Community Knows What They Need

Patricia Mejia, Vice President, Community Engagement and Impact

I came to my work in philanthropy inspired by the hustle of my mother who raised my brother and I primarily on her own and from years of working in the nonprofit sector focused on economic mobility. I start my story there because it matters. That lens, my ‘not so’ rose tinted, is what I use to transform philanthropy through trust-based trust-based principles. I was raised on $463 dollars in South Texas. My mom didn’t have the opportunity to complete high school, but she knew how to effect the change that mattered to her and her community. I remember being five years old and my mom taking me blocking walking for the next upcoming female elected official. Her hope for that elected official illustrated something much bigger. She hoped that the flaws in the systems (education, health, housing, etc.) that did not benefit all could and should be different. She believed change for the Collective Corazon. That meant the change she demanded for herself really wasn’t for herself – it was for the collective. She knew change required decision-makers to reflect our values by centering community. For me, while I may not have had the language of “trust-based philanthropy” as a child, those values have been part of my formation because my mom was one of my first teachers to ensure me that there is a community solution for everything personal.

Centering those values, I stepped into a huge opportunity in my role to support the San Antonio Area Foundation in making the shift from a traditional community foundation (one that may not use adequate information on community needs to make decisions) to taking on trust-based practices in our work. San Antonio was and continues to grapple with some very difficult realities, including making the national news as the poorest metropolitan city in the country. We were ranked number one for economic segregation. Allowing us to engage in difficult conversations and implement change prior to Covid - Covid and the murder of George Floyd, simply catapulted disruption the status quo. 

For us, that meant centering community in every facet of what we do. We were entrusted with a significant legacy gift – an asset of $600 million – which invited us to ask, “How do we want to center community voices in allocating this influx of money?” We ran listening sessions with a mix of community members, residents, nonprofit leaders, other funders, and board members. It helped to bring all of these people into the same room so the people with more positional power could hear directly from community. 

When you ask community what their needs are, they not only will tell you, but are also very prescriptive about what solutions should look like. They outlined trust-based philanthropy without saying trust-based philanthropy. They wanted multi-year, general operating funding. They wanted us to honor the different sizes of organizations, recognizing that each of them play a different role in serving the areas of greatest need. They wanted us to simplify our reporting process, and to change our matrix of how grants were scored by prioritizing organizations that were in our underserved communities. As a result, we’ve been able to prioritize the leadership that was responsive to those needs. Given the context of the moment, we were able to move all of those changes forward without a ton of permission seeking, community had spoken.  

None of that change came easily, necessarily. And it certainly didn’t come without tension or conflict. So much of my role as an internal changemaker is acting as a translator between community and those controlling resources (myself included) and a visionary to imagine a new world of philanthropy.  I’m still learning sometimes it is as simple as just moving forward with what I know is right, what I know community wants, and when to pause to translate by showing data. I am still learning about what I personally need and what my team needs in the process– because the labor of this type of translation and the associated exhaustion is real.

But then I think back on my mom. When she got an extra hundred dollars through a garage sale or one of the many other side hustles she had, she knew exactly how that money could best be used to improve the circumstances for her family. My dream for philanthropy is that we trust people at that level, and in doing so, honor their intelligence and dignity.