Turrell Fund

Turrell Fund

Margaret Hoberg Turrell and Herbert Turrell founded the Turrell Fund in 1935. The private foundation directs its resources toward organizations that deliver developmental and educational services to the youngest and most underserved children in designated areas of New Jersey and the state of Vermont. The fund maintains an endowment whose portfolio spans venture capital, buyout, distressed debt, mezzanine, secondaries and fund-of-funds commitments. While the foundation does not publicly itemize its direct deployment pace, its alternative investment sleeve is built to preserve purchasing power for its grantmaking mission. Strategic grant partnerships embed it in collaborative initiatives — it co-founded the New Jersey Early Years Funders Collaborative with the Burke Foundation and joined the Nicholson Foundation in the Reimagine Child Care campaign. Curtland E. Fields serves as CEO and also sits on the board of Kearny Financial Corp. Trustee Matthew Melmed, who leads ZERO TO THREE, ties the fund institutionally to the HealthySteps and Safe Babies Court Team models. The fund is an active member of the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers and Philanthropy New Jersey, participating in the Newark Philanthropic Liaison to coordinate local systems-change efforts. The Turrell Fund operates with a structure unusual among foundations of its scale: its CEO holds a fiduciary board seat at a publicly traded bank, while a trustee simultaneously directs a national early-childhood nonprofit. That architecture fuses investment governance, grantmaking, and policy advocacy through overlapping institutional roles rather than siloed functions.