Why Local News Day Matters

Across the country, people are choosing to start local. They’re following neighborhood outlets, subscribing to trusted sources, and supporting the organizations that help them stay connected to their communities.

At the same time, the landscape is shifting. More than 1,300 communities nationwide are considered “news deserts,” and in Texas, many counties have limited or no consistent local news coverage.

Local News Day connects both sides of this story. It’s a day to recognize the role local news plays in daily life and to act—whether that’s following a newsroom on social media, sharing a story, or making a gift that helps sustain this work. And when people come together to support local news, the entire ecosystem grows stronger.

A Local Solution with Lasting Impact

As the local lead for Press Forward San Antonio, the San Antonio Area Foundation is part of a national movement to strengthen access to reliable local information through coordinated, community-centered action.

“Local news is how people stay connected to what’s happening around them and make informed decisions about their daily lives,” said Jesus Garcia-Gonzalez, senior program officer at the San Antonio Area Foundation, where he leads the organization’s Press Forward effort. “Local News Day is an opportunity to build on that connection and make it even stronger.”

One of the most effective ways to participate is by contributing to the Local News Fund, a pooled fund that brings donors together to support local news organizations and the infrastructure behind them.

Through this collective approach, the Local News Fund:

• Supports reliable local information and the people who provide it.
• Provides flexible, sustained funding to strengthen local news organizations.
• Opens doors for new voices and local reporting talent.
• Protects independence through combined support.
  

When donors come together, the impact reaches further. In Texas, more than 130 counties have only one newsroom, and 30 have none, highlighting where collective support can make the greatest difference.

“Strong communities depend on access to trustworthy local information,” said Lisa Brunsvold, Chief Development Officer at the Area Foundation. “When donors come together to support local news, they’re investing in a more informed, connected, and resilient community.”

Additional Ways to Take Part

Local News Day is designed to be simple and accessible. You can participate in a way that feels right for you:

• Follow a local news outlet on social media, or subscribe to their newsletter.
• Share a story that matters to your community, citing a local news organization as your source of information.
• Directly support the outlets you rely on most (Find info on local outlets at localnewsday.org)
  

No matter how you choose to take action this Local News Day, your effort helps ensure local information remains accessible, relevant, and rooted in the communities it serves.

The post Start Close to Home: Join Us for Local News Day appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

Laura Giacomoni smiled at the sight of her two sons and their two cousins splashing in the waist-deep water of a creek down a small hill from where she stood.

It was early in the evening of July 3, 2025. Giacomoni, Executive Director of Development and Donor Services at the San Antonio Area Foundation (SAAFdn), tried not to think about the busy work week waiting on Monday. Instead, she was thankful for the Area Foundation’s first-ever weeklong summer hiatus and the vacation cabin her family rented near Kerrville, Texas.

A holiday weekend awaited. As Giacomoni basked in the balmy evening sunshine and the kids squirted bugs with water pistols, only a tiny concern crossed her mind.

“I hope I packed enough sunscreen,” she remembered thinking.

Like virtually everyone else in the Texas Hill Country, she never saw the deluge coming.

By the time she awoke to pre-dawn darkness on July 4, Giacomoni and her family were at ground zero of one of the deadliest flash floods in Texas history.

And in the hours and days to come, she and her Area Foundation colleagues stepped forward to help lead a philanthropic response that also proved to be historic. The Kerrville-based Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country (CFTHC) and its newly mobilized Kerr County Relief Fund came to epitomize the way community foundations can lead during a moment of extraordinary need. And the Area Foundation became a model of collaborative support by surging expert staff, leadership and resources to help a peer successfully manage a crisis.

The resulting collaboration allowed the Relief Fund to raise more than $110 million (and counting) for urgent and long-term disaster recovery in the Hill Country community that the neighboring foundations both serve.

“The Area Foundation was our closest neighbor and our huge ally,” CFTHC CEO Austin Dickson reflected. “We were in a moment, and they stepped up. That was a true gift.”

Within a week of the disaster, CFTHC announced its first $5 million in aid to support local first responders and nonprofits providing food, housing aid and other crisis care. Over the next few months, CFTHC committed some $60 million more to help families and businesses rebuild, repair and cope and fund the revitalization of the region’s civic and cultural fabric.

“The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country had four employees” when the flood hit, Area Foundation CEO Nadege Souvenir said. “They were scaled to meet the day-to-day needs of supporting their community – but they weren’t scaled for anything like a massive natural disaster. We are their neighbor, and we had the organizational infrastructure to handle the scale and scope of change that happened overnight.”

