The murals are easy to see. They splash color across walls throughout Silver City and Grant County, created by young artists through a program that has become part of the visual identity of the community.
What is harder to see is the paperwork behind them. There are financial records to keep, reports to file and rules to follow, the administrative work that comes with operating a nonprofit program. Through a fiscal sponsorship with the Gila Community Foundation, the Youth Mural Program doesn't have to shoulder all of that itself.
“They get to focus on their mission,” Gila Community Foundation Executive Director Jamie Sechrist said. “What they worry about is getting new murals out, getting the kids, you know, being creative in the community.”
That arrangement offers a glimpse of a much larger role the foundation is carving out across southwestern New Mexico. Sechrist calls it a “philanthropic hub,” an organization that can connect donors and nonprofits, hold and manage funds, help organizations become stronger and bring outside money into communities that might otherwise struggle to compete for it.
Sometimes that means helping a nonprofit with governance or financial compliance. Sometimes it means administering a fund. Sometimes it means responding when a wildfire or another emergency suddenly creates a need.
And sometimes it means simply taking care of the machinery behind a community project so the people doing the work can concentrate on doing it.
“We're very boots on the ground,” Sechrist said. “We hear something's going on, we investigate and we take action to try to fix it.”
The foundation primarily serves Grant, Luna, Catron and Hidalgo counties and is working to add Sierra County. It began more than a decade ago as the Grant County Community Foundation before adopting the Gila Community Foundation name as its reach became increasingly regional.
But Sechrist, who became executive director in 2024, has been less interested in what the organization is called than in what it can do. She came to the nonprofit sector by an indirect route. An accountant by training, Sechrist worked in the corporate world before moving to Mexico, where she eventually became director of fund development and marketing for a nonprofit private school in a rural community.
The experience introduced her to fundraising and to the particular challenges, and opportunities, of doing nonprofit work in smaller communities. She brought both that experience and her accountant's eye to the Gila Community Foundation.
One of the needs she found was not particularly glamorous but was consequential. Nonprofits can have worthy missions and committed volunteers and still struggle with the business side of operating an organization.
“They don't realize where they have to be compliant,” Sechrist said.
Through Pathways to Progress, a program Sechrist started after arriving at the foundation, organizations receive training and assistance in areas that include compliance, leadership, strategic planning and board governance.
When the effort began, Sechrist said, 49 of 185 nonprofits identified in Grant County were out of compliance. Of those, 45 have since become compliant.
The program has expanded into board governance training for nonprofits, municipalities, local governments and special districts, an effort Sechrist said has been successful enough that another organization is funding its expansion statewide.
It reflects one of the central ideas behind the foundation's work: Strengthening a community doesn't always mean starting another program. Sometimes it means making the programs already there stronger. That can be particularly important in a region with a surprising number of nonprofit organizations competing for a limited pool of money.
Sechrist said the foundation is encouraging organizations with similar missions to look for opportunities to collaborate, including pursuing grants together. Funders, she said, may be more receptive when they see several organizations joining forces to address the same problem rather than working independently in separate silos.
For some organizations, fiscal sponsorship offers another option. Instead of maintaining their own nonprofit structure, programs can operate under the foundation, which handles much of the financial administration and reporting.
The Youth Mural Program is one example.
But the foundation's role can look entirely different when a community need arrives without warning. When the Trout Fire struck the area, the foundation quickly established a fund and raised about $48,000, Sechrist said. The money helped evacuees, provided food and assisted residents returning home, including replacing refrigerators and even a well.
Money remains in the fund so the foundation can respond when another fire comes.
When the loss of SNAP benefits put additional pressure on families and food providers, Sechrist said the foundation again responded, directing additional money to food pantries in the four counties it serves. Those responses illustrate the advantage Sechrist sees in remaining closely connected to the communities the foundation serves.
“We're here,” she said.
The foundation also works from the other direction, helping bring larger sources of money into the region. Through a partnership with the Southline Transmission Project, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been directed to nonprofits in southwestern New Mexico, with additional grant cycles planned as the project moves forward.
Then there is Give Grandly, perhaps the foundation's most visible connection between local donors and local organizations. The annual giving effort has generated more than $1 million for participating nonprofits since it began, providing organizations of varying sizes an opportunity to tell their stories and reach donors throughout the region.
Behind all of those efforts is another part of the foundation's work that most people never see. It holds endowment funds for nonprofits, allowing smaller organizations to participate in a larger investment pool. It administers donor-advised funds, allowing donors to make a contribution when it makes financial sense for them and decide over time which local organizations they want to support. And it can serve as the financial home for community projects that might never need, or be able to support, their own nonprofit organization.
For a staff of four, it is a broad portfolio. Sechrist doesn't pretend the Gila Community Foundation has the resources of larger community foundations elsewhere in New Mexico. In fact, she jokingly describes it as “the baby over in the corner.” But being smaller, she believes, can also mean being closer.
“If our constituents call us, we're there,” she said.
That proximity may ultimately be the foundation's most important asset. Its work isn't confined to writing checks. It is helping a nonprofit get its paperwork in order so it can qualify for funding, teaching a board how to govern, giving several organizations a reason to collaborate, connecting a donor with a community need or creating a place where money can quickly be collected when disaster strikes.
Sechrist says it is a considerable departure from the corporate accounting world where she began. She still deals with numbers. They simply mean something different now.
“You're not sitting in an office plugging numbers all day,” she said. “You're out there, you're in the community and you're doing things that matter.”
And much of the time, the best evidence that the foundation's work is succeeding may be something happening somewhere else — a food pantry with additional resources, a nonprofit that has gotten its financial house in order, a family getting help after a fire. Or another blank wall becoming a mural.
