Hoping to raise better attention to the charity throughout San Juan County, a group of community leaders is working to establish a community foundation, a specialized nonprofit group that could better connect would-be donors with ideal local charity funds.
A meeting set to gauge area interest in development of a community foundation will be at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Farmington Civic Center.
"In Farmington we have a really great medical foundation, we have a really great college foundation, but we don't have a place that's a clearing house for all the other things," said Daily Times Publisher Sammy Lopez. "We have a lot of private foundations. (The community foundation) kind of fills in the gaps."
Lopez, with experience serving on the Carlsbad Community Foundation board of directors for six years, helped organize a local task force of 10 community leaders to consider whether a community foundation could benefit the Four Corners area.
"The key here is not to compete with the others, but to enhance everyone," Lopez said.
A community foundation, if established, would not only work with existing charities, but the nonprofit would establish independent funds that could be used to supplement valuable public projects at the discretion of an independent board of directors.
Other leaders like the idea for Farmington.
"If you sat down and made a list of all the 501(c)3 (nonprofit) organizations that deal with the arts and that sort of thing in town, you'd probably miss half of them just because you don't know they're there," said state Rep. Tom Taylor, a member of the Farmington foundation task force. "When you have those organizations kind of connecting to a central funding source like that, you sort of bring them out of the wood work."
But the organization wouldn't seek to take control of charity funding accounts and independent boards of directors. Instead, the collective goal is to increase awareness of the many worthy needs in the Farmington area.
"I think we'll get a lot of community support," said Farmington Mayor Bill Standley, a member of the foundation task force. "I've found, as mayor, this is a very giving community. They look for ways to tend to the needs of the community."
Foundations typically require many years to develop a collection of donations large enough to generate strong interest revenues that can be reinvested in the community, but after being established, the fund can be a permanent resource for community support.
"It's kind of the starting of the race. We'll start at square one and see where we go," Lopez said. "It could be a great way to maintain a source of funding for nonprofits that goes from generation to generation to help us build a better community."
If you go:
Learn more about the proposed community foundation at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Farmington Civic Center.
James Monteleone:
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