That’s why there was no choice for the Area Foundation but to mobilize – immediately.

“We were in a unique position to be able to help a smaller community foundation at the center of a crisis,” Souvenir said. “People care. They want to help. They want to know who they can give to and feel secure knowing their help will flow to where it is needed. It’s philanthropy’s job to crowd out confusion and fear. So, it was critical for the local community foundation to succeed in that moment.

“They were at risk of being just overwhelmed. We could not let them fail.”

A Wall of Water, a Wave of Charity

Around 1:40 a.m. on Friday, July 4, two massive weather systems collided over the Hill Country. As Kerr County residents slept, clouds unleashed biblical torrents of rain. The typically lazy Guadalupe River became a roiling tsunami, rising 30 feet in just three hours.

Yet the severity of flash flooding along the river had not yet come into focus as dawn broke. In Kerrville, Dickson awoke to a mass of texts describing flooded roads, sodden homes and uncertainty. He was still in his pajamas, surrounded by holiday-weekend house guests, when he established the Kerr County Relief Fund at 9:47 a.m.

“When we opened the fund, I had no idea of the destruction,” he recalled. “I just knew there would be some damage, and people would want an outlet to help.”

But the news darkened quickly. Later that morning, Souvenir called from San Antonio, an hour’s drive south of Dickson’s Kerrville office, to offer a helping hand. The two community foundations’ service areas overlap (Bandera and Kendall counties), and they share common donors and grantees. They has also worked together before, most notably in the philanthropic response to the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in nearby Uvalde.

Souvenir volunteered to spread the word about the relief fund to other Texas community foundations and to regional and national funders in her network. She connected Dickson with Giacomoni, who had volunteered to stay in Kerrville to help. And Souvenir invited Dickson to come to her San Antonio office to develop a plan.

A Tide of Pain – and Compassion

With every passing hour, authorities pieced together an ever-bleaker picture of the scale of the catastrophe. By late Friday, it became clear that more than 100 people were dead or missing, including dozens of children from upstream summer camps. At least 2,000 homes, businesses and other structures were damaged or destroyed.

At early news briefings, Kerr County officials publicized Dickson’s fund and CFTHC’s website and phone number. His foundation’s limited staff and crew of volunteers were quickly inundated. By Saturday, its web hosting service warned that the website was nearing collapse and switched CFTHC to a separate server. Its staff and volunteers couldn’t keep up with donor calls, taking down phone numbers and promising to call back. Dickson faced dozens of interview requests from media outlets around the world.         

A Neighbor’s Helping Hands

Dickson was exhausted when the Area Foundation welcomed him to its office just days after the flood. He and his team had been working 20-hour days. Online donations were coming in at a rate of two every second.

He had a massive portfolio of corporate and foundation donors who had inquired and were awaiting callbacks. U.S. Mail trucks pulled up several times a day to unload sacks of mailed donations and well wishes. His phone rang nonstop with calls and texts from flood victims and first responders.

And five people he knew personally had perished in the flood.

“We need help,” Dickson told Souvenir and her senior leaders. “We can’t do this alone.”

Dickson broke down in tears, vulnerable and humbled at having to ask. Souvenir told him to just pause and breathe. Then she gave him a hug.

“I could literally feel him decompress,” she said.

Together, they drew up a plan for the Area Foundation to lend CFTHC up to 10 staff members – including several senior leaders – to support the smaller foundation during the unprecedented surge in demand for the Hill Country community foundation’s expertise and leadership. Souvenir agreed to lend these staff members pro bono, to help with gift processing, finance, operations, governance, grants management, human resources and more.

Lisa Brunsvold, SAAFdn’s Chief Development Officer, recalled that when high-profile institutional philanthropists learned that the Area Foundation was augmenting CFTHC’s capacity to administer and dispense the surge of charitable gifts, “you could almost hear the pressure valve release.”

The collaboration from a peer made the moment more manageable and helped get resources into victims’ hands almost instantly, Dickson said.

“She [Souvenir] said, ‘I stand ready to support you,’ he said. “And within one week of the flood, we had a press conference where we announced $5 million in grants and that $30 million had already been raised. Our message was, ‘We are in control and help is on the way.’ Nadege came up and stood with me then. And she gave me some guidance, and coaching and honestly just moral support.”

The Area Foundation also extended other assistance, including:

• Relief-fund publicity: SAAFdn worked with Santikos Entertainment to feature a CFTHC-produced disaster relief video in Santikos theaters through the end of August, raising awareness and encouraging donations.
• IT help: SAAFdn worked with Santikos tech staffers to set up new computers, printers and scanners CFTHC bought to manage the donation surge.
• Funding support: SAAFdn pledged $50,000 to the relief fund as well as directly investing into helping rebuild the community: $50,000 grants each to Kerrville Pets Alive, LiftFund and the Kerrville Daily Times, as well as $20,000 to Texas Public Radio.

