The San Antonio Area Foundation is a

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of 50 ...

nonprofit organization established in 1964 as a

community foundation Community foundations (CFs) are instruments of civil society designed to pool donations into a coordinated investment and grant making facility dedicated primarily to the social improvement of a given place. Community foundations are a global pheno ...

. The San Antonio Area Foundation manages and administers charitable funds for individuals and organizations in San Antonio and South Central Texas. The Area Foundation

Board of Directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

are community volunteers who give guidance and oversight. The Area Foundation has an grants program and is a partner with San Antonio city government and other nonprofit entities in community initiatives.

Mission

The San Antonio Area Foundation's mission is to help donors achieve their charitable goals for the greater benefit of the community long-term, to help the city of

San Antonio ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= U.S. state, State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , s ...

give back into its own community.

Grants philosophy

Honoring donors' wishes for the betterment of the community is the fundamental principle behind the San Antonio Area Foundation’s grant distribution process. Grants from Donor Advised Trusts and Funds are made throughout the year based upon receipt of donor recommendations. The Area Foundation also awards annual Community and

Research Grants A grant is a fund given by an end entity grant – often a public body, charitable foundation, or a specialised grant-making institution – to an individual or another entity (usually, a non-profit organisation, sometimes a business or a local ...

from permanent trusts and funds through a competitive proposal process. In the year 2015, the Foundation granted $1 million or more to the following organizations:

San Antonio Botanical Garden The San Antonio Botanical Garden is a , non-profit botanical garden in San Antonio, Texas, United States, and the city's official botanical garden. History The garden was first conceived in the 1940s by Mrs. R. R. Witt and Mrs. Joseph Murphy, ...

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

Greater San Antonio Greater San Antonio, officially designated San Antonio–New Braunfels, is an eight-county metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Texas defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The metropolitan area straddles South Texas and Central ...

, Southwest School of Art, Any Baby Can, Morgan's Wonderland,

Witte Museum The Witte Museum was established in 1926 and is located in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio, Texas. It is dedicated to telling the stories of Texas, from prehistory to the present. The permanent collection features historic artifacts and photograp ...

, UTSA College of Sciences, and

San Antonio Museum of Art The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. The museum spans 5,000 years of global culture. The museum is housed in the historic former Lone Star Brewery (1886) on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio ...

Knight Foundation NOWcastSA Grant received

The San Antonio Area Foundation received a matching grant for $488,500 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to fund NOWcastSA, a grassroots project of the Alamo Area Community

Information System An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

(AACIS) administered by the San Antonio Area Foundation. NOWcastSA is a virtual

public square A town square (or square, plaza, public square, city square, urban square, or ''piazza'') is an open public space, commonly found in the heart of a traditional town but not necessarily a true square, geometric square, used for community gathe ...

where people share relevant news and information online. It empowers neighborhoods to define for themselves how to create, exchange, and use community information and conversation. NOWcastSA provides hands-on training for citizen journalists creating stories and information through the use of online broadcast technology and

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

ing.NOWcastSA Key message platform. Adopted by steering committee on July 15, 2009

TRIAD fund

In 2007 the

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Foundation, the Permian Basin Area Foundation, and the San Antonio Area Foundation established funds for Texas Resources for Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment (TRIAD) Fund, collectively awarded over $11 million in support of agencies serving OEF and OIF families. In August 2008, the Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment Impact Fund of the

California Community Foundation The California Community Foundation (CCF) is a philanthropic organization located in Los Angeles, California. Foundation Center, an independent nonprofit organization, ranks it among the top 100 foundations in the nation by asset size and total ...

provided additional funding of $15 million to continue this work in the

State of Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

. The Dallas Foundation and San Antonio Area Foundation are now accepting applications from 501(c)(3) agencies providing services in their region.

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.saafdn.org Non-profit organizations based in Texas Community foundations based in the United States Organizations based in San Antonio