Bastian Family Foundation Inc.

Bastian Family Foundation Inc. is a small, family-run private foundation headquartered at 12715 SW 62nd Ave in Pinecrest, FL — a Miami-Dade suburb — with roughly $6.09M in assets and a single listed officer, Marquette Arnold, who draws $0 compensation. Its IRS filing self-identifies as making contributions only to preselected organizations, and the application_instructions field on record is explicitly blank. That combination signals a personal giving vehicle for the founding family's existing relationships rather than a competitively-run program: there is no LOI process, no published deadline, and no dedicated program staff to evaluate cold submissions. Confirming this, bastian.org — the domain on file as the foundation's website — currently resolves to a parked "domain may be for sale" page with no grants content, guidelines, or contact form of any kind.

The grantee list bears this out. Of the nine grants on the most recent filing (FY2023, $260,000 total), the largest single gift was $100,000 to Carrollton (Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart, an elite Miami Catholic girls' school), followed by $50,000 to Boston College (scholarship) and $30,000 each to Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden and Camillus House — both flagship Miami-Dade civic institutions. Smaller gifts went to Coral Gables Community Foundation ($15,000), Jackson Health Foundation and Lab School ($10,000 each, both research), Northeastern University ($10,000 scholarship), and Georgetown ($5,000). This is a pattern of personal and alumni ties layered onto strong Miami-Dade civic loyalty, not a thematic RFP.

For an organization with no prior relationship to this family, cold outreach carries very low odds of success. The more realistic path is relationship-building within South Florida's civic and philanthropic circles — Coral Gables Community Foundation, itself a past grantee that regrants locally, is a plausible indirect channel. Organizations with genuine Miami-Dade civic standing, elite-education ties, or healthcare-research credentials, introduced through a warm contact rather than a cold LOI, stand the best chance of eventually surfacing on this foundation's radar.

On the most recent filing in the database (FY2023), Bastian Family Foundation Inc. paid out $260,000 across 9 grants — an average of $28,889 and a range of $5,000 (Georgetown) to $100,000 (Carrollton). By purpose: General Purpose grants accounted for 5 of 9 awards and $180,000 (69% of total dollars) — Carrollton $100,000, Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden $30,000, Camillus House $30,000, Coral Gables Community Foundation $15,000, and Georgetown $5,000. Scholarship gifts totaled $60,000 (23%) — Boston College $50,000 and Northeastern University $10,000. Research grants totaled $20,000 (8%) — Jackson Health Foundation and Lab School, $10,000 each. No capital-campaign or multi-year program grants appear on record.

Third-party 990 tracking (Instrumentl) extends this picture past the database's FY2023 cutoff: FY2024 giving fell to $230,024 across just 5 grants (avg. ~$46,000), then jumped to $430,000 across 8 grants in FY2025 (avg. ~$53,750) — the typical award size cited there runs $5,000 to $350,000, implying at least one gift well above anything visible in the FY2023 detail. The trend across three years (9 grants/$260K → 5 grants/$230K → 8 grants/$430K) points toward fewer but individually larger awards rather than steady annual distribution.

Assets have grown unevenly: just over $1.0M from 2017-2019, up to $4.84M by 2023, $6.42M in 2024, and $6.09M in 2025 — driven by lumpy contributions received ($509,198 in 2017, $490,959 in 2019, $0 in most other years) and volatile net investment income ($914,851 in 2017 vs. $134,901 in 2023) rather than a predictable annual replenishment cycle. Officer compensation has stayed at $0 in every year on file, confirming an all-volunteer, no-staff structure. Geographically, the 2023 grantee cohort split FL (5), MA (2), and WA-coded (2) — reflecting the Miami-Dade home base plus scattered university and East Coast ties rather than a defined service region.

All five peer foundations sit within roughly $10,000 of Bastian's $6.09M asset base and share the identical Philanthropy & Grantmaking (T20) NTEE classification — a strong signal these are structurally similar small, single-family pass-through vehicles rather than program-driven institutions. None of the five peers maintains a public giving history or application guidance in the sources checked here (only Smallpage Family Foundation has a live website, and it is a personal site rather than a grants portal), which itself reinforces the pattern: at this asset tier, invitation-only, relationship-driven giving is the norm rather than the exception, and Bastian's own preselected-only status and blank application-instructions field fit squarely within that peer group.

No press coverage, announcements, or media mentions specific to Bastian Family Foundation Inc. (EIN 81-4002379, Pinecrest, FL) turned up in web search — results instead surfaced unrelated organizations that share the Bastian name, including the Chapel Hill, NC-based Bastian Family Charitable Foundation (EIN 27-1271726, ~$220,900 given in 2025 across 10 awards), the Intermountain-West-focused B.W. Bastian Foundation, and Utah's M. Bastian Family Foundation Trust. None of these are this foundation, and grant seekers researching Bastian Family Foundation Inc. should be careful not to conflate the filings.

What can be confirmed from financial data: giving rose from $260,000 across 9 grants in FY2023 to $430,000 across 8 grants in FY2025 per third-party 990 aggregation (Instrumentl), with a dip to $230,024 across 5 grants in the intervening FY2024 — the largest single-year total on record for this foundation. Total assets peaked at $6.42M in FY2024 before settling to $6.09M in FY2025, tracking normal investment-market movement rather than a large one-time inflow or outflow.

No leadership changes were detected. Marquette Arnold remains the sole listed officer across every filing year available (2017 through the most recent), uncompensated in each. The foundation's website domain, bastian.org, is currently a parked "domain may be for sale" landing page — there is no indication of when it last hosted live content, and it should not be treated as a current source of programmatic information.

Because Bastian Family Foundation Inc. self-reports as preselected-only with no published application process, the most important "tip" is to recalibrate expectations: this is not a competitive RFP program, and there is no portal, LOI form, or deadline to target. bastian.org, the domain on file, is currently parked and offers no guidance — do not assume a functioning grants page exists simply because the database lists a website.

Given that, the realistic playbook is relationship-first, not application-first: - Lead with Miami-Dade civic credibility. Every general-purpose grantee in the record (Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden, Camillus House, Coral Gables Community Foundation, Carrollton School) is a well-established South Florida institution with deep local roots — a newer or out-of-region organization without a comparable local footprint is a weak match for cold outreach. - If pursuing scholarship or research funding, note the specific institutional pattern: Boston College and Northeastern University both received scholarship gifts, suggesting a family alumni connection rather than an open scholarship fund; Jackson Health Foundation and a Lab School received research gifts. Framing a request as continuing an existing institutional relationship (if one exists) will land far better than a generic research pitch. - Use Coral Gables Community Foundation as a possible bridge. As a past $15,000 grantee that itself regrants within the Coral Gables/Pinecrest area, it may be a more accessible entry point for local nonprofits than approaching the family foundation directly. - Avoid mass-mailing or generic cover-letter language. With a single uncompensated officer and no program staff, there is no one positioned to triage a high volume of unsolicited proposals — a warm introduction through a shared board member, alumni network, or civic organization is far more likely to get read than a cold email to the (305) 479-6217 contact number on file. - Do not expect a fast answer or site visit process. Nothing in the public record describes formal due diligence steps (site visits, multi-stage review, board calendar), consistent with an ad hoc, relationship-driven decision process rather than a scheduled review cycle. - Track the giving-level trend, not a calendar. FY2025's $430,000 (per third-party 990 data) is the largest total on record, an encouraging signal for well-connected prospects, but there is no evidence of a recurring application window to time a request around.