Along with the loaned senior leaders, other SAAFdn staffers also found ways to offer a helping hand.

“Across the Area Foundation, people were volunteering to do things that were not part of their job description,” Souvenir said. “Everyone who could help wanted to help.”

Teamwork on a Heavy Lift

Giacomoni parked herself at a desk at CFTHC’s Kerrville office and took charge of one of the most promising but daunting challenges: navigating the bureaucratic maze of corporate philanthropy.

She handled the portfolio of institutional donor prospects awaiting callbacks. Giacomoni spent weeks calling them back, one by one. Each company and foundation had its own requirements. She gave flood updates, handled legal paperwork, answered questions about grantees and consulted with lawyers.

“She did that over and over again – 15 million dollars’ worth of times,” Dickson said in amazement. “She was physically here, leading by example – on the phone, taking Zoom meetings and stewarding these donors on our behalf.” 

Gradually, the backlog shrunk. The donation total rose. Other loaned SAAFdn staff simultaneously stabilized operations, grants processing, finance, and hiring, ensuring the fund could move at both speed and scale. And Dickson found crucial breathing room.

“We do not have a development officer here. No one on staff does fundraising – that’s my job. But there are not enough hours in a day, not enough phone lines and only one of me,” he said.

SAAFdn Chief Operating Officer, Arenda Burns, took on another challenge: CFTHC needed to hire a senior program officer for long-term response work. Burns collaborated with Dickson and his staff on a job description. Then Burns and her team advertised the position, screened applicants, interviewed candidates and referred finalists to Dickson.

Sharlene Casaclang, SAAFdn’s Treasury Manager, commuted north to work alongside CFTHC Business Manager Amy Rector, documenting gifts, preparing receipts and leading volunteer data processors.

As each loaned staff member took on tasks to help the neighboring community foundation, their San Antonio colleagues stepped up to take work off the volunteers’ desks, whether for the Area Foundation or for the flood relief effort.

“Anybody who raised their hand and said they are happy to help with work got overwhelmed with work, and then their work poured on to others,” Dickson said.

By the time the personnel aid agreement ended in August, and all 10 loaned staff returned to full-time SAAFdn work, Burns said, virtually every San Antonio staff member had contributed to the flood-relief effort, directly or indirectly. The value of the donated time surpassed $80,000, but the impact proved to be priceless. 

Impact and Gratitude

As autumn arrived, the situation had settled considerably. The Kerr County Relief Fund had already helped more than 700 families and 200 businesses and funded two dozen case workers from other nonprofits who were dedicated exclusively to tending to victims’ needs. Grants are funding repairs and rebuilding of homes, schools, parks, a senior center, Kerrville’s arts center and more. Roughly $40 million remains under stewardship to address long-term resilience, unforeseen needs and underlying vulnerabilities.

In late October, Dickson drove down to the Area Foundation office bearing thank-you gifts and bought lunch for the staff. He handed out gift baskets and hosted a lighthearted awards ceremony to honor his helpers.

The staff laughed as he handed out recognition trophies, such as “The Midnight Log-In Award” to three loaned finance staffers whose time-stamped donation-log entries during the peak surge showed them working as late as 2 a.m., and “The Matrix Award” to Philanthropic Advisor Carlo Tolentino for “getting lost in the matrix” while untangling countless technical issues with major donations.

Then Dickson gave what he called “a seven-minute TED talk,” methodically detailing the impact of the two foundations’ collaboration and how it helped an entire city and thousands of struggling neighbors recover.

“That turned out to be really meaningful,” he recalled later. “Employees I’d never met came up to me and said, ‘Thanks for sharing all of that. I had no idea.’”

From the Heart of San Antonio

Ultimately, Souvenir noted, that gift came from all of San Antonio. A community foundation represents and expresses the goodwill of its community, and of the philanthropists whose dollars and trust make the work of the Area Foundation possible every day, in perpetuity. And the trust, governance, and partnership model that guides the Area Foundation’s daily work made this unprecedented response possible.    

“Our community has enabled, empowered and entrusted us to take care of this place we love,” Souvenir said. “We just showed what a community foundation can really do – in an innovative, creative, real and impactful way. “And seeing how our team rose to the moment and gave life to the community’s trust – that has been one of the proudest moments of my career.”

