A LEGACY OF LOCAL GIVING
Albuquerque Community Foundation surpasses the $100 million milestone
In 1981, 10 business leaders each contributed $10,000 to establish the Albuquerque Community Foundation, the first charity of its kind in New Mexico. Nearly four decades later, the foundation is still going strong and has added a few extra zeroes to its bank account.
$100 million in assets
The foundation said last month that its assets under management exceeded $100 million for the first time. Randy Royster, president and CEO of the Albuquerque Community Foundation, called the designation an important benchmark in the lifespan of a community foundation, and noted that the asset pool has roughly tripled in the past 15 years.
“It’s not that you have to have $100 million to be doing good work; it’s that that’s one of the monumental increments in a community foundation’s life,” Royster told the Journal.
Steve Maestas, co-founder of NAI Maestas and Ward and trustee at the community foundation, said he thinks the foundation is well-positioned to use the influx of money to tackle some of New Mexico’s largest systemic issues.
“It’s really about coming up with solutions,” Maestas said. “I think philanthropy has an interesting opportunity to lead that discussion and to break some molds and create some change.”
William Lang, publisher of Albuquerque Publishing Co., is on the Albuquerque Community Foundation’s board of trustees.
Albuquerque’s foundation is one of around 800 community foundations across the country, including five in New Mexico. Such foundations are accredited nonprofits that provide grant funding to more specialized nonprofits within their cities or towns. To receive accreditation, Royster said the foundations must provide broad-based grant making and maintain paid staff.
Checking and savings
Although organizations such as United Way give out the majority of the money they receive in a given year, Royster said ACF grants only about 4% of the money it receives, with a focus on creating a permanent endowment that isn’t affected by year-to-year economic ebbs and flows.
“So we’re the savings account of the community, whereas they’re the checking account,” he said. “Savings and checking don’t compete against each other; they complement each other.”
Kelli Cooper, vice president of the foundation, said the organization expects to grant around $5 million next year. Albuquerque Community Foundation grants money through a variety of processes, including a competitive grant program.
Cooper said the foundation makes grants across six fields of interest: economic and workforce development, arts and culture, education, environmental and historic preservation, health and human services. The organization convenes pools of experts and determines which organizations applying in each field of interest should receive funding. Cooper added that the foundation also accepts applications for rolling grants, known as “need to know grants,” throughout the year.
Growth over the years
Albuquerque and New Mexico don’t always have a positive reputation when
it comes to giving money to charity. A report from 2017 ranked New Mexico 47th in the nation in charitable giving. Royster noted that Albuquerque lacks the wealth and massive companies that drive philanthropic giving in other communities.
“We don’t have those national headquarters, and we don’t have manufacturing here in a major way,” Royster said.
Because of that, the Albuquerque Community Foundation has had to get creative to grow its endowment. When Royster came on board, he pushed to add a new field of interest, focused on economic and workforce development. This, he argued, would bring the business community to the table in a different way to work on systemic challenges like unemployment.
“If philanthropy is not supporting business, we could come to a point in time where we don’t have business supporting philanthropy,” Royster said.
Royster said the Albuquerque Community Foundation was the first foundation of its kind to implement this approach, and he credited it with growing the overall endowment. This, in turn, allowed them to hire more staff who have helped the organization grow.
Giving back
One beneficiary of the new program is NMCAN, an Albuquerque-based nonprofit that focuses on helping at-risk young people, many of whom have spent time in foster care and juvenile detention, as they transition to adulthood.
Ezra Spitzer, executive director of NMCAN, said the organization has received some level of funding from the community foundation every year since 2012, totaling around $80,000. Grants helped fund a financial literacy program, where NMCAN teaches groups of young people how to manage money and set up a bank account, while setting them up with a coach. Spitzer said around 90 percent of the 75 students who have gone through the program were able to establish an account, and he credited the community foundation with helping to fund it.
“They’ve been, through one facet or another, a good partner,” Spitzer said.
Royster also credited improving relationships in the Albuquerque community, particularly in the public sector, as a key to the organization’s growth. He said the foundation’s relationships with organizations like the 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque has improved dramatically during his time in charge.
Connecting with community
“We’re connected to the public sector now in a way that we weren’t connected at all 14 years ago,” Royster said. “And I think we have a higher level of touch with our donors and our grantees than we’ve ever had before.”
The foundation has also made an effort to invest in specific communities.
An exemplary program is Tapestry, an effort to address challenges within individual neighborhoods more holistically than other grants. Cooper said the program took shape last year as a way to address a variety of challenges in the International District.
“A lot of things could be done there that didn’t just have to do with money,” Cooper said.
Some of the foundation’s efforts were relatively small, including working with Public Service Company of New Mexico to add street lighting along East Central. Others were larger, like the foundation’s grant to get the International District Economic Development Center off the ground.
The development center was the brainchild of Alex Horton, who grew up in the International District. Horton said he saw his community decline and wanted to find a way to give back to the neighborhood. After consulting on a project at the South Valley Economic Development Center, Horton envisioned a similar program, with workshops, office space and consulting services, that could help small businesses grow in his
International District help
“I’m putting my money where my mouth is,” Horton said.
The nascent development center received $40,000 from the community foundation. The money helped him convert a dilapidated 5,000-square-foot building near the intersection of Central and Wyoming NE into a functional center, which is scheduled to open in October. Even more importantly, Horton credited the foundation with taking a genuine interest in his work and helping to connect him with advisers who can help the company grow.
“I tell them all the time I can’t thank them enough,” Horton said.
Although the Albuquerque Community Foundation can’t reverse systemic problems on its own. Maestas praised the foundation’s approach. Its ability to fund a variety of programs across different fields of interest helps them address some of the root causes of Albuquerque’s crime and homelessness, rather than just its downstream effects.
“It seems like a bigger, bolder, more ambitious effort could serve us better,” he said.
With an improving local economy, Maestas said a key to creating lasting change is bringing a variety of stakeholders in the public, private and nonprofit sectors together to work collaborative.
At its best, he said the Albuquerque Community Foundation is well positioned to do that work.
“I think the next five years are going to be better than the last 10,” Maestas said. “And I think a lot of that is going to be played out with philanthropy.