One of the priorities for the Charles Butt Foundation is supporting the community our founder calls home. Throughout the Greater San Antonio area, the Foundation provides seed funding and support for initiatives demonstrating the greatest potential to improve the lives of local children and families, schools, and the overall community.
Recognizing the importance of early development of children, the Foundation supported the establishment of Early Matters, a community-driven organization created to “catalyze the power of people, partnerships, and investments to make San Antonio the best place in the country for children and families.”
Collaboration is a core value of the Charles Butt Foundation and represents an essential building block in marshalling all stakeholders to ensure our youngest San Antonians have a strong start. As a part of ensuring a strong start for children, the Foundation is supporting the establishment of the first Educare Center in Texas in the southern sector of San Antonio. Educare provides a model of research-based, high-quality childcare from birth to age 5.
Expanding into PK-12 education in San Antonio, the Foundation is a proud lead supporter of CAST Schools, a growing network of innovative schools designed in partnership with local public school districts, industry partners, and community leaders to provide students with authentic experiences in high potential career pathways.
To foster real-world learning across the region, the Foundation supports SA Works, which provides job shadowing and internship experiences for high school and college students throughout San Antonio.
Since post-secondary education and training is essential for employment in today’s economy, the Foundation supports both Alamo Promise, which provides two-year, tuition-free certification or an associate’s degree at any of the Alamo Colleges, and the National Post-Secondary Strategy Institute national network, focused on increasing college and career outcomes for low-income and minority students throughout the region.
Building on the value of research and data-informed problem-solving in education, two of the organizations and initiatives that the Charles Butt Foundation supports augment San Antonio’s capacity to learn together and to assemble essential data for more informed decision-making. The UP Partnership is a local nonprofit committed to using data and aligning resources to create equitable systems and ensure all young people in Bexar County are ready for the future. The San Antonio Education Forums, presented by the SA Report, annually bring together educators with civic, business, and non-profit leaders to address Bexar County’s most pressing PK-12 public education challenges and opportunities. Each of these organizations foster deep collaboration across sectors in San Antonio to improve the educational outcomes of the region’s children.
With the onset of the pandemic, technology and access to the internet became essential for students and for families. Over the years, the San Antonio region has struggled with digital access, so a team of community leaders, with initial support from the Charles Butt Foundation, created a public-private-community collaboration called SA Digital Connects. The collaborative developed the San Antonio and Bexar County Digital Equity Plan, which is advocating with city and county officials to designate local, state, and federal funding for initiatives to close the digital divide, and will track and report progress in un/under-served areas disproportionally impacting some of San Antonio’s most vulnerable families and individuals, including PK-12 students.