Coming Into Focus - Painting by Natalie Voelker

2022 Annual Report

A Letter From President & CEO Randy Royster

Welcome to the 2022 Albuquerque Community Foundation Annual Report. Creating this publication is an impressive effort every year, the result of months-long collaboration between our staff, Board of Trustees, and grantees, some of whom you’ll see featured in the following pages. It’s a time to look back at the Foundation’s many accomplishments over the previous year, as well as the many achievements of our grantees and community. Last year was crucial for the Foundation – we had tremendous growth and worked diligently on finalizing a Strategic Plan that will lead our work through 2026. Our path as a Foundation is clearer than ever, and I’m grateful to our staff, Board of Trustees, donors, and community for their guidance in bringing our Values, Vision, and Mission into focus.

As I think back on the year, I am particularly proud of the growth we’ve had as a foundation; we continue to grow the assets we manage, which in turn allows us to grow our grantmaking. We added 15 new endowments and distributed $6.9 million in grants. Along with financial growth, we’ve also added staff for both the Foundation and New Mexico Community Trust (“NMCT”).

In addition, the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration approached us to continue distributing vouchers to address housing insecurity in Albuquerque. In 2022, we deployed over $8.9 million in housing assistance grants and will continue working with the state to distribute these vouchers through 2025. I have talked about NMCT before, but I’m excited we’re able to share details about this important new initiative.

NMCT offers foundation services in areas of the state that don’t have a local community foundation or where a local community foundation is much smaller that they don’t have the capacity to provide services to corporate or individual donors. Our clients receive the expertise of the Foundation but have the ability to receive access to services under the umbrella of NMCT.

Through NMCT we’ve been able to expand our services to Las Cruces, Taos, and Ithaca, New York. We’re looking forward to expanding that footprint throughout New Mexico and even nationally—we continually get referred to smaller community foundations across the country.

We continue to work on addressing pressing questions and meeting urgent needs to support racial, social, and economic justice here at home. During this last year, we continued to finalize our new Values, Vision, and Mission with this as a guiding principle. It has been a meaningful effort, and the results speak directly to the kind of change we want to see not only across our state but in the philanthropy sector at large. This is a collective effort, and I know that together we will continue to fulfill our commitment in becoming the community’s foundation.

Signature of Randy Royster, President and CEO of the Albuquerque Community Foundation.
President & CEO

Donate Now

Welcome to the 2022 Albuquerque Community Foundation Annual Report. Creating this publication is an impressive effort every year, the result of months-long collaboration between our staff, Board of Trustees, and grantees, some of whom you’ll see featured in the following pages. It’s a time to look back at the Foundation’s many accomplishments over the previous year, as well as the many achievements of our grantees and community. Last year was crucial for the Foundation – we had tremendous growth and worked diligently on finalizing a Strategic Plan that will lead our work through 2026. Our path as a Foundation is clearer than ever, and I’m grateful to our staff, Board of Trustees, donors, and community for their guidance in bringing our Values, Vision, and Mission into focus.

As I think back on the year, I am particularly proud of the growth we’ve had as a foundation; we continue to grow the assets we manage, which in turn allows us to grow our grantmaking. We added 15 new endowments and distributed $6.9 million in grants. Along with financial growth, we’ve also added staff for both the Foundation and New Mexico Community Trust (“NMCT”).

In addition, the New Mexico Department of Finance and Administration approached us to continue distributing vouchers to address housing insecurity in Albuquerque. In 2022, we deployed over $8.9 million in housing assistance grants and will continue working with the state to distribute these vouchers through 2025. I have talked about NMCT before, but I’m excited we’re able to share details about this important new initiative.

NMCT offers foundation services in areas of the state that don’t have a local community foundation or where a local community foundation is much smaller that they don’t have the capacity to provide services to corporate or individual donors. Our clients receive the expertise of the Foundation but have the ability to receive access to services under the umbrella of NMCT.

Through NMCT we’ve been able to expand our services to Las Cruces, Taos, and Ithaca, New York. We’re looking forward to expanding that footprint throughout New Mexico and even nationally—we continually get referred to smaller community foundations across the country.

We continue to work on addressing pressing questions and meeting urgent needs to support racial, social, and economic justice here at home. During this last year, we continued to finalize our new Values, Vision, and Mission with this as a guiding principle. It has been a meaningful effort, and the results speak directly to the kind of change we want to see not only across our state but in the philanthropy sector at large. This is a collective effort, and I know that together we will continue to fulfill our commitment in becoming the community’s foundation.