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Sidebar:

Community Foundations Grow into New Roles

Community foundations began more than a century ago as a form of collaborative, perpetual public trust. Through them, philanthropists large and small pool their money into investment funds that generate earnings, which in turn fund grants to nonprofits, scholarships and other civic-minded endeavors. 

That funding role remains crucial. But over the years, community foundations have evolved into high-profile forces for local civic progress, convenors of public policy conversations and advocates for the broader nonprofit sector.

Recently, community foundations have emerged in yet another leadership role: Serving as the primary fundraisers and recovery coordinators in the aftermath of natural disasters. From Hurricane Harvey to wildfires in Hawaii and California to 2024’s flash floods in the Appalachian region, local community foundations have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and distributed it to agencies to fund immediate and longer-term recovery.

It’s another evolution of community foundations’ characteristic servant leadership, according to San Antonio Area Foundation CEO Nadege Souvenir.

“I can’t think of any organization that’s better suited to do that than a community foundation,” she affirmed. “Community foundations are local. They understand local needs. They have vetted the local nonprofit agencies that can help and know where the gaps are. They are outstanding at collaborating and team building. They hold the trust of donors and the community. And they have the processes and governance in place to ensure that trust is well placed.”

The post Showing Up: Area Foundation Responds to Kerrville Tragedy appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

The Area Foundation is committed to building more and better bridges with the advisor community, which plays a crucial role in helping steer clients toward fulfilling their philanthropic wishes and goals.

That is why the Area Foundation recently added a new face to its Development and Donor Services team, David Simmons, who serves as Wealth Relations Advisor Manager. A veteran of the financial services community, David is leading the Area Foundation’s charge in strengthening and expanding the organization’s partnership with local professional advisors.

A major step toward that mission was taken in February, when David organized a very successful gathering at Area Foundation headquarters, bringing together more than 70 members of the Financial Planning Association of San Antonio & South Texas and the San Antonio Estate Planners Council.

The “Kickoff to 2025 Networking Mixer” was deemed an instant hit by participants all around, particularly since members of the two distinct advisor groups do not typically get together.

Estate planning attorneys, investment professionals and accountants are critical in the charitable planning process and that is why it is a priority for the Area Foundation to see this partnership blossom.

For FPA and EPC members who could not make this first gathering, fret not – there will be more opportunities to come together under the Area Foundation’s auspices. Stay tuned for information on opportunities later this year and make sure to mark your calendars for the 2026 Networking Mixer, planned again for February.

In the meantime, advisors are encouraged to check out the Area Foundation’s website with key information just for them. Additionally, feel free to direct any questions directly to David Simmons at dsimmons@saafdn.org.

The post Professional Advisors Find A Home At The Area Foundation appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

Among the legendary figures that have helped shape the industry in the city was Durrell “Dee” Howard. A true modern-day renaissance man, Howard was the epitome of the American success story. Despite leaving school before ninth grade, he went on to have a legendary career as a self-taught inventor, engineer and entrepreneur.

After serving in World War II, he formed a partnership with Earl F. Slick in founding Slick Airways, one of the first post-war cargo aviation companies in the country. In 1964, Howard launched the Dee Howard Co., becoming an innovator in the burgeoning commercial aircraft market.

Before his passing in 2009, Howard turned his passion for engineering into a new company, River City Products, this time focusing on automotive engineering. His dynamism and drive made him a magnet for those that came into his orbit. Among those was a young and idealistic lawyer from San Antonio named Wayne Fagan.

“I met Dee Howard in 1970,” said Fagan. “Back then, he had one hangar and 75 employees. We hit it off and became very close. I remained in private practice but became his lawyer. He was just a brilliant man, a brilliant engineer. A real innovator.”

After Fagan graduated law school from the University of Texas in Austin, he returned home to San Antonio to build his law practice. Along the way, he spent time teaching at the Head Start program in the Edgewood Independent School District. There he planted the seed for what later turned into multiple philanthropic efforts geared toward education and uplifting underprivileged youth.

“I have always had an interest in helping underserved communities no matter where I lived,” Fagan explained. “I’ve always had an interest in the role that the law plays in underserved countries and populations.”

Also, early on in his career, Fagan met someone that proved to be equally important to his life – Richard Goldsmith. Just a few short years after creating what became the San Antonio Area Foundation, Goldsmith’s mission resonated deeply with Fagan. However, still young in his career, he didn’t feel he was ready yet to make the difference in the community that he wanted. That meeting always remained in the back of his mind, though.

