Learn about our 2024 High Impact Grant winner CAMP (Children’s Association for Maximum Potential) and the Fully-Accessible Music Garden and Pavillion your membership helped make possible. More than simply a new feature on campus, it has become a place where confidence grows, friendships flourish, and every note played reinforces the message that every individual belongs.
We caught up with Jessica Knudsen, President and CEO of Clarity Child Guidance Center, to learn more about their new Crisis Assessment Services department and their plans for the future. Clarity is one of Impact SA’s 2025 Support Grant recipients.
We are excited to share an interview with Marisa Bushman, Executive Director, violinist, and founding member of Agarita Chamber Players. Agarita engages the local community through artistic collaborations, education, community engagement, and free, adventurous programming.
Close to Home collaborates, studies, and listens in order to guide planning efforts by addressing homelessness in our area. And through the Diversion Program, they are able to address housing crises at the moment they occur.
“Having the support of Impact San Antonio has helped GSP accelerate our work and advance our time-sensitive mission to conserve irreplaceable, high-conservation land,” says Emma Lindrose-Siegel, Chief Development Officer, GSP. “We’ve now successfully engaged every landowner identified in the Initiative and are working toward the goal of conserving 50,000 acres of Central Texas Hill Country.”
Sometimes we ask ourselves, what kind of impact can you have on your community? Members of Impact San Antonio experienced the answer up close. We recently had the opportunity to tour the Museo del Westside, a vibrant, living project by the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center and one of our 2020 High Impact Grant recipients.
Kinetic Kids has provided adapted sports and fine arts programming around San Antonio for over 24 years, yet over the past decade, they noticed that families were driving from other communities like New Braunfels and Boerne because there were no options for adapted activities in their local community. After piloting programs in New Braunfels using the same successful Kinetic Kids model popular in San Antonio, they realized that the outlying and rural communities needed their programming, too.
Funding from Impact San Antonio will greatly assist Youth Orchestras of San Antonio (YOSA) with continued program success, greater student enrollment, and expanded program offerings for young student musicians in San Antonio and Bexar County.
Located at the Sally Cheever Girl Scout Leadership Center is the Backyard, a four-acre green space with limitless potential. As a 2024 Impact San Antonio Support Grant recipient, their vision is to develop the Backyard into a multi-purpose space for use by Girl Scouts and the greater San Antonio community.
Congratulations to 2021 High Impact Grant recipient Family Violence Prevention Services (FVPS) on the recent ribbon cutting celebration marking the completion of the new storage structure on the campus of the Battered Women and Children’s Shelter.
There’s no doubt that the cost of health care and prescription medication continues to be a challenge for many in South Texas and the Hill Country. For those at or near the poverty line, it can sometimes mean choosing between buying food and buying vital medications. The Hill Country Mission for Health, based in Boerne, is a medical ministry providing charitable primary healthcare for eligible low-income, uninsured or underinsured adults in Kendall County and the Boerne Independent School District, which includes parts of Bexar and Comal counties. The nonprofit is using funds from a Support Grant received from Impact San Antonio last year to help create an onsite pharmacy. The clinic treats and counsels about 10-18 patients per day from 18 to 64 years old on a sliding payment scale — becoming, in essence, a hub for community health. Executive Director Connie Padgett, nurse Mary Cortez and nurse practitioner Sarah Martinez are using the $11,000 grant to transform an office into a full-fledged pharmacy and to purchase the key medications their patients need, such as Rybelsus, a new drug designed to improve blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. “We are about one-fourth of the way through stocking the pharmacy,” Ms. Padgett said. “We were also able to pre-purchase flu vaccines, as it is a requirement to order them in advance. “Funding from Impact SA has paid for all medications and shots that have not been donated by humanitarian organizations. Additionally, we have been able to purchase pharmacy equipment, supplies, and some furniture necessary to properly operate the pharmacy and dispense medication.” While most of the medications are donated, more specialized medications are purchased through a local collaborative pharmacy partner using the funding from Impact SA, Ms. Padgett added. While the clinic sees patients with a variety of medical conditions, 70 percent of them have diabetes, and another 20 percent have prediabetes. “Diabetes is the most prevalent illness we see here at the clinic,” Ms. Cortez said. “The ability for us to keep plenty of diabetes medications on hand, along with other much-needed medications for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma — it’s so important in our ability to take care of those who need us most.” The clinic is a boon for clients who meet income requirements because “we don’t take any insurance or do any billing, so there is no co-pay for anyone,” Ms. Padgett said. “As long as we have the prescribed medication in stock at the pharmacy, the patient will not be charged for it. If we do not, then we either purchase it for them or, worst case, they go to their preferred pharmacy outside of the clinic.” The eight paid staff members include nurses, a phlebotomist, administrative employees and a translator because many patients are primarily Spanish speakers. In addition, there are several volunteer positions in nursing, orthopedics and dermatology. The Impact SA funding means a great deal to the clinic and its clients, Ms. Padgett said. “Funding from Impact SA has allowed us to pay for medications that are too expensive for the patient and that provided the patient with immediate symptom relief,” she said. “Our goal is to provide the very best health care that we can for them, and that includes relieving them of the kinds of decisions” between food and medications. Fabiola, a patient at the clinic, is grateful for their services. “I arrived with my A1C very high without knowing I had diabetes,” she said. “They taught me how to control my diabetes and lower my blood sugar. I would recommend this clinic to others who are in the same situation.” www.missionforhealth.org (830) 249-0130
