Bastinelli Family Foundation Inc.

The Bastinelli Family Foundation Inc. is a small, unstaffed private family foundation (formed 2024, per registration; first activity reflected in the FY2023 Form 990-PF in our data) run entirely by two officers, A Richard Bastinelli (President & Treasurer) and Charles B Jones (Secretary), both uncompensated. With $3.96M in assets and roughly $142,500-$150,000 in annual grants paid across just 8 gifts, this is a classic low-overhead family vehicle, not an institution with published guidelines, staff reviewers, or a formal LOI-to-proposal pipeline. There is no `grants_page_url`, no `application_form_url`, and `application_instructions` is explicitly recorded as none in IRS-derived data — meaning applicants should not expect a portal or published RFP at all. The foundation's website of record, bastinelli.com, is in fact a CPA practice site with zero foundation content, so cold web research yields almost nothing; this is a foundation that operates on personal relationships and direct outreach rather than public solicitation. The one restriction that IS documented is legally binding: grants go only to 501(c)(3) public charities under IRC 509(a)(1) or 509(a)2) — private foundations, most fiscal sponsorships of non-509(a) entities, and non-charitable causes are categorically ineligible. First-time applicants should treat this as a warm-introduction target: identify any board, family, or professional connection to Bastinelli or Jones (the Caves Valley Golf Club Foundation and Stevenson University gifts suggest a Baltimore-Reisterstown-area social and institutional network) before submitting anything cold. Given the grant range ($5,000 to $100,000) and total pool size, this foundation is best approached for a single, modest, clearly-scoped ask rather than a multi-year program request — and expectations should be set low on response time or formal feedback, since there is no staff to manage correspondence.

Per the FY2023 Form 990-PF in our database, the foundation paid out $142,500 in qualifying distributions across 8 grants (average $17,813 per grant, but the distribution is highly skewed). One gift of $100,000 to Living Classrooms Foundation accounted for 70% of total giving that year; the remaining 7 grants ranged narrowly from $5,000 to $6,250 each (Helping Up Mission, Innocence Project, Wayout LGBTQ+ Foundation, Ashley Inc., M Family Foundation, The Center for Disordered Eating, and Hackensack Meridian Health Foundation at $5,000, the smallest gift on record). Geographically, the 2023 grantee list spans six states (MD received 3 grants, with one each to CA, FL, NC, NJ, and NY) — indicating no hard geographic restriction despite the Maryland home base. Total revenue that year was $421,540 against $150,067 in total giving and $60,165 in net investment income, with $350,000 in fresh contributions received — meaning the family is actively funding the foundation's corpus, not just distributing off existing assets. Total assets grew from roughly $3.1M (FY2023 book value implied by the financials) to $3.96M in the most recent snapshot. A more recent (CauseIQ-sourced, likely FY2024 or FY2025) grant round shows a different pattern: $100,000 to Mercy Medical Center, $50,000 to Stevenson University, and $5,000 to Caves Valley Golf Club Foundation — a shift toward fewer, larger, Maryland-institution gifts (all three recipients are Baltimore-area) rather than the geographically dispersed small grants of 2023. Program-area breakdown cannot be computed precisely since IRS filings list only "to further exempt purpose" for every grant with no NTEE sub-coding, but the two years combined suggest a mixed portfolio: health/medical (Mercy Medical Center, Hackensack Meridian, The Center for Disordered Eating), higher education (Stevenson University), homelessness/recovery (Helping Up Mission), justice (Innocence Project), and LGBTQ+ services (Wayout LGBTQ+ Foundation) with one large community-institution anchor gift each cycle.

All five peer foundations returned by our database sit within roughly $2,000 of Bastinelli's $3,959,564 in assets — this is a size-matched peer set drawn from the same T20 (Philanthropy & Grantmaking) NTEE category, not a curated list of similar-mission funders, so the comparison is structural rather than programmatic. None of the five peers have public websites on file, reinforcing that this asset tier ($3-4M) of family foundation is characteristically unstaffed and closed to unsolicited applications; grant seekers should expect the same relationship-first dynamic across this entire peer class, not just at Bastinelli.

No news coverage, press releases, leadership changes, or public program announcements were found for the Bastinelli Family Foundation in any of four targeted web searches — consistent with a foundation that has no staff, no communications budget, and no public-facing grants program. The most concrete recent signal is financial: the foundation's asset base grew from an implied ~$3.1M in FY2023 to $3,959,564 in its most recent filing, and it received $350,000 in fresh contributions in FY2023 alone, indicating the Bastinelli family is actively adding to the corpus rather than winding the foundation down. The most recent Form 990-PF on file with CauseIQ (described as fiscal year 2025, filed around December 1, 2025) shows continued eight-grant-per-year giving, now anchored by a $100,000 gift to Mercy Medical Center and a $50,000 gift to Stevenson University — both Baltimore-area institutions — plus a smaller $5,000 gift to Caves Valley Golf Club Foundation, a private club charity, which is a useful signal of the founders' personal and social network. No new officers, no address change (still 5 Norfolk Ct, Reisterstown, MD), and no shift in EIN or legal structure were found. Given the total absence of a public information trail, the most actionable "recent activity" for a grant seeker is simply this: the funding pool is growing, the family is still writing checks annually on a similar schedule, and the giving pattern is trending toward larger, more locally concentrated gifts rather than the wider small-grant spread seen in 2023.

There is no published LOI process, no online form, and IRS data explicitly records application_instructions as none — so the first and most important tip is to abandon any expectation of a formal cold-application channel. Instead: (1) Identify a warm connection first. The two officers (A Richard Bastinelli and Charles B Jones) and the pattern of gifts to Caves Valley Golf Club Foundation and Stevenson University point to a Baltimore/Reisterstown, MD social and institutional network — organizations with a board member, alum, or staffer who has a personal tie to either officer will have dramatically better odds than a mass-mailed request. (2) Keep the ask modest and specific. Actual grants have ranged from $5,000 to $100,000, with most falling at $5,000-$6,250 — request a defined amount tied to a concrete program or need rather than general operating support at a large scale; the one $100,000-tier gift each cycle appears reserved for an anchor institution, not a first-time applicant. (3) Confirm 501(c)(3) public charity status under 509(a)(1) or 509(a)(2) before reaching out — this is the one hard eligibility rule on file, and it rules out fiscal-sponsorship arrangements and most donor-advised or supporting organizations. (4) Reach out by mail or phone to the registered address (5 Norfolk Ct, Reisterstown, MD 21136) rather than the bastinelli.com website, which belongs to an unrelated tax-practice, not the foundation — sending a proposal there will go nowhere. (5) Time outreach for well before December, since the most recent filing was dated close to the December 1 filing deadline, suggesting fiscal-year-end (December) grant decisions are likely finalized in the fall; a Q3 approach (July-September) gives the best chance of being considered in that year's distribution round. (6) Do not expect acknowledgment or formal rejection correspondence — with zero paid staff, informal or no response to an unsolicited request is the norm, not a signal of disinterest.