Soon after, Fagan had that fateful meeting with Howard. The relationship evolved over the years, starting professionally as Fagan served as both Howard’s personal attorney as well as his corporate one.

Over the course of the coming decades, Fagan and Howard’s professional relationship turned into a deep friendship. When Howard passed away, Fagan wanted to not just honor him but also find a way to cement his legacy.

“I was always concerned about the 20% dropout rate in San Antonio with kids in schools, and I became interested in how we could use aerospace to reach the underserved community to inspire them,” Fagan explained. “When Dee passed away in 2009, I talked to the family about all of that, and we decided to start a foundation to carry on Dee’s legacy.”

As the idea solidified, Fagan recalled the meeting with Goldsmith in deciding to grow Dee Howard’s legacy in partnership with the Area Foundation. Despite having limited resources at the time for the Dee Howard Foundation, Fagan and Goldsmith came up with the perfect solution: a donor advised fund (DAF).

“Donor advised funds (DAFs) are tools that enable easy, impactful philanthropy in the community,” explained Laura Giacomoni, Executive Director of Development and Donor Services at the Area Foundation. “They allow donors to receive an immediate tax deduction for the amount contributed, and the flexibility to support nonprofits at their own pace. They are incredible corporate and family philanthropy tools, and in many cases, they can take the place of private foundations because the funds can be inherited by children and grandchildren.”

The Dee Howard Foundation grew from concept to full-fledged nonprofit over the course of Fagan’s tenure. Created to foster the growth of aerospace and aviation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs in underserved areas of the community, the Dee Howard Foundation expanded its reach and scope over the years.

They launched a Drone Education Initiative to improve education on the burgeoning usage of unmanned aircraft systems. Dee Howard also became an integral partner with the College of Engineering at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA). Fagan was instrumental in this partnership, helping to create the Dee Howard Fellowship at UTSA, as well as finding a home for some of Howard’s memorabilia and personal effects.

“Wayne and the Dee Howard Foundation helped to kick-start our aerospace engineering certificate program,” said Christopher Combs, the Aerospace Engineering Program Director at UTSA. “Part of what drew me to this position at UTSA in the first place was the clear commitment to aerospace education and the commitment … through the Dee Howard Endowed Fellowship position that I still hold.”

Fagan ultimately stepped away from the Dee Howard Foundation to help launch the Dee Howard International Education Foundation, as well as his own philanthropic effort with his family. The life experiences he shared with Howard and those that he experienced on his own all have come together and given him the vision and platform with which to help make the world a better place and to honor his friend. Through it all, he’s been a valued partner of the Area Foundation.

“The [Area Foundation] is a tremendous resource for the community,” noted Fagan. “I always speak highly of the Area Foundation to anyone and everyone every chance I can.”

The Area Foundation highlights the work, impact and partnership of the Dee Howard Foundation as part of Community Foundation Week 2024. Please click here to learn more about the many options the Area Foundation offers for philanthropists to give back to our community.

Eric Moreno is a contributor to the San Antonio Area Foundation Marketing & Communications Storytelling Ambassador Network.

The post Taking Flight: Dee Howard Foundation appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

Normally, it’s a process filled with both excitement and nervousness as young people begin the first steps toward life on their own.

For first-time applicants – especially those from marginalized communities – the anxiety and pressure are ramped up even further. Their hopes and dreams are often tied to critical scholarships and other crucial financial aid programs.

This year was fraught with more potential pitfalls for students with the tumultuous rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). This U.S. Department of Education allows students access to the largest source of grants, loans and work-study opportunities in the country.

It also serves as a component of many students’ applications for non-federal funding opportunities, such as scholarships. This past year, a planned rollout of updates to the online form were met with glitches and errors that proved to be disastrous.

“From my understanding, there are some changes with the FAFSA occurring and this resulted in delays of students receiving their student aid reports,” explained Jennifer Ballesteros, Executive Director of Scholarship & Relief Programs at the San Antonio Area Foundation (SAAFdn).

“With that, students were, in some cases, having to submit that information for scholarship applications. This would help determine what the students would receive as part of that scholarship,” Ballesteros added.

For example, the Education Department announced that there was a miscalculation in its student aid index. Any forms that were delivered to schools with that information needed to be reprocessed. This had the potential to cause delays in funding and admission to schools for scores of students.

“The major concern we heard from the students was that they weren’t going to be able to qualify for scholarships in time to report that to their schools,” explained Ballesteros. “This caused more stress for them and their families. We heard from quite a few that they are thinking about taking on more shifts or hours at their work and for some to actually take on a job to be able to afford college.”

