1979 - 2024
1979
Burt Bershon presents Stewart Stearns with a plaque commemorating the founding of the “Sarasota County Community Foundation.”
By the Decades
Philanthropic work allows us to shape our own society by giving to the common good. The 1970s was a decade of “pivotal change” and members of Sarasota County sought to better their community. Before there was a community foundation in Sarasota, philanthropists struggled to connect to nonprofits without an entity that could bring them together. The Southwest Florida Estate Planning Council recognized this need and established the Community Foundation of Sarasota County in 1979. Ever since then, the Foundation has produced an environment where people can make charitable donations, knowing their gift will be handled with care, going to the place they desire to help.
The 1980s: Establishing Connection and Priorities
The Community Foundation of Sarasota County was first orchestrated by a single donation and guided by a committee of volunteers working in an office in the back room of what was then the West Coast Symphony (today the Sarasota Orchestra). The objective of this decade was to improve the quality of life as the community identified needs. Getting into hands-on community involvement, the first grant initiative helped identify street addresses and numerically label houses in Newtown. After the Salvation Army met an unexpected rise in needs, the Foundation stepped up to provide aid. Mote Marine’s Jason Project, an educational deep-sea discovery, was one of many examples of the Foundation’s developing interest to support culture and science. During this time our foundation’s first scholarship fund was created for Venice High School students in the name of Richard Curcio. Betty and Alex Schoenbaum gave a gift to the Foundation to help print our brochures and organize a marketing campaign. After growing success, Stewart Stearns was hired as first Executive Director who later helped to ring in the “electronic age” by loaning the Foundation his son’s Tandy Computer.
1988
After an extensive national search, the Community Foundation hires Stewart Stearns as first Executive Director. Stearns would serve as Executive Director until 2010.
1986
Four members of the Community Foundation – Robert Donlan, John “Jack” Shea, Rod MacLeod, and Ron Skipper –share a laugh to celebrate eight years of unprecedented success and growth at a progress report meeting.
1986
The Community Foundation’s first major grant initiative provided housing numbers to identify street addresses in Newtown, Sarasota.
1990
Stewart Stearns stands with Betty Schoenbaum, who provided the Community Foundation with its first major gift to help advance the organization’s connections within the community.
1996
The warm embrace between a father and son: In 1996, the Community Foundation received a national grant to sponsor an initiative to work with fathers to strengthen relationships with their families.
The 1990s:
Uncovering Deeper Needs
The 90s were a time of developing trust and showing Sarasota County that residents could look to the Foundation as a resource. So, in addition to traditional grantmaking, the Foundation’s leadership sought out other ways to help. For example, after reading about a burglary at The Society of St. Vincent de Paul’s food pantry, Stearns gave an emergency fund to bring relief before Thanksgiving arrived. This reactive response demonstrated a sensitivity to community needs and expressed a culture of collaboration. As its commitment to the community expanded, the Foundation was looked to as an entity that could address issues that weren’t largely recognized or organized. Funds were given to a variety of needs including the Ear Research Foundation, a nonprofit that provides hearing aids to children whose families cannot afford them. Notably during this time, Sarah Greer Mayer, who greatly valued literacy and helping the disadvantaged, provided one of the largest gifts to the Foundation that opened a children’s library in Newtown. Projects including the Women’s Legal Fund, Nurturing Dad’s Initiative of Children First, and the Parenting Initiative of the late 90s were early ideas of our Two-Generation Approach, a method that we still apply today.
1997
In 1997, Stewart Stearns presents a check for over $1 million in celebration of the Community Foundation’s early grants program. That year, more than $2 million was distributed in grants and scholarships, with 140 established funds.
The 2000s: Strategic Planning for Philanthropy
Diane McFarlin, editor of the Herald-Tribune, suggested a partnership with the Foundation after expressing great concern regarding homelessness in Sarasota. An idea grew into a program that could help families avoid homelessness by providing funds to aid a variety of needs such as food vouchers, utility bills, and childcare. The Season of Sharing was born, developing connections between organizations to focus on prevention. By building off individual programs that were established in the 90s, the Foundation looked closer into the Two-Generation Approach with Connecting Fathers and Families, an initiative helping fathers learn parenting skills, bringing them closer to their children. Jo Bowen Nobbe gave the largest donation yet to the Foundation with a gift of $17 million, which propelled future giving towards education and scholarships. Recognizing the unmet needs of the elderly, grants were provided to services like the Senior Friendship Centers with continued funding for healthcare programs. The 2000s closed with a developed understanding of family needs across all ages and collaborating in unique ways to finding solutions.
2006
Stewart Stearns, Leila Gompertz, and Community Foundation staff stand in the lobby of the completed Leila and Michael Gompertz Center in 2006. Gompertz generously bestowed $2 million to help construct the new space.