Signature of Randy Royster, President and CEO of the Albuquerque Community Foundation.
President & CEO

Donate Now

In all aspects of the Foundation’s mission, 2022 was a very successful year. As the cornerstone of that success, the Board and Foundation staff worked hard to develop a strategic plan that will enable the organization to achieve the next stage of growth.

Part of this planning process included updating our vision and values to better reflect our organizational focus on trust, equity, integrity, and accountability. During this process, our team set three broad strategic goals for the next five years.

An illustrative icon depicting a person inside a gear shape.

Community
Impact

The Foundation belongs to the community, and we want to make sure we are doing the best we can to meet its needs. We do this by deepening trust and relationships with grantees, moving resources quickly into communities, and advocating for and embodying our principles of equity.

An illustrative icon depicting three people standing together.

Community
Leadership

We use every resource as a community foundation for greater impact on those we serve. We are conveners—we provide recommendations to other funders, and we connect other funders to the local landscape, large donors, other foundations, and businesses. We want to continue leveraging our grantmaking impact.

An illustrative icon depicting a rising bar graph with an upwards pointing arrow.

Organizational
Sustainability

We commit to responsibly managing the community’s investment and becoming a self-sustaining organization by building the endowment to $200 million by 2026. We’re also diversifying our donor base by adding affinity-based giving circles and building authentic, genuine relationships with new communities.

In all aspects of the Foundation’s mission, 2022 was a very successful year. As the cornerstone of that success, the Board and Foundation staff worked hard to develop a strategic plan that will enable the organization to achieve the next stage of growth.

Part of this planning process included updating our vision and values to better reflect our organizational focus on trust, equity, integrity, and accountability. During this process, our team set three broad strategic goals for the next five years.

Community
Impact

The Foundation belongs to the community, and we want to make sure we are doing the best we can to meet its needs. We do this by deepening trust and relationships with grantees, moving resources quickly into communities, and advocating for and embodying our principles of equity.

Community
Leadership

We use every resource as a community foundation for greater impact on those we serve. We are conveners—we provide recommendations to other funders, and we connect other funders to the local landscape, large donors, other foundations, and businesses. We want to continue leveraging our grantmaking impact.

Organizational
Sustainability

We commit to responsibly managing the community’s investment and becoming a self-sustaining organization by building the endowment to $200 million by 2026. We’re also diversifying our donor base by adding affinity-based giving circles and building authentic, genuine relationships with new communities.

In 2022, the Foundation took a close look at our Annual Grant Cycle, previously known as the Competitive Grant Cycle. The Community Impact Committee and staff spent much of the year consulting with our local nonprofit community, collecting input from a survey and participating in trainings with the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project.

We did this in an effort to flip the script on traditional philanthropy by adopting the principles of trust-based philanthropy: centering relationships with nonprofits away from a transactional approach. Trust-based philanthropy places trust in organizations and the way they implement their programs; the funder is there to learn from them, instead of telling the organization how and on what to spend grants.

Our goal was to shift some of the burden of the funding process away from organizations and back to us. By recognizing the values of advancing equity, building mutually accountable relationships and demonstrating humility and collaboration in what we do and how we show up in all aspects of our work, the Committee adopted several changes that went into effect in 2023.

First, we greatly reduced the number and redundancy of questions on the application, removing components we as staff could do ourselves, because one principle of trust-based philanthropy is that the funder does its homework. We also removed the presentation requirement; funding decisions will now be based solely on the application. In lieu of presentations, we will host a series of four PEEP (Party to Enhance Equity in Philanthropy) events throughout the year to create space for nonprofits to share their work with one another and with staff, Trustees, Committee members and community members. These informal events are intended to support community and relationship building.

Next, we implemented a scoring rubric that is available to all nonprofits during the application process so that they can see how they will be scored before they even apply. We will continue to host our successful Coffee Chat hours during the application cycle to answer questions or provide space for feedback.

Finally, we added a seventh field-of-interest for awards to support animal welfare, beginning in 2023. This new field-of-interest comes as the result of several donor-advised funds being pooled to support this common interest.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that all awards in the Annual Grant Cycle program continue to be unrestricted — a lesson we learned during the pandemic. Nonprofits need the freedom to shift in the moment to serve the greatest need without risking losing or returning funds when they pivot their services.

We believe this updated program reflects both what we care about today and what we want to embody in the future. It is our intention that trust-based philanthropic values guide our work moving forward, underscored by how we show up in the community.

Signature of Khia Griffis, Community Impact Director at the Albuquerque Community Foundation
Community Impact Director