Meet our members!  AFN’s greatest asset is our members—a diverse network of national, regional, and community-based foundations, financial institutions, and grantmakers—investing in advancing equitable wealth building and economic mobility. Check back each month and meet your peers!   

1: What is the mission of your organization and how is advancing equitable wealth building and economic mobility incorporated into the work?

Our mission is to serve our community by mobilizing and stewarding resources to create equitable opportunities for all. At the core of this is a belief that when we support community power-building, increase nonprofit capacity, and incorporate Trust-Based Philanthropy practices, we can support solutions around wealth building and economic mobility that are built by and for the community. As a community foundation, one of our greatest assets is our role as a convener and connector, so we keep that at the forefront of what we do.

 

2: How does your organization bridge the racial wealth gap?

We build a big table! And if the table isn’t working, we allow it to become what it needs to be to work for the community, metaphorically speaking. For example, as we have begun work around the Foundation’s advocacy agenda, our team has designed that strategy by listening to what the community, particularly BIPOC folks, see as our greatest advocacy needs.

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3: Where are we lacking investments as a sector that will result in greater economic equity, and how can we address the gap?

I’d like to see community foundations, in particular, play a bigger role in guaranteed basic income programs. At our foundation, we think about using all the “philanthropic tools in our toolbox” in a coordinated way and then finding ways for our donor-advised fund holders and other New Mexico funders to collaborate. As a small state, New Mexico may not have a huge number of foundations, but it is tight-knit, and I am proud of how we have collaborated to achieve more coordinated and collaborative investments.

 

4: Share a question you would like to raise to your AFN community.

How do you you bring your board along in your asset/wealth building strategies?

 

5: What have been some of the biggest benefits of being part of the Asset Funders Network?

Community! Resource sharing, relationships and being part of a peer network dedicated to the same thing.

 

6: What event or activity in your community have you most enjoyed resuming in the past year?

Festival Flamenco Albuquerque – one of the largest flamenco festivals in the world!


About Marisa Magallanez, Chief Operating Officer,  Community Foundation

I oversee the strategic direction and day-to-day operations at the Foundation. The Albuquerque Community Foundation’s mission is to serve our community by mobilizing and stewarding resources to create equitable opportunity for all. The Foundation’s geographic area includes Bernalillo, Valencia, Torrance and Sandoval counties in New Mexico.