Our First Gift (Grant)

The call came from my friend Kelly Stranahan, the spouse of a board member of the Robert A. Stranahan Charitable Advised Fund. Kelly has known our work for years: how we treat caregivers, how we talk about care, how we move through our community.

She asked a simple question:

“If a foundation wanted to support you, what would you do with the money?”

I paused.

Over the years, I’ve learned that many organizational challenges don’t come from a lack of good intentions, but from a mismatch between values and structure. When those two are misaligned, leaders spend enormous energy explaining themselves, reassuring others of motives, ethics, and priorities. When they align, trust doesn’t need to be argued for; it becomes easier for others to recognize and engage with the work.

That insight shaped a decision I made about how to structure the organization I lead.

I chose to make the organization a nonprofit because it felt like the clearest way to protect what mattered most. I wanted a structure that would help ensure the power inside the organization remained uncorrupted, one that would prevent greed, or even subtle financial pressure, from making decisions instead of values. Becoming a 501(c)(3) wasn’t about fundraising; it was about safeguarding integrity.

We are a self-sustaining organization. Fundraising wasn’t something we had focused on or even fully imagined. It existed more as a nebulous concept (something nonprofits do) rather than a central part of our plan.

So when Kelly asked her question, I thought carefully.

I thought about our nonprofit charter. I thought about the caregivers we support every day. I thought about the Circle of Love workshops we’ve been developing for the past four years, spaces designed to help caregivers stay connected to themselves and to each other while doing emotionally demanding work. I thought about how often people outside the organization asked if they could participate, learn, or bring this work into their own communities.

That’s when I understood what we might offer.

I told Kelly that if we received foundation support, we would expand the Circle of Love workshops into the larger community. In our proposal, I described how we would test our work: would this serve the larger community, and could it help strengthen Santa Fe’s caregiving ecosystem? We believed it could.

A few months later, our bank account was $70,000 more resourced.

Shortly after that, I found myself sitting with board members from one of our local hospitals, talking about how a Circle of Love workshop could be adapted to teach empathy clarity skills for social workers, nurses, physicians, and other caregivers throughout their organization, supporting the healthcare providers we all rely on in this community. The conversation felt easy. Collaborative. Grounded in shared concern.

This year, we grew more than 40 percent. By December, our core caregiving operations were financially self-sustaining. It’s been a good year, a growth year, and operating as a nonprofit has made that growth easier.

Not because the work changed. It didn’t.

Not because our values shifted. They didn’t.

But because the structure now better reflects what we’re actually trying to do. When values and structure align, less energy goes into explanation and reassurance, and more can be directed toward the work itself.

Sometimes you labor for years to build something quietly, unsure whether it will ever be fully seen.

Then it is.

This column ran in the Santa Fe New Mexican on December 30, 2025, under Business Different.