CFSA News Now: San Miguel de Allende: Continuing the Vision

One of the outstanding features of a community foundation is our ability to turn a donor’s charitable vision into meaningful change – whether that change is in their home community, across the border, or around the world.

The Community Foundation for Southern Arizona (CFSA) has worked diligently over the years to fulfill the Shaaron Kent Endowment Fund’s vision to improve the lives of San Miguel de Allende residents, and that vision was fulfilled for the third year in a row through a two-day intensive resource development training for the nonprofit community.

Through a partnership between CFSA and the U.S. Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership (BPP), two experts in nonprofit fundraising provided high-quality training that will enable San Miguel de Allende nonprofits to increase their capacity to engage in effective fundraising for their programs and services. The faculty, Carlos Madrid of Mexico City, and Alma Delia Abrego Ceballos from Tijuana, are known and recognized as experts throughout Mexico. Over ninety individuals attended the two-day training program. In addition to the training seminar, CFSA convened eleven nonprofit organizations who were the recipients of our first CORE grants (general operating support) in San Miguel de Allende. Grants totaling $79,900 were awarded to nonprofits that met the program criteria.

CFSA also met with other community foundations in San Miguel to share information and explore collaborations. These foundations included the San Miguel de Allende Community Foundation and the Don Diego Community Foundation.

Through a listening session facilitated by Clint Mabie, CFSA’s President & CEO, we heard from nonprofit
representatives some of the ways that the community foundation can deepen its impact within the community and further improve the capacity of nonprofits. We feel that through our concerted and collaborative efforts to support the sustainability of those nonprofit organizations, we will make strides in achieving our goal of honoring Shaaron Kent’s legacy for years to come.

We cannot accomplish this work without our partners, and we are deeply grateful to Andy Carey and Maria Laura Muñoz of BPP for their continued stellar execution of nonprofit capacity building training programs in San Miguel de Allende.