.
Tisch is a trustee and past chair of the Whitney Museum of American Art, vice chair of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and co-chair of the campaign committee for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. She also serves on the boards of the Women’s Sports Foundation and Aspen Institute and is a co-owner and board member of the New York Giants. See the fund’s leadership and background page for current information.
The Fund is on a mission “to improve access and opportunity for all New Yorkers and foster healthy and vibrant communities.” Grantmaking includes health, arts access, Jewish life, and civic engagement. The Illumination fund supports organizations in New York across all of its funding programs.
Grants for Arts, Health and Mental Health
The Arts in Health initiative supports organizations using the arts to address health issues affecting New York communities. It focuses on mental health stigma, trauma and aging-related diseases, as well as the well-being of caregivers and frontline healthcare workers.
- Supported disciplines include visual art, music, dance, theater and film.
- Arts in Health launched in 2018 with an initial $10 million commitment. In late 2024, the fund expanded its total commitment to $25 million. Its funding supports direct programming, organizational growth, research, collaboration and efforts to build the broader arts-and-health field. The fund describes this expansion in its 2024 Arts in Health announcement and report.
- In 2021, the Fund ran its first open RFP for Arts & Mental Health, a COVID-responsive expansion of Arts in Health. It selected 14 NYC arts organizations using the arts to address mental health challenges in communities disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
- The Illumination Fund’s Executive Director Rick Luftglass told IP that while therapeutic benefits of the arts is common knowledge, the fund “felt it was essential to go deeper and to target particular populations that had existing mental health challenges and disparities that were exacerbated by the pandemic.”
- The Arts & Mental Health grant announcement describes the selected cohort. That competition is closed and should not be treated as a recurring application opportunity.
- A major component is the Fund’s partnership with NYC Health + Hospitals, which has expanded arts programming for patients, families, employees and communities throughout the city’s public healthcare system.
Grants for Youth Mental Health and Youth Sports
Launched in 2025, Play to Thrive is a $10 million, multiyear initiative supporting organizations that use sports to improve youth mental health, expand access and address inequities in New York City and Northern New Jersey.
- Program priorities: young people whose opportunities to participate in sports are constrained by income, neighborhood, gender or identity.
- Best fits: Organizations working at the intersection of sports, youth development, community health and equity appear best positioned. A conventional athletic program without a strong access, mental health or youth-development component is less likely to fit.
- Play to Thrive invests across the youth-sports ecosystem rather than focusing only on athletic participation. Areas of interest include safe and affordable places to play, coach-mentor models, leadership development, social-emotional learning and mental health support.
- Recent investments include South Bronx United and City Parks Foundation. The fund discusses these partnerships in its 2026 Play to Thrive update.
Grants for Arts Access
The fund’s Access to the Arts program seeks to make cultural participation more equitable across New York City. This portfolio encompasses both large institutions and community-based organizations.
- Its four strategies support:
- Community and educational programs at major cultural institutions;
- Neighborhood arts organizations serving low-income and historically marginalized communities;
- Community anchors that use the arts to strengthen neighborhood life; and
- Innovative projects responding to social, political and cultural change.
- The Fund is especially interested in organizations that view arts access as part of a broader effort to improve well-being, civic life or neighborhood opportunity—not simply as audience development.
- Past partners include the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Center for Urban Pedagogy, which uses art and design to help historically underrepresented New Yorkers understand and engage with public policy.
Grants for Jewish Life
The Jewish Life program supports selected arts and cultural work in Israel and inclusive Jewish institutions in New York City.
- In Israel, grants principally support arts organizations and projects that promote cross-cultural engagement, deepen understanding of the country’s diverse communities and strengthen the arts ecosystem. In New York, the fund supports anchor institutions rooted in Jewish culture and committed to inclusion.
- Grantees and partners have included Artis, the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, the Jerusalem Biennale and This Place, an international photography project examining Israel and the West Bank.
- No public eligibility requirements or open application process are available. Organizations are most likely to gain traction through established Jewish cultural, arts and cross-cultural networks connected to current or former grantees.
Grants for Civic Engagement and Immigrant Communities
The fund supports a limited number of Civic Engagement initiatives that help New Yorkers participate more fully in their communities and local government.
- Program priorities: Its interests include civic leadership, dialogue, public service and increasing the participation of immigrant and historically underrepresented communities in the city’s political and economic life.
- Best fits: This is a focused local civic-participation portfolio, not a broad national democracy program. Groups working on immigrant civic participation, community leadership, public-policy education and service infrastructure are more likely to fit than organizations primarily seeking support for partisan elections or litigation.
- Partners have included NYC Service, the Aspen Institute, the New York Immigration Coalition, Make the Road New York and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.
Legacy Programs
The Fund is unusually transparent about its closed initiatives. It states clearly that it is not making new grants through its legacy programs, although some organizations and projects developed through these investments continue to operate. Legacy initiatives include:
- Healthy Food & Community Change, a $15 million, five-year NYC initiative launched in 2013 to improve healthy-food access, nutrition education, workforce development and community leadership;
- NYC Green Cart, a public-private partnership that used mobile produce vendors to increase access to fruits and vegetables in underserved neighborhoods; and
- Service, which supported national-service policy, NYC volunteer infrastructure, service-year programs and youth leadership. Selected service-related work now continues under Civic Engagement.
- Food access and general volunteerism should not be treated as current standalone funding priorities.
Important Grant Details:
The foundation’s latest available tax filing reported approximately $317 million in year-end assets and about $29.7 million in grants during 2024.
The 2024 total was heavily influenced by a roughly $21.6 million award to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. The median grant was about $25,000, and many awards fell between approximately $10,000 and $50,000. Major institutional and capital awards can exceed $1 million.
- Geography: Most grantmaking remains concentrated in New York City, but the fund is not exclusively local. Play to Thrive includes Northern New Jersey, Jewish Life includes Israel and selected national or out-of-state organizations also appear in the foundation’s filings.
- The foundation’s tax filings do not capture giving through its affiliated donor-advised fund. Its online grantee database is also described as a sampling rather than a comprehensive grants list.
- This funder does not accept unsolicited requests for funding and seeks out its own long-term partnerships.
- Contact: General inquiries may be directed to info@lmtif.org. The fund is located at 156 West 56th Street, Suite 2001, New York, NY 10019.
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