This year, Community Foundation Tampa Bay celebrates 35 years of facilitating philanthropy and bolstering a regional network of nonprofit organizations working to improve lives and the quality of life across the Bay Area.
The Foundation reaches its anniversary alongside another milestone - $1 billion in commitments to support nonprofits working on community issues today and into the future. It’s another achievement for an organization that is the region’s largest grantmaker, the largest community foundation in Florida, and one of the largest in the country. Community Foundation Tampa Bay manages more than 1,200 charitable funds and 129 family foundations. In 2024, it distributed more than $32 million in grants to more than 1,200 nonprofits.
Back in 1990, it started with a $100 donation and two dedicated and determined founders.
“George and Debbie Baxter were the ones who had the dream and put it together,” says Sandy Rief, whose long involvement with the Foundation has included a lengthy stint as pro bono legal counsel and a term as board chair. “George’s vision, and the vision of the people he assembled moving forward, was that this was a way to facilitate philanthropy among the members of the community. These foundations had been operating around the country for years and some of them had some significant dollars in them. This was a way the community could come together, make contributions, set up funds, and have an unrestricted fund that could meet the specific needs of the community as they existed at the time.”
Difficult but rewarding
George Baxter recalls when the inspiration struck. He was a member of the Tampa Bay Estate Planning Council in the late 1980s and a representative of the Baltimore Community Foundation came to town and gave a talk to the group. Fascinated with what he heard, George Baxter was on a plane to Baltimore the next week to learn more. When he returned, he approached the Estate Planning Council’s leadership about starting a community foundation in Tampa Bay. At the time, he was unaware there had been several unsuccessful past attempts.
“I only knew of the previous one, which had been several years earlier,” George Baxter says. “So we did go into it very blindly. I had been on boards of some nonprofits and thought this would be an easy way to retire. It wasn’t. But it was truly extremely rewarding, although very difficult to get any interest initially. The assumption was it was just one more failed attempt.”
Those early days were full of challenges. The Community Foundation of Greater Tampa, as it was initially known, launched in January 1990 with an initial 42-member board of directors that never met and a staff of two who were essentially full-time volunteers - President and CEO George Baxter and Program Manager Debbie Baxter.
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Community Foundation Tampa BayCommunity Foundation Tampa Bay founders Debbie and George Baxter at the Foundation's 35th anniversary celebration.Seeking advice and insights on how to get the organization going, George Baxter sought out nationally known community foundation guru Eugene “Gene” Struckhoff. Struckhoff said the key to success was to meet with the big utilities, the telephone company, the large law firms, accounting firms, and banks and secure six-figure contributions, $500,000 in some cases, from each.
“Bottom line, at the end of the day we had eight telephones and no cash,” George Baxter says. “That’s how it started.”
“And that’s the truth,” Debbie Baxter adds.
There were some early efforts to add staff. The first secretary they brought on board did a great job but called the Baxters when they were at their first community foundation national conference to say she had to resign because she was not making enough money to pay her rent.
They stuck it out in those tough early months, uncertain when, or if, the tide would turn.
“We didn’t know,” George Baxter says. “It was extremely discouraging.”
In April 1990, four months after launching, the Foundation received its first financial donation - $100 from husband and wife Stuart Forbes, a Hillsborough Community College professor, and Peggy Forbes, a librarian at Berkeley Prep. Soon after, two members of the Community Foundation’s board, which had met for the first time in March 1990, also made $5,000 contributions. With that money, the Foundation was able to begin funding some projects and building a story it could share with the public, Debbie Baxter says.
A story to tell
With only enough money to fund small community grants and projects, George Baxter, a CPA who owned his own firm, turned out to have a skill for coming up with creative and impactful grant ideas.
“What I brought to the table was some creativity and, having had my own business, the ability to produce, to serve the donors, to cut through red tape, and make things happen,” he says. “Help the nonprofits take some risks and try to do some things. We could literally do anything as long as it was philanthropic. It was fun just to come up with ideas.”
“If George had not been super creative with some of the grants he made, which enabled me to tell the story, we would not have made the inroads we did,” Debbie Baxter says. “Everyone would say, ‘You’re a CPA, George, what are you doing being able to think up all these creative ideas?’“
George Baxter approached Hillsborough’s then-Superintendent of Schools Walter “Walt” Sickles and got permission to offer $500 grants to high school service clubs. The clubs applied through a simple application form. One of the first projects was a grant to build a tricycle track and buy tricycles for the children at New Life Dwelling Place, a residential program uniting single mothers with their children who had been placed in state custody. Other grants expanded debate teams to more public schools. Ten musicians from The Florida Orchestra were hired to rehearse and perform a joint concert with high school orchestras. Foundation grants also launched The Florida Orchestra’s free outdoor concerts in Hillsborough County.
Longtime Carrollwood Village Homeowners Association Board President Dick Woltmann, also the longtime president and CEO of nonprofit law firm Bay Area Legal Services, told George Baxter they were trying to put together an art festival in Carrollwood Village. George Baxter says Community Foundation donor Art Haedike gave money to launch the festival and built a temporary stage for performances. Today, Carrollwood has a cultural center and a vibrant arts scene.
