Santa Fe Community Foundation
Contact information:
P.O. Box 1827
Santa Fe, NM 87504-1827
Phone: (505) 988-9715
Fax: (505) 988-1829
Website: http://www.santafecf.org/page.aspx?pid=340
Type of foundation: Community
Types of grants: General operating, project
Description: The Foundation makes discretionary grants through its Community Grants program. It also shares information about grant applicants with its donors through the Foundation’s Giving Together program. In its first year of the Giving Together program (2010), total giving to grant applicants grew by 30 percent.
The Foundation is interested in helping organizations to collaborate in tackling community programs. The Foundation is clear that it intends for its grants to help recipients leverage additional support from other foundations and donors.
The Foundation makes grants toward the following goals:
- Closing the educational achievement gap: The Foundation works to increase academic success among low-income children and to grow the number of low-income students who are prepared for post-secondary education.
- Creating economic opportunity: The Foundation works to help low-income people achieve stable housing, supports job training programs, and helps low-income people save and invest.
- Improving the health of underserved residents of our region and strengthening service delivery: The Foundation works to expand access to health services; improve access to affordable healthy food; strengthen services and advocacy related to homelessness; and improve safety for children, women, families, sexual minorities and the elderly.
The Foundation also makes grants to support public policy, civic engagement, community organizing and public information in all of the above areas.
In addition, the Foundation makes grants for the arts and for environmental organizations, but will not accept proposals for competitive grants in these areas until 2013.
The Foundation also offers a variety of workshops and events aimed at building the organizational capacity of nonprofits and facilitating networking among organizations.
Sample grants: (Community Grants and donor-advised grants made through the Giving Together program)
- $15,000 to Think New Mexico (2010).
- $13,500 to Santa Fe YouthWorks (2010).
- $10,000 to Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Program (2010).
- $5,500 to Canones Early Childhood Center (2010).
- $5,000 to Literacy Volunteers of Santa Fe (2010).
- $1,000 to Outside In Productions (2010).
Fit for public broadcasting: The Foundation has a strong interest in tackling critical community needs, especially by leveraging the work of multiple organizations working together. Public media could play a role in a variety of ways. For instance, public media organizations working in the areas of early childhood education or dropout prevention are helping to address the Foundation’s goals in education. Public media organizations regularly advance civic engagement and public information in all of the areas of interest to the Foundation. A good case could be made that public media is key to helping the community address and deal with critical issues in each of the Foundation’s priority areas.
Eligibility: To be eligible for a competitive grant program, applicants must serve Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Mora, Rio Arriba, San Miguel or Taos County. Applicants must have 501(c)(3) tax status, be a public agency in the state of New Mexico, or have a fiscal sponsor. Applicant organizations must be at least three years old. No support will be given for capital campaigns or endowments.
Deadline: The Foundation takes applications for Education, Economic Opportunity and Environment in the Spring. It accepts applications for Health and Human Services, and Arts in the Fall. Specific deadlines can be found here.
How to apply: Applicants should review the guidelines for Community Grants. Organizations may only submit one application per year. (The exception is for Native American or LGBT organizations, which can apply to the specific initiatives supporting those communities as well as to the Community Grants program.)
Giving range: Up to $15,000 for Community Grants.
Assets: $33.7 million in total assets as of December 31, 2010.
Total giving: $3.1 million in grants awarded in 2010.
View 2010 Annual Report here.
