Gia Maione Prima Foundation Inc.

The Gia Maione Prima Foundation is a small, single-family private foundation (EIN 45-2504060, Florham Park, NJ) established in honor of Gia Maione Prima, singer and widow of jazz legend Louis Prima. It operates without a public application process, a grants portal, or published RFPs — the website's own Sponsorships page states no formal criteria and directs inquiries to "Contact Us." Every grant traceable in IRS filings and the foundation's own news archive flows through direct, personal relationships cultivated by President/Treasurer/Trustee Anthony J. Sylvester (named a New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Cultural Champion in 2022) alongside Secretary Linda Consolazio and Trustee Kathryn Knight — all three serve without compensation. First-time applicants should not expect to submit a cold proposal and receive a grant; the realistic path in is a warm introduction through an existing grantee (Trombone Shorty Foundation, Jazz House Kids, NOCCA, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Count Basie Theater, or Ocean County College) or an invitation to co-sponsor a named recurring event the foundation already backs (Shorty Fest, the Jazz & Heritage Gala, Class Got Brass, Tunes for Toys). The foundation favors organizations that are themselves respected, mission-anchored arts/education institutions rather than emerging or unaffiliated nonprofits — its top grantees (Ocean County College Foundation at $164,740 across two grants, Count Basie Theater at $148,957, Trombone Shorty Foundation at $78,411) are established regional institutions with track records, not startups. Scholarships to individual students (St. Vincent Academy, Toms River High School) show the foundation also funds people directly, typically through a named, renewable scholarship fund rather than a one-off application. Grant sizes cluster tightly: the median award is $10,000 with a typical range of $1,500 to $100,000 and an average of $17,655, so applicants should calibrate asks modestly — a $500,000 request would be far outside pattern. With 47 recorded grants totaling $839,955 against $13.3M in assets, the foundation distributes conservatively relative to its corpus, prioritizing renewal of proven partnerships over expanding to new ones.

Across 47 recorded grants totaling $839,955, the median grant is $10,000 and the average is $17,871 (IRS financials list a slightly different typical-grant-size median of $10,000 with average $17,655 across 25 tracked awards, min $1,500, max $100,000) — the two figures are consistent and confirm a funder that writes many modest checks rather than a few large ones. Geographically, giving is bifurcated: Louisiana (New Orleans area) accounts for 22 of 47 grants and New Jersey for 18, with smaller counts to New York (4), Washington DC (2), and California (1) — together NJ and LA represent 85% of all grants by count, reflecting Gia Maione Prima's New Jersey roots and Louis Prima's New Orleans jazz heritage. By recipient, the largest cumulative beneficiaries are Ocean County College Foundation ($164,740, 2 grants — home to the foundation's own "Studio Theatre"), Count Basie Theater ($148,957, 2 grants), Trombone Shorty Foundation ($78,411, 2 grants), Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra ($60,000, 2 grants), and WWOZ-School Groove ($55,000, 2 grants); nearly every listed purpose is coded "GENERAL SUPPORT," indicating the foundation prefers unrestricted operating gifts over project-specific grants. Total giving has grown steadily: from $27,537 (2014) and $181,263 (2015) to $647,758 (2019), $650,943 (2021), $768,465 (2022), and $891,653 (2023) — a roughly 33x increase in giving over a decade, tracking the foundation's asset growth from under $120K (2012-2014) to $13.6M (2023) following a major contribution event. Total assets have held in the $13.3M-$14.0M range since 2021 after a $6.5M net investment income spike in 2022 (total revenue that year hit $6.66M against typical annual revenue of $500K-$1M), suggesting a one-time large gift or bequest rather than a recurring inflow — contributions received in most years are $0, meaning the foundation is now funding almost entirely off its investment portfolio. At current giving levels (~$525K-$890K/year in grants paid) against $13.3M in assets, the foundation is distributing at roughly the 4-6.6% range required to maintain 501(c)(3) private foundation payout minimums.

Gia Maione Prima sits in an asset tier (~$13.3M) essentially identical to five other small family foundations nationally, all generically classified under "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" with no public grantee data in this dataset. What distinguishes Gia Maione Prima from this peer set is that it is a genuine program-focused funder in practice — nearly all of its peers appear to be pass-through or dormant-seeming family vehicles with no discoverable grant activity, while Gia Maione Prima has an active, well-documented 10+ year track record of named partnerships, recurring events, and a maintained public website. Applicants comparing options should treat the peer foundations as unlikely near-term prospects absent further research, and treat Gia Maione Prima as the most "findable" and active funder of the group, despite its closed application process.

