PRESS

CHANGING CHARITY

$10 million campaign aims to increase philanthropy along border

By Sandra Dibble
STAFF WRITER Union Tribune
April 19, 2003

TIJUANA – Off a quiet street near the city's main bus station, Tijuana's Asociación Civil Para Cuadriplégicos scrapes by with donations of used electric mattresses, wheelchairs and other necessities.

"There are too many of us in need, and there is little help," said Rodrigo Malagón, director of Tijuana's only nonprofit group for quadriplegics, himself paralyzed from the neck down.

But now a $10 million campaign to increase philanthropy along the U.S.-Mexican border could boost the prospects of Malagón's group and hundreds of others. A coalition of nine major foundations including the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Mexico's Fundación Gonzalo Río-Arronte has set out to strengthen the fund-raising capacities of 21 smaller community foundations that, in turn, support hundreds of nonprofit groups.

Explosive population growth has created vast social needs along the border. Those needs are especially great in Mexico, where federal and local governments don't have enough money to meet pressing infrastructure, education and health-care demands.

Though northern Mexico is the country's wealthiest region, many border residents don't reap the benefits of living there.

"The growing social problems of the border cannot be solved by government alone," said Richard Kiy, president and chief executive officer of the San Diego-based International Community Foundation. "The community needs to play a role – people need to give of themselves, and they need to give to their community."

Efforts to promote organized philanthropy along the border go back a decade, said Jorge Villalobos, who directs the Mexican Center for Philanthropy in Mexico City. But it is only now that the region is seeing results through the U.S.-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership, the combined effort of the nine foundations managed by the New York-based Synergos Institute.

The challenges are numerous.
North of the border, many potential donors don't know where to go to support Mexican organizations. And in Mexico, the philanthropic culture is far weaker: Existing laws provide few tax breaks to charitable donors, and decades of rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party created the expectation that it is up to the government to meet social needs.

Though based in San Diego, the International Community Foundation focuses on the Baja California peninsula. The group has already distributed $1.2 million in grants; its goal is to increase the level of donations to $10 million a year.
"We're saying our community is binational, it respects no political boundaries," Kiy said. To raise donor awareness, the foundation has worked with its Tijuana counterpart, the Fundación Internacional de la Comunidad, to compile detailed information about 106 nonprofit groups in Baja California. The various organizations care for the dying, protect street children, defend wildlife, strengthen indigenous cultures and fight for human rights.
The list includes well-established groups such as the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Mexican government-funded think tank outside Tijuana.

But others are far smaller:
La Familia de Paco, A.C., in Mexicali works with a $66,000 budget and six-member staff and volunteers to care for people with incurable diseases who have been abandoned or are unable to care for themselves.

Comité de Participación y Defensa Ciudadana, A.C., is a citizens group in Tecate whose past campaigns led to the creation of a city park and the preservation of archaeologically sensitive areas.
Asociación Voluntaria para la Protección y Cuidado de Animales, A.C., in Tijuana operates with 21 volunteers and a $2,800 annual budget to reduce the number of strays and to protect animals from abuse.

The list is a good way of making people aware of Baja California's nonprofits, said Marcela Merino, director of Fronteras Unidas Pro Salud in Tijuana. Her group offers low-income families medical care and education in sexual and reproductive health.

The International Community Foundation will rely heavily on the list when it launches its "Give 2 Baja" campaign. By channeling contributions through the foundation, donors can receive U.S. tax breaks.

Rodrigo Malagón has experienced the government's limitations firsthand. The father of three was working in Long Beach as a general contractor when an assailant shot him in the neck seven years ago, leaving him paralyzed.

At the time, he was in the process of getting U.S. residency. Denied government help, he moved his family into his father's house in Tijuana.

The state of Baja California offered little assistance: 10 diapers a month and a monthly food basket. But Malagón, now 37, needed around-the-clock care. Realizing that others shared his predicament, he used $20,000 he received from a U.S. court settlement after his injury to start the Asociación Civil Para Cuadriplégicos.

Not yet 3 years old, the group subsists on a $12,000 annual budget and on donations from groups such as Wheels for Humanity, based in North Hollywood.

"Every day, every day I receive a call from someone who needs something," Malagón said.

For more information, go to the following Web sites: www.icfdn.org, www.fundacionicomunidad.org.mx and www.synergos.org.

Sandra Dibble: (619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com

Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.