Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen foundation gave less than .1% of their worth to charity from 2007-2019

The future of a charity started by Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen hangs in the balance after the legendary quarterback and supermodel finalized their divorce and divided an estimated $770 million in assets last month.

But the Luz Foundation, a Nassau County based non-profit, has given out relatively small grants to other groups since its founding in 2007, according to public records.

In 2018, it gave out $300 to support the Waterkeeper Nicoya Peninsula, an environmental group in Costa Rica where the couple owned a beach-front home. In that same year, it gave out $900 to the World Wildlife Fund and $1,000 to the Challenged Athletes Foundation, a charity that helps people with physical disabilities, tax filings show.

Most of the Luz Foundation’s donations have gone to yoga and meditation groups. In 2019, the last year for which filings were made available, the Luz Foundation donated $80,000 of its $350,000 budget to the Pointing Out the Great Way Foundation, a Massachusetts-based charity that promotes Indo-Tibetan meditation.

In 2017, the group doled out $25,000 to the David Lynch Foundation, a New York-based group which promotes meditation and yoga in schools. You Go Girl Yoga, a Waltham, Mass-based group also received $25,000 that year.

Between 2007 and 2019, the Luz Foundation gave out a total of $640,402 to various groups, an amount that translates to .00008 percent of the couple’s combined net worth.

Bündchen, 42, said she started the Luz Foundation in 2007 to provide grants and support to young girls. The group, which is based in Great Neck, received its IRS tax exempt status three years later.

“My life is devoted to this,” said Bündchen in a 2015 interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. “I know from the outside that people think, ‘This girl just poses for pictures.’ But in my head, I’m thinking the whole time, ‘Okay, if I take this job, then I can have more money to put into this [project].’ So that’s what I’m doing, because that’s [why] God gave me to do what I can do, right?”

The Luz Foundation features Bündchen, ex-husband Brady and Peter Mattoon on its board of directors. Mattoon, a financier, is one of a handful of business managers who help Brady with his investments and entrepreneurial ventures. In 2021, Mattoon bought the couple’s Boston condo for $9.2 million.

Bündchen, who has contributed to environmental causes in her native Brazil, was on the Rainforest Alliance board of directors for two years between 2014 and 2015. In those years, the Luz Foundation donated $48,000 in 2014 and $25,000 the following year to the environmental charity.

Bündchen and Brady also made headlines at the height of the pandemic when they contributed 750,000 meals to Feeding Tampa Bay in 2020. The donation coincided with the legendary quarterback joining the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in March of that year.

Recently, Bündchen was named the director of Environmental and Social Initiatives for FTX, the bankrupt crypto currency empire founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, which is reportedly missing some $1 billion in client funds. Bündchen and Brady are investors and have promoted FTX in ads and interviews. In April, Bündchen announced Bankman-Fried’s pledge to donate a billion dollars to charitable causes over the next year.

“Whenever someone is willing to commit to change, I’m willing to help,” said Bündchen in an interview with Vogue magazine while at a cryptocurrency conference in the Bahamas in April. “Sam is making such an important statement with this, and I’ve found that inspirational.”

Both Bündchen, her NFL quarterback ex and other celebrity endorsers of FTX are now being sued by investors who lost money in the bankruptcy of the crypto empire that was reportedly worth more than $32 billion.

In addition to the Luz Foundation, Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champ, heads up his own charity, the TB12 Foundation, which works to “inspire” and help athletes by providing access to “innovative health and wellness resources,” according to public records.

But the charity has been propping up his own for-profit company, according to the Daily Beast. The outlet reported that since the charity’s founding in 2015, the foundation has paid Brady’s similarly named for-profit — TB12 LLC — more than $1.6 million as its single biggest contractor. Both Brady, who is listed as the charity’s president and Jeffrey Surette, the treasurer of the group, have executive positions with TB12 LLC, according to public records. (When asked for comment by the Daily Beast, a spokesperson for TB12 would only say that the company’s assets do not impact its charitable foundation.)

Calls to Mattoon and reps for Bündchen and Brady were not returned this week. Repeated calls to NKSFB, the accounting firm listed as the main contact for the Luz Foundation, were not returned this week.