Silvana Massolo Endows Entrepreneurs Grant With Current and Planned Gifts

With a gift from Silvana Massolo ’04, College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts (CARTA), alumni now have the opportunity to apply for grants to invest into their startups or small businesses, with preference given to minority-owned ventures.

The Silvana Massolo Entrepreneurs Grant is one of only a handful of endowments at FIU that benefit alumni and is the first of its kind at CARTA. A graduate of CARTA’s mass communications program, Massolo’s mission has long been to help small businesses succeed.

With more than 15 years of experience working for major advertising agencies, Massolo launched her own agency, The Bloom Agency (previously known as Advertising Addicts), in 2017 with the goal of helping businesses establish themselves as leaders within their categories and increase sales via cost-effective digital and social media marketing.

“The entirety of the investment required to launch my business came out of my pocket,” Massolo said. Those early days are what inspired her to create the grant.

Massolo made her quarter-million-dollar gift through FIU’s unique Pathway to Philanthropist program, which makes establishing an endowment more accessible to aspiring philanthropists. The program’s gift structure combines a contribution to immediately support programmatic or scholarship needs with funding to establish an endowment and a planned gift to ensure the endowment’s impact continues, creating a lasting legacy for the donor.