There’s no doubt that Impact San Antonio’s High Impact Grants are a major benefit for the nonprofits that receive them. But for some of our grantee agencies, the funds they receive from us are just the beginning. Those agencies have used the prestige of receiving a major Impact SA grant as a catalyst to apply for others. And other grant-making foundations, organizations and individual donors are impressed! Two agencies that have done quite well with this strategy are the Magik Theatre and the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center. Magik Theatre received a 2017 High Impact Grant from us to address accessibility issues. Our grant ultimately paid for the renovation and enlargement of the two lobby restrooms, making them wheelchair accessible and adding a shower and other amenities for the casts of their plays. Other grants have addressed accessibility issues in the building, which was constructed in 1893 and needed serious updating. The theater has posted the logos of their funders on a wall in their lobby for all to see. “The key to it all was the first grant we received from Impact San Antonio,” said Frank Villani, Magik Theatre CEO. “It taught us two things: first, to think holistically about everything we needed, and second, to break that down into parts. “The work we did for the Impact SA grant transferred to the other grant applications we did,” he said, citing the rigorous process that Impact SA requires for its grant applicants. Development Manager Eric Schneeman added, “Because of the prestige of the Impact SA grant, you can build in a continuing plan with other funders.” The benefits of the Impact SA grant were soon evident, with a $100,000 grant in December 2017 from the Lee Family Foundation to repair and update the backstage area. Subsequent grants included $500,000 over five years from the Kelleher Charitable Foundation; $50,000 from the Meadows Foundation; $35,000 from the Circle Bar Foundation, Greehey Family Foundation and Valero Benefit for Children; $100,000 from the Nancy Smith Hurd Foundation; $100,000 from the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation; $20,000 from the Pryor Charitable Trust; and $30,000 from the TND Family Foundation. All are being used for accessibility updates, including a wheelchair seating area at the front of the theater and a ramp with an awning outside, Villani said. Esperanza’s project, the Museo del Westside, received a High Impact Grant from Impact SA in 2020. The Museo project involves renovating and enlarging the old Ruben’s Ice House to become a museum highlighting the history and culture of San Antonio’s West Side. Graciela Sanchez, director of Esperanza, believes that the Impact SA grant helped other funding organizations recognize the widespread community support for the Museo project. She can cite a considerable list of grants that have been received since the Impact SA grant, including $100,000 from the San Antonio Area Foundation and $50,000 from an individual donor and long-term supporter of Esperanza in 2022. The agency also was awarded a Humanities in Place grant of $1.6 million over three years from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2021. And it received a $1 million grant in 2021 from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott. In addition, Esperanza received a $500,000 Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant in 2022 from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which requires a 3:1 match. The grant will be matched by the $1.5 million in Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone funding awarded by the City of San Antonio for the Rinconcito project in 2021. Rinconcito is the larger project that surrounds and includes the Museo. In terms of programming at the Museo del Westside, Esperanza was awarded a $75,000 Public Humanities Planning Grant in 2021 from the NEH to plan the opening exhibition at the Museo, which will be a survey of Westside history titled Historias del Westside. Finally, Esperanza was awarded a $50,000 Inspire! Grants for Small Museums award from the federal Institute for Museum and Library Services in 2022 to do an assessment of the Museo’s collections, purchase any needed storage materials for the archives, and hire a consultant to select the software that will be used to manage the Museo’s digital and material collections. Esperanza was the first agency to request a letter of support from Impact SA to include with their other grant applications, and that is now done routinely for grant recipients, said Audrey Laird, co-chair of Grant Oversight and Outcomes on the Impact SA board of directors. “Impact SA’s rigorous and objective grant application and review process is run by our members and helps ensure that the most impactful grant proposals are selected as finalists,” she said. “Once a grant award is made, we publicize the achievement and extend support letters that can be used with other funders.” Elizabeth Garretson, vice president of Operations for Impact SA, said, “I continue to be blown away by the amazing good our grant recipients are able to do in our community with the funds they’ve received from Impact SA. It is doubly rewarding to hear from those who’ve shared that going through our process has helped them make other strong applications and secure further funding. In this way, it feels like our grants keep on giving.”
