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Sunny. High 49F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph..
Cloudy with snow showers developing after midnight. Low 24F. Winds light and variable. Chance of snow 30%.
Betty Gonzales, Virginia Romero and Teddie Santistevan at the Talpa Community Farmers Market. Photo by Kathryn Hayden
Allegra Sleep stands next to the utility box she helped transform. Photo by Kathryn Hayden
Sonya Struck talks with a community member at Taos Plaza Live. Photo by Jay Brouchard.
Betty Gonzales, Virginia Romero and Teddie Santistevan at the Talpa Community Farmers Market. Photo by Kathryn Hayden
Allegra Sleep stands next to the utility box she helped transform. Photo by Kathryn Hayden
Sonya Struck talks with a community member at Taos Plaza Live. Photo by Jay Brouchard.
There’s a good chance you’ve already seen a few recent projects the LOR Foundation has supported in Taos:
the vibrant mural local artist Lynette Haozous created downtown; the traffic signal boxes sporting artwork created by high school students; the Talpa Community Farmers Market, which launched this year to better support local growers.
LOR provided funding to help bring each of these initiatives to life, and they represent just a few of the nearly 200 projects LOR has supported since it began working with Taos more than a decade ago.
LOR is a private foundation that works with rural communities across the Mountain West to improve quality of life. What that looks like: LOR provides funding in the form of grants to locals who bring forward solutions to community problems.
For example, when Taos sunset its plastic recycling program in 2019, a local group, Taos Initiative for Life Together (TiLT), came up with the idea to repurpose the plastic into building material. All they needed was a piece of equipment to make it happen and LOR was able to provide the funding to launch the project. Today, some of that recycled material has been used to build walls and benches at the Questa Farmers Market and other locations
To facilitate grant-making like this, LOR hires locals who are deeply connected to listen widely for community priorities and ideas. In Taos, that’s community officer Sonya Struck. Born and raised in Taos, Struck has long been involved as a volunteer or board member with community organizations and, today, she listens to community needs through her service with Rotary, 100% Community, the Taos Housing Partnership and others.
“Civic service has always been a priority for me, and I approach my work at LOR with a common interest; enhancing livability for the community we all love,” Struck says. “I am eager to hear solutions that improve quality of life and invite anyone to reach out.’”
While the results of LOR’s grant- making can be highly visible, the other support LOR offers is often less obvious. In listening to the community, Struck and her team also look for ways to connect Taoseños to access additional private and public funding.
For example, LOR has helped connect Taos to American Rescue Plan Act funding in a couple of ways: A grant from LOR in the summer of 2021 helped secure an additional $120,000 in ARPA funding for free summer programming for nearly 400 students. LOR has also helped fund a consultant to assist the town and county in prioritizing how it uses ARPA funds — while making sure locals voices were heard. LOR even puts together a monthly email of funding resources (LOR Helps) that anyone can sign up to receive.
LOR also conducts research that supports community priorities, contributing research to a statewide task force exploring what it would take to bring wellness spaces — like the ones it has funded in Taos — to schools across New Mexico.
And, buoyed by a LOR community survey that identified affordable housing as the single most pressing issue in Taos, the foundation helped fund a consultant to establish the Taos Housing Partnership, a nonprofit committed to developing housing in and around Taos.
“We understand that capacity and resources can be limited in rural communities like ours,” Struck says.
“LOR’s team works closely to under- stand the need in the community and bring resources back to places like Taos that otherwise might be left off the map.”
If LOR’s focus on supporting many, small place-based solutions that improve livability feels a little different than when the organization got started in Taos, that’s because it is. Early on, LOR focused on regional grant-making, primarily in the areas of land and water; included among its early funding were grants to support a multipronged effort to protect the Rio Fernando watershed, purchase land to expand Fred Baca Park, and buy land to help launch Not Forgotten Outreach, a veteran-founded nonprofit dedicated to the wellness of veterans and their families through agricultural and other therapeutic activities.
“Even as impactful as our early work was in Taos, we weren’t connecting with people directly as we needed to, though — and that’s a big part of our mission,” says LOR executive director Gary Wilmot. “We’ve also expanded our approach, exploring important matters like housing, education, and health among other things, because matters of livability are bigger still than land and water.”
LOR also expanded its place-based work to more communities in recent years. In addition to Taos, the foundation is currently working in Lander, Wyo.; Libby, Mont.; and Cortez and Monte Vista, Colo. — and, this month, LOR hired a community officer to begin working with Questa.
What hasn’t changed, says Wilmot, is LOR’s interest in connecting with people and supporting their ideas. “Every solution that we take up, we can trace back to an individual who had an idea, had some energy, and said, ‘I want to help my community,’” Wilmot says. “And that really is the essence of the LOR Foundation. It’s a person with an idea who’s ready to raise their hand; they just need a little help.”
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