Barrett Family Foundation Trust

Barrett Family Foundation Trust is a small, volunteer-run Clearwater, FL private trust (0 paid staff, $6.8M in assets) built around the Barrett family — chaired by John P. Barrett, with co-trustees Erika L. Barrett, Samantha Barrett (Tuczynski), John C. Dew, and Michele Barrett Skelly, and administered in care of Clearwater estate attorney Alan S. Gassman's office. It runs on two tracks that grant seekers should treat separately. Track one is an individual veteran vocational scholarship, capped at $10,000, that is explicitly referral-based: the applicant's vocational or certificate school (past recipients include Pinellas Technical College and St. Petersburg College Foundation) initiates contact with the Foundation, not the veteran directly. Track two is discretionary nonprofit grantmaking to organizations serving homelessness/mental health, veterans advocacy, and education — 44 of the Foundation's 51 tracked lifetime grantees (86%) are Florida-based, concentrated in the Tampa Bay area, with only small satellite gifts to NY, VA, CA, GA, and MD. There is no public LOI portal, RFP calendar, or grants-management system; outreach runs through the (727) 461-7700 office line or the Belleair Road address. First-time applicants should not expect a formal review committee cadence — with a two-to-six-person trustee board and no program staff, decisions likely happen informally around the family's existing relationships. That shows in the grantee list itself: Metropolitan Ministries, Navy SEAL Foundation (funded under two separate entity names), Agency for Community Treatment, and Service Source each received multiple grants across different years, evidence that once an organization is in the Foundation's circle it tends to be re-funded rather than that the Foundation runs a fresh open competition each cycle. For a first ask, the strongest path is a warm introduction — through a current grantee, the Tampa Bay veteran-services network, or the Gassman law office — paired with a request framed tightly around one of the three funded buckets (homelessness/mental health, veteran advocacy/vocational training, or education) rather than a general operating appeal. Cold, unsolicited proposals from outside Florida or outside these categories have essentially no footprint in the historical grantee data and should be considered a long shot.

Across the 51 grants tracked in the platform's data (lifetime total $818,338, average $16,046), the Foundation's typical scholarship-track award runs a median of $25,000 with an average of $19,730 and a range of $1,306 to $40,000 (n=15) — noticeably higher than the average across all grant types, reflecting that vocational/tuition awards run larger than the smaller discretionary gifts. Grants span from $100 (Florida Aquarium, Sara F. Gassman Foundation) up to $146,591 in cumulative giving to Metropolitan Ministries across two grants. By purpose, homelessness/mental health work (Metropolitan Ministries, Agency for Community Treatment, The Springs of Tampa Bay, Sleep in Heavenly Peace) accounts for roughly $232,600, about 28% of tracked dollars. Education-purpose giving — split between the legacy 'Award for Excellence in Education' teacher prizes (14 individual $10,000 awards = $140,000) and the American Swiss Foundation ($105,000 across two grants) plus scattered small education gifts — totals roughly $250,700, about 31%. Veterans-focused giving (Pinellas Technical College $55,286, Navy SEAL Foundation $92,500 combined across two entity listings, St. Petersburg College Foundation $50,000, Service Source $30,000, Blue Star Families $20,000, Amskills $15,000, plus smaller vocational-program line items) totals roughly $280,800, about 34% — now the largest single bucket by dollar volume even though education carries the higher grant count. On the balance sheet, total assets grew from $3.74M (FY2019) to $5.46M (FY2023) per the platform's IRS-sourced financials, then to $6.82M by the most recent web-reported filing — about 25% asset growth in roughly two years, driven partly by a $2.5M asset sale/contribution event reflected in FY2025 revenue. Total giving, however, has been volatile and recently declining: $224,932 (FY2019) dipped to $167,417 during the pandemic (FY2020), rebounded to $492,594 (FY2021) and $502,905 (FY2023), then fell to $345,000 (FY2024) and roughly $270,000 (FY2025) — a nearly 46% drop from the FY2023 peak even as assets climbed, indicating the trustees are currently holding back payout relative to asset growth rather than scaling distributions in step with it.

All five peers sit within roughly $30,000 of Barrett's $6.82M asset base — an unusually tight cluster that likely reflects a platform-matching threshold rather than true strategic similarity, since four of the five show no public web presence in the data at all. Barrett stands out among this peer set as the only one with a documented, if narrow, application pathway (the school-referral scholarship process) and a mixed focus that has drifted from pure education toward veterans and social services; Campisi Family Foundation, the lone peer with an active website, is the most promising benchmark for comparing outreach approach.

The most concrete recent development is a July 1, 2025 leadership transition: Thomas Skelly took over as Executive Director from Michelle Barrett Skelly, who remains on the trust as a co-trustee. The Foundation's fiscal-year 2024 Form 990 was filed September 5, 2025, showing $345,000 distributed across 10 grantees, with American Swiss Foundation (~$95,000) and Metropolitan Ministries (~$85,000) as the largest recipients and Operation Healing Forces (~$50,000) appearing as a newer veteran-services grantee not present in the platform's historical top-50 list — a signal the trustees are still actively adding new veteran-focused partners. The most recent reported fiscal year (FY2025) shows a tighter slate of roughly 8 grants totaling about $270,000, even as total assets rose to $6,818,915, partly on the strength of a large asset-sale/contribution event. No independent press coverage, press releases, or news-media announcements about the Foundation were found in this search — consistent with its profile as a small, volunteer-run family trust with no communications staff; virtually everything discoverable about its recent activity comes from IRS Form 990 filings surfaced by nonprofit-data aggregators (CauseIQ, Instrumentl, Grantable) rather than earned media. Grant seekers should treat the annual 990 filing (typically appearing each September for the prior fiscal year) as the most reliable signal of what the Foundation actually funded most recently, rather than expecting a news cycle or grants-portal update.

Split your approach by track. For the veteran vocational/certificate scholarship (capped at $10,000 per award, median historical award $25,000 across the broader vocational-support portfolio): do not apply directly. Build a relationship with the financial aid or veteran-services office at the target vocational school first — Pinellas Technical College and St. Petersburg College Foundation are documented past conduits — because the Foundation's own stated process has the school notify the trust of potential candidates. Have ready: full name, birthdate, school ID, contact info, a clear answer on GI Bill eligibility/exhaustion, the specific vocational program selected, a brief career-aspirations statement, a copy of an honorable-discharge DD214, a school recommendation, the program's total cost, and proof of a 3.2+ GPA. There's no fixed annual deadline, but submit before the school term starts, not after — the trust processes these on a rolling, term-aligned basis. For the general nonprofit track, there is no visible online application, LOI form, or RFP calendar — treat this as a relationship-first funder, not a portal-first one. Call (727) 461-7700 or write to 2240 Belleair Rd Ste 100, Clearwater, FL 33764 to ask directly what the current cycle looks like; because the trust is administered through a Clearwater law office (c/o Alan S. Gassman) rather than a program staff, expect a personal, not bureaucratic, review process. Anchor your ask in one of the three funded categories — homelessness/mental health, veterans advocacy, or education — and, ideally, in the Tampa Bay/Pinellas-Hillsborough footprint that captures 86% of known grant dollars; requests outside Florida or outside these three themes have almost no precedent in the data. A common mistake would be treating this like a large institutional funder with published guidelines — it isn't; over-formal, generic proposals are less likely to land than a warm, specific introduction. Also note a data-quality trap: the Foundation's listed website (barrett.com) actually belongs to an unrelated medical-robotics company, and the more commonly cited barrettfamilyfoundation.org returned an access error on direct fetch — don't rely on either as a working application portal; phone or mail is currently the dependable channel.