Gobioff Foundation

Gobioff Foundation is a small, closely-held family foundation (three-person leadership: Neil Gobioff as Director/President/Secretary and Gianna Rendina-Gobioff as VP, both uncompensated) established in 2007 under Howard Gobioff's directive to "make the world a better place" before his death in 2008. It runs two distinct grant tracks that seekers should not conflate: an organizational track for nonprofits (arts institutions and human-rights/civil-liberties groups, largely in and around Tampa) processed through GrantInterface/Foundant, and a Microgrant track exclusively for individual artists and curators (never organizations) capped at $500 per award. Of 183 tracked grants totaling $1.68M in cumulative giving, the average award is just $9,154 — this is a funder of many small, targeted gifts, not a handful of transformational ones. The grantee list is dominated by repeat relationships: Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum ($105,000 across 3 grants), Tempus Projects ($100,000/4 grants), and Tampa Arts Alliance ($95,000/3 grants) show the foundation favors multi-year renewal over one-off funding, so first-time applicants should expect a smaller opening gift with room to grow into a recurring relationship. Geographically, 138 of 183 grants (75%) went to Florida recipients, confirming this is fundamentally a hyper-local Tampa Bay funder despite an EIN registered in Wilmington, DE (via Foundation Source, its administrative agent). A secondary human-rights cluster — National Police Accountability Project, The Sentencing Project, Marsha P. Johnson Institute, Lavender Rights Project, Equality Florida — shows real dollars flow outside Florida when the mission alignment (racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights, civil liberties) is strong, typically at the $20,000 unrestricted level. First-time applicants should identify which of the two tracks fits (individual artist microgrant vs. nonprofit general support) and should not expect a site visit or heavy due-diligence process typical of larger funders — with a total grants budget of roughly $530,000-$730,000 a year firmwide, the review process is proportionately lean and relationship-driven, run directly by the two named officers rather than a program staff.

Total giving has ranged from $604,592 (FY2023) down from a peak of $729,597 (FY2020), following total assets that fell from $5.2M (2021) to $4.2M (2023) after a 2021 investment-income spike ($4.2M net investment income that year, an outlier vs. typical years of $20K-$250K). Grants paid tracked closely with giving: $532,705 (2023), $553,219 (2022), $589,200 (2021), $629,900 (2020) — a gradual multi-year decline worth flagging to applicants, likely tied to asset depreciation rather than a strategy shift. At the aggregate grantee level, median grant size is $5,000 and the typical range runs $100 to $100,000 (average $11,885 per the foundation's own reported typical-grant-size data), though the very largest cumulative recipient relationships (Woodson Museum, Tempus Projects) exceed $100,000 in lifetime giving spread over 3-6 separate awards rather than single large checks. Individual grant sizes among the top 50 grantees cluster heavily at $20,000 for unrestricted general support to advocacy/civil-rights groups, and at $10,000-$50,000 for Tampa arts organizations receiving repeat, purpose-specific gifts (e.g., Tampa Museum of Art: $49,000 across 6 grants for specific exhibitions like the Jake Troyli acquisition and the Jorge Perez Collection show). By geography, Florida absorbs the overwhelming majority (138 of 183 grants), with California (9), DC (7), Massachusetts (4), Washington (4), and New York (5) picking up the human-rights/civil-liberties allocation. By program, arts and culture organizations (museums, theaters, arts alliances) make up the largest share of the top-50 grantee list by both count and dollars, with the parallel Microgrant program adding roughly $8,000/year in $500 increments to individual artists (up to 4 grants of $500 per quarterly cycle) — small in dollar terms but high in application volume and community visibility.

Gobioff sits in a tight asset band ($3.6-3.7M) shared with five nearly identical small family foundations, all coded under the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE category with no public websites listed in this dataset. What sets Gobioff apart from this peer set is transparency and accessibility: it is the only one of the six with a public website, published application FAQs, an open GrantInterface portal, and a standing Microgrant program soliciting unsolicited applications from individual artists — the peers show no evidence of open, documented application processes. For grant seekers, this makes Gobioff a meaningfully more approachable target than typically-invited family foundations of similar size, though its total annual giving (~$530K-$730K) still requires seekers to target modest ask sizes ($5,000-$20,000 for organizations, $500 for individual artists) rather than six-figure asks.

The most concrete recent activity is the ongoing Microgrant cycle: 2025 Cycle 4 recipients were announced January 27, 2026 (Taelynna Czech's 'Vibrant Visions' community event, slated for May 16, 2026, and Jeremiah Woody's spoken-word film 'Galileo's Puberty'), following 2025 Cycle 1 (Ric Savid, 'Darkroom Silver Linings,' May 2025) and Cycle 2 (Desiree Murphy, 'The Dancing Queen,' August 2025) awards. The 2026 program year opened with Cycle 1 recipient Jesi Cason for 'Alt Tampa,' an exhibition running April 29-June 14, 2026 at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts — confirming the foundation is actively funding and the microgrant pipeline remains live and on-schedule for 2026. The most significant strategic development is the Tampa Bay Arts Bridge Fund, a joint initiative with the Vinik Family Foundation (owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning and a major regional funder) launched in direct response to roughly a 90% cut in Florida's state arts-funding budget, which left the state ranked 48th nationally for arts funding. This positions Gobioff as a visible convener beyond its own balance sheet, pairing with a much larger funder to backstop organizations facing state funding cliffs — a signal that arts organizations facing budget shortfalls in the Tampa Bay region should look to this fund specifically rather than the standard grant cycle. No leadership changes were found; Neil Gobioff and Gianna Rendina-Gobioff continue as the foundation's sole officers with no reported compensation, consistent with a lean, founder-family-run operation.

For the Microgrant program (individual artists/curators only, $500 max, up to 4 awards of $500 per quarterly cycle): apply through the online portal at grantinterface.com/home/logon?urlkey=gobiof, but complete the offline Application Worksheet first — the foundation explicitly warns the portal can time out mid-session. Read the published Evaluation Rating Form and Scoring Alignment Table before drafting so your narrative addresses exactly what reviewers score. Propose a new, publicly-accessible display/performance/exhibition in Hillsborough or Pinellas County — the foundation is explicit that it does NOT fund classes, workshops, retrospectives, capital improvements, or market-booth participation. Keep any artist honorarium and transportation line item at or below the lesser of $100 or 20% of total budget, and if the project includes a ticketed event, price tickets at $25 or under — exceeding either cap is a stated disqualifier. Do not apply if you received a Gobioff microgrant within the past 12 months; the foundation enforces a one-year cooldown. The project must not start before the grant announcement and must launch within 6 months of notification, so time applications to your actual production schedule. The foundation actively recruits LGBTQ+, Black, Asian, Latinx, Indigenous/Native American artists and artists with disabilities — if applicable, this is worth naming directly rather than assuming reviewers will infer it. For the organizational/nonprofit track (arts institutions and human-rights/civil-liberties groups), the strongest path in is Tampa-area relevance plus a specific, fundable project rather than general capacity-building — the grantee data shows the foundation strongly favors project-specific asks (a named exhibition, a specific initiative) renewed year over year over truly "general & unrestricted" pitches, though it does fund both. First-time nonprofit applicants without a Tampa Bay footprint should target the human-rights/civil-liberties track instead, where non-Florida grantees (Tides Foundation, University of Chicago, Allied Media Projects) have succeeded at the $10,000-$20,000 level with clear racial-justice, LGBTQ+, or civil-liberties framing. If your budget or project doesn't fit either published form, email grants@gobioff-foundation.org directly — the foundation states it will work with applicants needing an alternative format, a rare degree of flexibility for a fully family-run funder.