It became clear that there would be lengthy delays in students’ abilities to report their financial aid information, which would then impact the ability to apply for most scholarships. The deadline to apply for Area Foundation scholarships, for example, was Feb. 24 – around the time when FAFSA was slated to report their information.

“Practically, all of our students were impacted by this,” Ballesteros said. “Most of the students don’t necessarily come from the background where they have the financial means to be able to afford college on their own. For our scholarship processes, this was approximately 800 to 900 students who were affected.”

Thinking ahead to help alleviate some of these concerns, the SAAFdn scholarship team stepped in and took action. Proactively, staff began researching ways to help. They knew this was needed to help students cope with the address stress.

“We worked with our donors to try and figure out what some alternatives were,” Ballesteros noted. “We also looked to see if we could remove [the FAFSA information] from their applications from this cycle to remove this barrier for the students.”

The Area Foundation also allowed, where applicable, for students to submit FAFSA information from the previous year to fulfill some scholarship requirements. This allowed them to go through the process while allowing Area Foundation staff its donors to get a greater understanding of their financial situations and needs.

“We communicated to all of our students that were directly impacted and we let them know if they had any questions or if they were concerned that their FAFSA information wasn’t going to get there in time to reach out to us,” said Ballesteros. “We reminded them that there were options. Taking those calls and emails really helped to reassure the students and their parents that we would be able to resolve their issues on our end.”

The Area Foundation runs the largest college scholarship program in the San Antonio region, managing more than 120 scholarship funds. It also manages the separate Legacy Scholarship Program, one of the largest in the nation. Click here to find out more about our scholarship work and how to get involved.

Eric Moreno is a contributor to the San Antonio Area Foundation’s Storytelling Ambassador Network.

The post Thinking Ahead: Scholarship Team Takes Action appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

It was a $250,000 Area Foundation grant that provided a path for the nonprofit American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions (AIT) to buy a 12,000-square-foot building near downtown that has now become the first-ever American Indian Center and art gallery.

“The Area Foundation was critical in making this a reality for us, not just for our organization but for the San Antonio American Indian community,” said Ramon Juan Vasquez, AIT’s Executive Director. 

“It has elevated us to whole different playing field,” he added. “We have now joined the ranks of others who have assets – our assets have been computers and desks that were donated.”

Vasquez recently gave the Area Foundation a tour of the new campus, noting that the art gallery features original artwork from 30 local artists.

Check out a video the Area Foundation produced after our visit with Vasquez at the new center.

The AIT grant represents a new direction for the Area Foundation in being more intentional about directing grantmaking to help those most in need. 

New funding was just announced as part of the most recent three-year funding cycle (2023-2025) – providing more than $9 million to nearly 100 nonprofits. Find out more by clicking here.

Hernán Rozemberg is Executive Director for Marketing and Communications at the San Antonio Area Foundation.

The post Native American Heritage Month: Planting Seed For New Center appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

The post First Generation Legacy Scholars Off To College! appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

Galbraith is a college professor who lives and teaches in Virginia – but it so happens that he’s from San Antonio and he never forgets about this hometown when it comes time to give back.

Earlier this year, volunteers loaded 36,000 pounds – 108,000 servings – of potatoes valued at $18,000 into vehicles of 31 local area food providers.

“This is a unique charity event, open to any food provider free of charge. Just after Christmas is a good time to help families struggling to get through,” said Galbraith. “We saw no need for fresh nutritious food to go to waste at a time when so many people are in need.” 

The potatoes are provided free of charge, shipped in from northern Wisconsin by the Society of St. Andrew, the national gleaning society. The Poerner family also provided 28,000 pounds of carrots, sweet potatoes, cabbage, lemons and oranges – also free of charge. 

The donation was made possible through a grant from the San Antonio Area Foundation and the Terry Lynn Poerner Charitable Trust, a Donor Advised Fund (DAF) of the Area Foundation. 

“The grants from the Poerner Trust and the Area Foundation are an example of how we’re working in ways big and small to close opportunity gaps for people that need it the most in our region,” said Gavin Nichols, Senior Program Officer with the Area Foundation’s Community Engagement and Impact team. “Many of the recipients of the food from this event are parishioners from small rural and urban churches. We’re proud to be associated with this effort.”

Laura Giacomoni, the Area Foundation’s Executive Director for Development and Donor Services, worked with the Poerners’ DAF to assist the effort.

“This story illustrates how we serve as the most trusted and impactful philanthropic partner for our Donor Advised Funds,” Giacomoni said. “We love joining forces with our Donor Advised Funds because when we work together, we are able to deepen relationships, build trust and accomplish greater impact.”

