LACF News:
Do you remember when you turned 10 years old? Maybe you felt you should not be treated like a “little kid” anymore. Maybe your parents gave you more independence and responsibilities around the house. Well, the Los Alamos Community Foundation (LACF) is about to turn 10 years old in November 2025. LACF is excited to take on more responsibilities and opportunities in support of our mission “to build enduring philanthropy to empower our community’s nonprofit organizations”.
Looking back, we see how three executive directors, plus innumerable volunteers and donors have helped LACF mature. This collective effort has allowed LACF to give away more than 120 grants totaling more than $280,000, and create endowment funds of more than $1.3 million prudently invested and providing an income stream to our nonprofits in perpetuity. These are not just numbers, they are concrete illustrations of how the Los Alamos “village” has helped raise the LACF child.
The story of LACF started even earlier than Nov. 6, 2015, the date when we received our New Mexico incorporation papers. Two years earlier, an informal group of community leaders, including local politicians, bankers, county staff and non-profit leaders, began meeting to envision how our community could help itself through philanthropy support. We were already familiar with all the impediments that our nonprofits encounter to receive robust funding. Federal and State funds are usually vectored to needier communities; local funding is limited by procurement policies and legal constraints on public-private partnerships in New Mexico; there did not exist local, simple mechanisms for donors to establish legacy gifts and endowments that could provide long-term, steady income. We also did not want to cut the philanthropic pie into smaller pieces. The group discussed how to grow the opportunity for Los Alamos to help itself financially strengthen the capacity of our community’s nonprofits.
We began by working closely with our partners at the United Way of Northern New Mexico. This sister organization, led then by Kristy Ortega, was instrumental in helping our steering committee identify gaps in resources that a new organization could fill. We put together the infrastructure for accepting endowments that would be invested for the long-term. These endowments could benefit a single organization, an area of interest such as youth sports or music, or unrestricted, so that as needs in our community changed, our impact and focus would change as well. We developed a robust training program for our nonprofits, with sessions ranging from how to write effective press releases, to nonprofit accounting, and the roles and responsibilities of nonprofit board members.
Organization wise, we considered all sorts of models. More established community foundations offered to let us affiliate under their organization. For a while, there was discussion among established community foundations across the state about merging into a single state organization. Eventually, our steering committee decided to take the plunge and start our own, independent of any others. But how could we get going on our own? Most community foundations begin through the generosity of a few larger donors, or through some legal transaction such as the conversion of a hospital from nonprofit to for-profit status.
Instead, we got started in a very Los Alamos way. As far as we know, we are the only community foundation to come into existence through the generosity of more than 50 donors who pledged thousands of dollars over multiple years to get us started. We proudly display a canvas with the signatures of many of these donors on our office wall, located in the Los Alamos Enterprise Bank & Trust building, the space they provided in-kind.
There is more to say about this story as well as share about our year-long celebration. We will share more of our infancy and milestones over the last 10 years as we approach our anniversary. We plan to give special grants to our Los Alamos nonprofits, and host celebratory events throughout 2025, beginning with a free community breakfast at the Betty Ehart Senior Center Jan. 10, 2025. Keep an eye out for more details.
From this November to November 2025, LACF will be hailing our 10 year anniversary with a “birthday stamp” that will be displayed alongside our logo.
It’s been a great journey, and there was plenty of love in the air when we got started.
Established in 2015, the Los Alamos Community Foundation seeks to improve the local quality of life by inspiring, facilitating and supporting enduring philanthropy, and building the capacity and success of our local nonprofit organizations. The Los Alamos Community Foundation stewards 16 locally endowed funds and has total assets of more than $1.5 million.
For more information about the Los Alamos Community Foundation or to donate, visit www.losalamoscf.org.