Environmental group Tampa Bay Watch has been a grant recipient since both organizations' early years. Today, the Community Foundation continues to support the nonprofit’s programs through grants focused on environmental resiliency and sustainability.
Community Foundation volunteers often got as much out of their experience as the people they helped. That happened when middle-class families worked with migrants in south Hillsborough County and saw firsthand the conditions they lived in.
“Our world opened up tremendously,” George Baxter says.
Neighborhood associations received grants to launch community projects in the inner city. George Baxter says longtime City of Tampa administrator Fernando Noriega, Jr. praised the Community Foundation for making a big community impact with those small grants because they “told people their neighborhood is their neighborhood, their responsibility.”
George and Debbie Baxter also have fond memories of donors from the early years. There were Hazel Bryson and Harold Corrigan, close friends who were both widowed former teachers living in Sun City Center. George Baxter says Hazel lived in the lowest cost efficiency available in Sun City Center and donated half her money to charity. He says Harold had inherited wealth from his late wife and gave away about $100 a year until Hazel told him he could do more.
Through the Community Foundation, Hazel put book nooks in south Hillsborough
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Courtesy Community Foundation Tampa BayEarly donors Harold Corrigan and Hazel Bryson funded book and reading programs for school children in south Hillsborough County County schools with large populations of migrant students. School kids could buy a brand new book to take home for 50 cents or get it for free if they had no money. Hazel was also the founding donor of the Community Foundation affiliate covering the Sun City Center area and the $1.7 million endowment she left when she passed away in 2003 continues to fund nonprofits working on community issues in the South Shore area.
Harold was a retired teacher who did not know the impact his money could make on education until he got involved with the Community Foundation, George Baxter says. When he passed away at age 98, he left a $5 million endowment that will continue to fund educational programs long after his passing. Thanks to his contributions, more than 400 school principals and assistant principals have gone through an Eckerd College Leadership Development Institute management course designed for corporate executives. His philanthropy has funded grants that sent middle school students to a science camp at Eckerd College, supported summer bridge programs for kindergarteners and first and second graders, and paid for the Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) room at Eisenhower Middle School in Gibsonton.
Husband and wife Durward and Janet Siville also stand out, George Baxter says. As the couple grew older, they became less and less connected to the community, to the point even their neighbors didn’t know them. They were looking for a way to reconnect and make an impact.
George Baxter took them to tour Lowry Park Zoo (now ZooTampa at Lowry Park). Then he connected them with Sun City Center’s Sawdust Engineers woodworking shop to fund a grant program making benches, mating dens, and various additions to the zoo’s animal enclosures.
Durward Siville was in his 80s when he took that tour. It was his first time at a zoo since age 13. Durward and Janet Siville left a $6 million endowment to the Foundation and to the day he died Durward Siville talked about his trip to Lowry Park Zoo, George Baxter says.
“Everybody searches for meaning in their life,” he says. “I think the wealthier you become, the more you question what it’s all about. Good people, they’re searching. We brought meaning to people’s lives.”
Surviving and thriving
The Community Foundation’s rough road got smoother in December 1990. A person George Baxter knew gave $2 million as an anonymous donor. By the time the donor passed away he had given close to $14 million and trusted he‘d remain anonymous, “which to this day he is,” George Baxter says.
George and Debbie Baxter worked full-time at the foundation for 14 years before stepping down in 2004. Sandy Rief, the former board chair and long-time pro bono legal counsel, says the current-day Foundation continues to expand the reach and community impact of the philanthropic organization the Baxters persevered to build.
“George and Debbie Baxter wanted to make this organization succeed,” Rief says. “And the core group on the original board of directors all believed in this. They wanted it to be something the community would be proud of, something that would grow with the community. For a long time, the Community Foundation was one of the best-kept secrets. As time has gone on, that’s no longer the case.
Richard Dobkin has been involved with the Foundation from those early struggles, providing pro bono auditing services with Ernst and Young before serving on the board and numerous committees.
“The big challenge that the Community Foundation had was nobody knew what it was,” Dobkin says. “It was a tremendous challenge and I have all kinds of respect for George and Debbie. They’re the ones that made it happen. And it had to have been so frustrating for them because they were familiar with community foundations in other cities and knew what a community foundation could do, what it means to have it in your community. But to get that message out, to get people to believe, it was just a tremendous challenge. It was a lot of knocking on doors and you didn’t have the resources to support you in doing all that.”
“It was all about trust,” George Baxter says. When we started, the question was there: ‘Why should I give the Foundation money when you haven’t done much of anything and you may not be there? ’ My reply is all I offer you is trust - that we’re going to perform for you, that your money will be spent the way you want it spent and it will be a great investment. The strength came from us doing it together. When we had so much rejection the first year, if I hadn’t had Debbie there I probably would have given up, particularly when I realized the number of past attempts that had failed.”
For more information, go to Community Foundation Tampa Bay
This story is produced through an underwriting agreement between Community Foundation Tampa Bay and 83 Degrees Media.