No matter how far Blue Jays fly after they graduate, many still remember their roots and live Elizabethtown College’s motto, “Educate for Service.” Bill Smith ’91 is one of those alumni and now serves in Santa Fe, New Mexico as the president and CEO of the Santa Fe Community Foundation.
The Santa Fe Community Foundation awards grants to help support, grow and improve the communities of northern New Mexico, in counties near Santa Fe. According to Smith, the foundation has a broad range of giving interests, including but not limited to education, environmental issues, homelessness, the arts and cultural heritage.
The foundation works with donors, family foundations and other organizations to help them fund solutions to civic issues.
“As a community foundation, we work with everyone in the community to foster a culture of giving,” Smith said.
Part of Smith’s responsibilities at the foundation is reading grant proposals and requests for proposals (RFPs) and going on site visits to potential grantees, nonprofits or other organizations that might receive grant funds through the foundation and its community partners.
The Santa Fe Community Foundation also has an initiative called the Envision Fund, which is the largest fund devoted to helping the LGBTQ+ community in New Mexico. The Envision Fund “promotes the health, safety and empowerment of at-risk and underserved LGBTQ+ New Mexicans,” according to the Santa Fe Community Foundation website.
“I love reading those requests for proposals and doing those site visits,” Smith said.
However, Smith was not always the one reading grant proposals; he used to be the one writing them. Before joining the Santa Fe Community Foundation, Smith spent the majority of his career doing policy and advocacy work.
Smith studied political science at Etown and went on to do graduate level work at Villanova University, University of Notre Dame and the Catholic University of America.
“I had aspirations of being involved in politics,” Smith said.
Smith’s first job after graduate school was working for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which launched his career in public health policy. Over the years, Smith has been the Executive Director of the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD) in Washington, D.C. and the Vice President for Public Policy at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
Currently, Smith serves as a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy and a guest lecturer at the University of New Mexico, in addition to his current roles at the Santa Fe Community Foundation.
While working in Washington, D.C., Smith went to New Mexico for work and continued to visit for work reasons until he became the president and CEO of the Santa Fe Community Foundation and moved to New Mexico.
“I just fell in love with New Mexico,” Smith said.
Smith has worked in Mexico, Chile, the Dominican Republic and other Spanish-speaking countries on health-related issues. He said that New Mexico has a large Latin American community, which he enjoys.
“Santa Fe is like nowhere else with the melding and sometimes conflicts between cultures,” Smith said.
While at Etown, Smith took a Latin American politics class with professor of international studies emeritus Dr. Wayne A. Selcher, which Smith said he enjoyed and found inspiring.
Other Etown professors who influenced Smith were former professor of political science W. Wesley McDonald, Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus Paul Gottfried and professor of political science E. Fletcher McClellan.
Smith was also influenced by the motto “Educate for Service.”
“I learned that ‘Educate for Service’ is more than just a couple words,” Smith said.
He continues giving to the College because he came from a working family and would not have afforded his undergraduate education without financial aid.
Smith’s favorite quote is “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” by Martin Luther King, Jr. Because of this quote, Smith uses #arcbenders on his Facebook posts.
“That’s how I want to be remembered, in that vein of Martin Luther King,” Smith said.
Smith said that social justice issues have always been his passion and have shaped his career of service. He advised current students interested in service-related careers to find their own passion.
“Follow your love. Figure out what you care about and pursue that work,” Smith said.
If you want to learn more about the Santa Fe Community Foundation, visit https://www.santafecf.org.
