Announcing the Spring 2025 Community Based Grant Awardees!

Published on Thursday, August 21, 2025

We are pleased to announce the Spring 2025 Community Based Grant awardees. The Foundation has awarded a total of $50,000 to eleven organizations that are focused on supporting STEM learning opportunities and career pathway efforts throughout Central and Northern New Mexico. We congratulate and applaud each Spring 2025 awardee listed below.

During the recent open, competitive cycle, we received many wonderful requests for program, project, and special event support seeking to serve learners and communities in Central and Northern New Mexico. We admire the efforts of the many brilliant STEM entrepreneurs, educators, and champions who responded to our request for nominations via the open Community Based Grant funding cycle. While we could not fund all the requests received during this recent window, we applaud the talents, creativity, and passion of each nominator who submitted a grant request to advance STEM learning opportunities and career pathway support in their communities.

As we transition from summertime into the traditional school year, we are thrilled to highlight the Spring 2025 Community Based Grant awardees, which includes the Foundation’s first Collaborative Grant recipient.

Please join us in congratulating the following organizations and their grant funded efforts:

• Alliance of Indigenous Math Circles: To support lodging for high school aged youth from the surrounding areas and Pueblos to attend the annual Alliance of Indigenous Math Circles Math Camp, a math enrichment experience for students, held for the first time at Santa Fe Indian School.
• Gallup Children’s Museum: To support student intern stipends and the production of an AI Sandbox Exhibit—an augmented reality (AR) sandbox that can teach topography, natural science, & computer science. This effort will offer interns an opportunity to be involved in the exhibit development process by participating in hands-on sessions to gain relevant skills: such as, depth sensing; projection mapping; and exhibit construction; all while creatively designing an AR- based learning tool.
• Girls Inc. of Santa Fe: To support operational and program costs to host STEM Week, a weeklong camp that fosters hands-on learning experiences in math, engineering, and coding—held during the organization’s annual summer camp programming in Santa Fe.
• Indigitize: To provide operational support related to the effort’s SkoCode “Let’s Go Code” initiative, which delivers computer science and AI literacy training to youth and young adults in tribal communities and surrounding areas in Central and Northern New Mexico.
• La Fonda Foundation: To support the organization’s Family Services Program, which assists children of hospitality workers in Santa Fe to attend high-quality, STEM-based out-of-school time programming. Participation in these programs seek to build critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and confidence amongst the student learners.
• MathAmigos: To support teacher professional development and stipend support for attendance at a “mini-course” workshop, which delivers relevant math enrichment tips, tools, and ideas for teachers to further support their student’s math instruction in Northern New Mexico classrooms.
• New Mexico Tech Foundation: To support undergraduate teacher assistant stipends to deliver robotics engineering and design instruction, which includes the usage of programmable combat robots, NASA-inspired six-wheeled rovers, and robotic arms. This effort is for youth participants at summer camps held in Albuquerque and Socorro via the Mayhem Robotics Outreach Program.
• Northern New Mexico Recreation and Outdoor Conservation Fdn.: To support the Moon Chile Challenge, a citizen science initiative, with Chama Valley School students to grow Chimayo chile plants, collect data, and 3D print growing structures, which will add knowledge to ongoing research efforts that will one day will help grow chile on the Moon.
• STEMarts Lab: To support the expansion of STEAM Teams, a hybrid internship and mentorship opportunity for youth and young adults in Northern New Mexico that fosters the linkages between digital media, AI/data science, space science, and storytelling with real-world, sci-art installations that are showcased at major immersive art festivals.

Due to an increased interest in collaborations amongst applicants, we offered a Collaborative Grant funding opportunity to nurture synergy between two partnering organizations:

• Taos Center for the Arts & UNM-Taos HIVE: To support stipends and related intern expenses for the TCA’s Inter-Arts Internship program, which will fund a six-month, youth-led Creative Tech Studio intern experience in partnership with UNM-Taos’ HIVE. Through the Creative Tech Studio, interns will design and develop a community-centered app, specially designed for a Taos-based event. Interns will utilize a design thinking approach to conduct user research, develop prototype(s), and iterate the design based on real-life community needs. The resulting app will be revealed at showcase event, which celebrates the interns and their app development accomplishments.

The Foundation’s Community Based Grant funding program seeks to support charitable activities that increase access to STEM learning opportunities and career pathway support. This funding program awards grants to operational, programmatic, and/or special event activities in Central and Northern New Mexico.

Once again, congratulation to the Spring 2025 Community Based Grant awardees!