The regional food providers, who reported serving 62,288 families (about 226,343 people) each year, hail from San Antonio, Floresville, Castroville, Hondo, New Braunfels, Converse, Spring Branch, Helotes, Schertz, Bandera, Boerne and Bulverde. That’s on top of the the 100,000 people served each week by the San Antonio Food Bank.

The number of families seeking food has risen substantially recently because many people have lost their jobs, are recovering from Christmas spending or been unable to go back to work following the pandemic. Government assistance from the pandemic has largely run out.

“We know that demand at food banks has increased greatly in recent months, so we wanted to give something back in honor of our parents and grandparents. Our goal was to provide fresh food rather than canned goods because it is better for people’s health and harder for low-income people to come by,” Ed and May Poerner said.

The Poerner family wanted to reach out to smaller faith-based food providers as well as larger food banks. 

“The potatoes we will donate would have been used for animal feed or discarded to a landfill,” the Poerners said. “Currently, over 40 percent of the food grown in the U.S. ends up being left in fields, goes bad before it can be eaten, or is discarded. Instead, we will be able to provide this nutritious, fresh food free-of-charge to those in need.”

As our region’s most trusted and impactful philanthropic partner, the Area Foundation works toward closing opportunity gaps for our neediest neighbors. This effort to assist regional food banks symbolizes the reinvigorated approach toward giving back to the community adopted through our new mission and vision. Want to get involved? Click here and here to get started!

The post Area Foundation Helps Regional Food Banks appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

Now, despite the tremendous economic impact that the pandemic had on nonprofits – particularly small ones like Fuerza – this small but mighty team founded by and still led by seamstresses left jobless following the closures of former Levi Strauss plants in the mid-1990s is thriving like never before and quite optimistic of their future serving their mostly low-income members and clients.

How did that come about?

They made an unprecedented and concerted effort to fundraise not just to barely maintain an existence but, for the first time, actually try to grow – and they succeeded.

In great part thanks to two separate two-year grants from the San Antonio Area Foundation totaling nearly $88,000, Fuerza Unida has been able to more than double its budget as well as double its staff, according to Executive Director Petra Mata, who leads an all-woman staff – apt recognition during national Woman’s History Month.

“We’re extremely grateful,” she said. “Without this funding, thing would still be as hard as they were before – this has helped us not just economically but also psychologically, giving us a badly-needed mental boost.”

The grants from the Area Foundation come through a partnership with the City of San Antonio’s Metropolitan Health District through a federal program from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) meant to improve the local public health infrastructure.

One grant has allowed Fuerza to offer expanded programming and services to the community, such as immunization clinics, awareness campaigns on major health issues and even start a community garden to grow natural medicinal herbs.

It has also been able to increase its order of food boxes from the San Antonio Food Bank from 50 to 110, which are distributed for free at the organization’s community meetings.

The other grant is geared toward operational sustenance, allowing the nonprofit to expand staffing levels – literally doubling in size from five to 10 – which until now had remained mostly a pipe dream.

Thanks to reinvigorated leadership push starting with the Board of Directors and CEO Marjie French, the Area Foundation, backed with a new strategic plan including a new mission and vision, is set on a path to connect with and serve those in most in need in our community like never before.

That’s why small nonprofits like Fuerza Unida, which may have been overlooked for grant funding opportunities in the past, are now playing a central role in the Area Foundation’s new direction on grantmaking.

“Our support of great nonprofits like Fuerza Unida is emblematic of an intentional direction we’ve taken,” said Patricia Mejia, the Area Foundation’s Vice President for Community Engagement and Impact.

“We’re more determined than ever to honor the tremendous effort that organizations like Fuerza Unida have taken on for decades. Our grant funding is merely a recognition of their hard work lifting up our community in reaching toward more equitable outcomes for all,” Mejia added.

Being able to keep serving the community also allows Fuerza to keep honoring the spirit of many activists that came before them advocating for workers’ rights – such as the indefatigable and iconic organizer, Cesar

Chavez, whose legacy is hailed every year on his birthday (March 31) in what has become the federally recognized Cesar Chavez Day.

In observation and recognition of Chavez’s influence on their own work, Mata and her Fuerza team was in force last weekend in the official City of San Antonio annual Cesar Chavez March.

Most of all these days, Mata noted, is feeling thankful for the philanthropic recognition of her organization’s 33-year history proudly serving South San Antonio.

“It’s nothing short of a lifetime honor for me personally to have attained the interest and support of such a great organization in the community as the Area Foundation,” Mata said. “Being worthy of such an investment means everything to us.”