The foundation's news page shows continuous, near-monthly activity through April 2026, the most recent being sponsorship of the 2026 Jazz & Heritage Gala (benefiting the Don "Moose" Jamison Heritage School of Music) and the 2026 Shorty Fest lineup (Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, CimaFunk, Tank Ball, Big Freedia, plus brass bands) in April 2026, alongside the March 2026 "Class Got Brass" high-school brass competition (winners: Edna Karr, Abramson Sci Academy, Covington High School). In 2025, notable activity included a December 2025 "Tunes for Toys" concert at Tipitina's with Trombone Shorty and JoJo Hermann, an October 2025 benefit for the Tip-it Foundation with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, an August 2025 run of the free Louis Prima and Gia Maione Prima Music Camp (ages 9-14), and a June 2025 scholarship award to St. Vincent Academy graduate Abigail La-Anni Bonsu. Leadership has remained stable and unpaid: Anthony J. Sylvester (President/Treasurer/Trustee, also the foundation's listed C/O contact), Linda Consolazio (Secretary/Trustee), and Kathryn Knight (Trustee) have held their roles across all filings reviewed, with no compensation reported in any year — a hallmark of a closely-held family foundation rather than a staffed grantmaking institution. The foundation has also been expanding its footprint into museum and legacy-preservation partnerships, including a November 2024 collaboration with the American Jazz Museum on "Louis Prima – The Wildest" and earlier 2024 loans of Louis Prima artifacts to the Smithsonian-affiliated "Music America: Iconic Objects" traveling exhibit at the LBJ Library. No major leadership changes, new formal grant programs, or public application-process announcements were found in the 2025-2026 window.

There is no formal application to target: the foundation's own Sponsorships page confirms it does not publish eligibility criteria, deadlines, or a submission portal, and IRS filings list application_instructions as unavailable — meaning this funder should be approached as a relationship-first, invitation-driven prospect, not a competitive-RFP one. The single highest-leverage move is to identify whether your organization has any existing tie to a current grantee — Jazz House Kids, Trombone Shorty Foundation, NOCCA, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Count Basie Theater, Ocean County College Foundation, or WWOZ — and request a warm introduction through them, since virtually every dollar traced in this analysis flows to organizations already embedded in the foundation's existing New Jersey/New Orleans jazz network. Because purposes are coded almost universally as "GENERAL SUPPORT," proposals (if an opening is found) should emphasize unrestricted operating need and institutional stability over narrowly-scoped project budgets — this is not a funder that wants a detailed logic model, it wants confidence the money sustains a program it already believes in. Calibrate any ask to the documented range: $1,500 to $100,000, with $10,000 as the realistic median — a first-time, unsolicited outreach asking for six figures is very unlikely to land, while a modest $5,000-$15,000 sponsorship request tied to a specific named event (a summer jazz camp, a scholarship, a brass-band competition, a benefit concert) mirrors exactly how this foundation already gives. Geographic fit is non-negotiable in practice: 85% of grants by count go to New Jersey or Louisiana organizations, so applicants outside those two states/regions face a materially steeper climb regardless of program quality — a Colorado or Washington DC-based jazz nonprofit would be an outlier, not the norm, despite one or two such grants appearing historically. Timing-wise, the foundation's calendar shows dense sponsorship activity clustering in spring (April Jazz & Heritage Gala/Shorty Fest season), early summer (June scholarships, July-August camp season), and winter holidays (December "Tunes for Toys") — outreach timed 3-6 months ahead of these windows (i.e., contacting by January for spring events, by March for summer camps) aligns with when sponsorship commitments appear to be finalized. Common mistakes to avoid: sending a generic cold LOI with no personal connection or local/jazz-specific framing; requesting funding for a cause outside jazz, American popular music, or the fine arts (the foundation shows no history of funding unrelated causes even under its broad "religious, charitable, scientific, literary or educational" IRS purpose clause); and failing to reference the family's specific legacy (Gia Maione Prima and Louis Prima) — successful partners consistently frame their programs in terms of honoring that legacy (e.g., "Louis Prima Studio," "Louis Prima and Gia Maione Prima Music Camp").