2004
Stewart Stearns and Leila Gompertz breaking ground together as construction begins on the Community Foundation’s new permanent space on Fruitville Road. The Leila and Michael Gompertz Center would open in 2004.
2010
One of the several hundred families who received financial assistance through the 2010 Season of Sharing Donation Campaign posing for a photo.
2018
Roxie Jerde stands next to Debra Jacobs, President and CEO of The Patterson Foundation, during the kickoff to the 2018 Giving Challenge.
2018
Thank you notes sent in to Community Foundation staff from 2018 scholarship recipients. Thanks to the generosity of our community, the Community Foundation has been able to award over $2 million in scholarships each year to deserving students from all backgrounds.
The 2010s:
Culture of Caring
This decade ushered in a culture of philanthropy by taking new approaches to integrate charitable work. Under the guidance of Roxie Jerde, the new President and CEO, the Foundation launched in 2012 a digital fundraising campaign named the Giving Challenge, inviting everyone to become a philanthropist by making online gifts in a short period of time. In just the first year, $2.4 million was raised in 48 hours for 109 nonprofits. Today, nine challenges have raised more than $92 million in donations and highlighted our region’s longtime commitment to charitable giving.
Continuing to help families, the Foundation supported the Alta Vista Elementary School summer program and nursing program for single mothers, providing opportunities through education. The Foundation partnered with Suncoast Campaign for Grade-Level Reading and Celebrating our Differences to better children’s literacy and use creative strategies to promote diversity, increasing success in the classroom. In 2015, over 70 scholarships were supporting 575 students and adult learners in Sarasota. New and unlikely collaborations were created when the Foundation helped the Humane Society purchase dog food to be delivered by All Faith’s Food Bank to low-income families with pets. With collaborations that travel across sectors, the Foundation has crafted special relationships that work deeper on making our community stronger.
The 2020s: Points of Perseverance
Just a few short months into the decade, the world seemed to stop and stand still as COVID-19 had shut down borders, schools, and businesses, and people became shut-in as lockdowns swept the nation. But as the world was shutting down, philanthropy roared to life.
Ordinarily an annual campaign during the holidays and start of the New Year, our time-tested and trusted Season of Sharing campaign was reactivated in Spring 2020 as a response to the unprecedented needs of our neighbors that arose from the pandemic. The Community Foundation granted nearly $4.5 million to nonprofit organizations for immediate, short-term, and long-term responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020.
This recognition of the multiple phases of funding needed after disaster strikes was key to implementing the Suncoast Disaster Recovery Fund
in 2022, days before Hurricane Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida. A collaboration between the Community Foundation and The Patterson Foundation, this fund
prioritizes ongoing long-term needs that often go unnoticed and unaddressed, and typically exacerbate existing inequities in a community. In a display of great compassion and generosity,
our community members banded together in the aftermath of multiple major hurricanes, seeking ways to help their neighbors in need. As of November 2024, more than $4 million
has been granted to support long-range programs and solutions for nonprofits in Charlotte, DeSoto, Manatee, and Sarasota counties, and at the same time, additional contributions have been
received to respond to the chaotic hurricane season of 2024.
Continuing our long-running focus on helping families, the Community Foundation advanced a multi-generation or 2Gen (two-generation) approach that centers the whole family to create a legacy of success and prosperity for individuals and whole families. In February 2024 the Community Foundation hosted a 2Gen Summit, where nearly 300 practitioners, parents, and policymakers came together to share and explore successful ways to support the whole family—however these families may be defined. With collaborations throughout our region, the Community Foundation has crafted special relationships that make our community — and its families — stronger.
As our region continues to evolve and change, it’s crucial for our community-builders to have access to recent, up-to-date data to fully understand and
respond to the community and its needs. As a result, the Foundation developed a free online dashboard to promote data-informed decision making. The Community Indicators Dashboard
provides insight into community well-being by evaluating some of the key aspects of the four-county region, such as demographics, education,
economy, health, and housing. As our area keeps changing, the dashboard will grow alongside it, motivating us to inform ourselves about our community and take action.
2020
The Community Foundation provided a grant to The Ringling Art Museum which allowed them to offer live virtual tours to classrooms and hospital patients so that they could enjoy the healing power of fine art.
2022
Finding resiliency in the wreckage: Teresa and Dave Karaffa from Englewood stand inside their business which was destroyed by Hurricane Ian.
2024
The Lived Expertise Panel at the 2024 2Gen Summit.
Looking Ahead
The Foundation will continue to evolve as the needs of the community and the hopes of our donors do. Although the future is unwritten, the Foundation is a place that has been loyal to serving the community and building connection, and it will always strive for a better tomorrow for all.
A couple looks at the dazzling fireworks together at the Venice Symphony’s Patriotic Pops and Fireworks event.