The Area Foundation has changed its grantmaking structure from an annual to multi-year process, currently providing funding for three-year periods – the current one being 2023-2025.

Grants are issued based on four major impact areas. While applications are now closed for Cultural Vibrancy and Youth Success impact areas, nonprofits will be able to apply in the Successful Aging and Livable and Resilient Communities impact areas starting next month.

Click here for more information on grant information and the application process. Anyone interested in making donations directly to one (or more) of the impact areas can do so here.

Hernán Rozemberg is the Executive Director for Marketing and Communications at the Area Foundation.

The post Small Nonprofit Thrives Thanks To SAAFdn Support appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.

Among key challenges, provide unrestricted funding allowing organizations to adapt to rapidly changing environments; increase access and speed of support through simplified grant applications and reporting requirements; and to learn from and work alongside those on the frontlines in our schools, clinics, food banks and shuttered cultural organizations.  

For some funders, this situation presented an uneasy compromise between their standard mode of operation and the urgency of the moment. There was also a promised return to business-as-usual on the other end. But for us at the San Antonio Area Foundation, this was an opportunity to road test shifts in organizational culture, program structures and grant practices that we had already put in place prior to the pandemic. By implementing permanent changes to how we work with and in community, including our shift to multi-year funding, we affirmed our commitment to Trust-Based Philanthropy (TBP). 

Trust-Based Philanthropy challenges funders to understand how our practices can perpetuate the very inequities we seek to address and requires that we acknowledge and mitigate power imbalances in philanthropic relationships through changes in our bureaucratic processes and policies. In practice, this means streamlining application and reporting structures and working with grantees to understand how they define success and impact rather than forcing them to bend to inflexible definitions and metrics.  

Above all, TBP affirms the expertise held by community members and nonprofit leaders. As the very name implies, it  places trust at the center of the funder-grantee relationship, with the funder trusting that the grantee knows best how to handle and invest grant dollars.    

Many TBP principles served as guideposts for funders looking for effective responses to the multiple social and economic crises of 2020. While many funders were thinking through the implications and implementation of general operating support for the first time, we had already laid trailblazing groundwork for these shifts through strategic planning prior to the pandemic and have had ample opportunities to demonstrate their efficacy in the ensuing years.

The Area Foundation had taken early steps towards fully adopting TBP in 2019 by shifting to general operating support across our impact areas and uplifting the role of small nonprofits across sectors. This trend is reflected in the increasing number of grants to nonprofits with an annual budget of less than $75,000 awarded over the last five years. 

Our leadership in TBP continues as we maintain multi-year, general operating support grants and look ahead to the launch of our 2023-25 Responsive Grant Process, including: 

• The continuation of multi-year general operating support, which provides unprecedented stability to our grantees accustomed to having to reapply for funding every year. 
• Continued analysis of our grant processes to address barriers to success at every step, including awareness of grant opportunities and access to Area Foundation staff and technical support.
• Revising reporting requirements including streamlining written reports and integrating individual meetings with grantees into the reporting process.
• Ensuring our grant decisions are informed by diverse voices through inclusive volunteer Community Advisory Committees.  
• Prioritizing community engagement so our grantmaking staff has ongoing opportunities to hear from people impacted by our programs and take part in the work of our nonprofit partners. 
• Support beyond grantmaking dollars, such as  leadership training programs, staff training and capacity-building.  

TBP outlines tools to meet today’s challenges with hope for a more collaborative and equitable future. We are encouraged to see increasingly more funders committed to TBP, though we acknowledge that it presents quite a new approach to grantmaking for many of our nation’s more than 850 community foundations. Indeed, we often hear from nonprofits that our grants allow them to address gaps in funding left by the limited scope of funding from other philanthropic sources.  

As we celebrate National Community Foundation Week 2022, we urge counterparts across the country to join us in investing in a more equitable future for our communities and to be bold in shifting toward the transformational possibilities of TBP. All of us – nonprofits, foundations, fund holders, and individual community members – have much to gain and much to lose if we don’t.

Our years-long transition to TBP has already proved effective: at the height of the pandemic in 2020, we awarded nearly $72 million in grants, in the process helping many nonprofits keep their doors open and get on a steady road to recovery. Click here to learn more about our work in the nonprofit community and how you can get involved. 

Stephanie LaFroscia is Director of Grants and Community Engagement, and Patricia Mejia is Vice President for Community Engagement and Impact at the San Antonio Area Foundation. 

The post At the Forefront: Area Foundation Invests in Trust-Based Philanthropy appeared first on San Antonio Area Foundation.