Q&A with Community Foundation of St. Joseph County’s Rose Meissner
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With a mission to connect people who care with causes that matter, the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County focused on education, housing, and continued county and regional partnerships for 2024.
Bolstered by the strong performance in the U.S. stock market, a Gift VIII grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc., and generous individual donations, the nonprofit’s assets crossed the $300 million mark this year.
Inside INdiana Business spoke with President Rose Meissner, who has been with the organization since inception, about the focus areas for 2024, the importance of regional partnership as well as what 2025 could bring.
This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Let’s start with what the Community Foundation’s most significant milestones or accomplishments for 2024 were?
Well, 2024 was a terrific year for the Community Foundation of St Joseph County. We recently hit $300 million in assets, which is a really wonderful milestone. We have lots of positive momentum provided by the Lilly Endowment and their Gift VIII initiative. A lot of our growth is in response to a matching grant that they’re giving us, which will build our community endowment fund. That’s particularly delightful because it increases the amount of money we have available to give out to charity every year. So lots of positive momentum, obviously, a very strong year in the stock market. A lot of generosity coming forward in response to those Lilly opportunities. So really, a great year overall.
Are there any specific issues or causes that the organization focused on this year?
The Lilly Endowment gave us an opportunity to pursue two major grants. We used one planning grant to collaborate with the city of South Bend on their Downtown Vision 2045 planning process. So we’re really excited to see where that plan goes and to figure out how the Community Foundation can play a role in it.
Additionally, we reached out to our colleagues in Elkhart and Marshall counties and achieved another planning grant, which we awarded to MACOG (Michiana Area Council of Governments) so that they could commission a very extensive regional housing study. That’s really important at this point in time, because we have so many new jobs coming online, and we already have a shortage of affordable housing. So this study is going to really help all of us be more strategic about increasing the supply.
Meissner speaks on a couple of successful partnerships that happened this year.
One of the things that we’re really focused on right now is continuing to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and trying to help our students get back on track in terms of their aspirations and opportunities. We spend a lot of time focused on maximizing the number of students who can go to college through the 21st Century Scholars Program. Two years ago, the state automatically enrolled all students who are eligible if they’re from a low-income household. That actually quadrupled the number of students in St Joseph County that have a shot at that scholarship. So we spend a lot of time working with educational partners trying to help the students and families understand that opportunity and help them through the process.
From what I’m hearing, the strategic areas for this year were housing and education. Were there any other areas?
One direction we’ve been moving in with a lot of encouragement from the Lilly Endowment and others, is trying to collaborate across sectors. We’re working more with the municipalities and with economic development organizations. We really have to kind of team up, because there’s not enough charity in the world. There’s not enough tax money in the world to achieve the results that we need to achieve. So collaborating and looking for synergies and common cause has been really a big theme for us.
Looking back on the year, were there any partnerships that really yielded a very successful collaboration?
Our work with K-12 organizations, higher-ed and youth serving organizations around this 21st Century Scholars initiative has been really effective. We are tracking the data closely, and we expect every year to show that hundreds of additional kids are achieving a college scholarship as a result of our focused effort here.
Do you know what areas the Community Foundation will be focusing on for 2025?
Many community foundations have submitted grant proposals to Lilly Endowment, and we hope to know in the coming weeks whether we were successful or not. If we are successful, 2025 will have a lot to do with affordable housing.
You mentioned working with municipalities. What does that relationship look like in terms of the public-private partnership?
There’s a very strong team at the Department of Community Investment at the city of South Bend, led by Caleb Bauer, and under Mayor James Mueller’s leadership. There’s about a billion dollars of investment already written in ink that is coming into the downtown area. So our collaboration is to make sure that as those new jobs come online, as the Madison Lifestyle District takes shape, the Memorial Hospital expansion, that we improve the housing options for people in the downtown area. We’re collaborating on that, and we hope to work with the city of South Bend and the housing authority to develop brand new mixed income housing that will be an important component of this bigger downtown vision.
What’s the biggest lesson from this year that you’re going to be taking into next year?
Well, we know a lot more about the need for more affordable housing than we ever did before. That’s a very complex area. It’s kind of hard to get the market to pencil out in terms of the gap between what people can afford to pay and what it costs to build new units. We’re much better informed about that challenge than we’ve ever been, and we look forward to putting that knowledge to good use in the coming years.
Nice! And as we go into 2025 what message would you like to share with the St. Joseph County Community?
As I look forward to 2025 my emphasis is on trying to build collaboration, cooperation and unity among the members of our local community. It’s an important moment to keep a long view on things and to keep working with our neighbors on things that we can all unite around.