100+ Women Who Care marks sponsor support, nears $90,000 in grants

A quarterly dinner has turned into a durable funding stream for Los Alamos nonprofits. 100+ Women Who Care–Los Alamos now counts more than 200 members, has moved nearly $90,000 into local grants, and has built a repeatable process that turns modest individual donations into one concentrated award each quarter.

How the giving circle moves money

The mechanics are simple enough to be copied, but disciplined enough to matter. Members gather for philanthropic dinners, share a meal, hear five-minute presentations from three nominated local nonprofits, and then vote on which organization will receive the pooled donations. That format keeps the process local, public, and easy to follow, which is part of why it has lasted since the Los Alamos chapter was founded in August 2015.

The model does more than create a social calendar. It creates a recurring decision point for community money, with each dinner translating volunteer participation into a grant that can be tracked, discussed, and repeated. In a small county where nonprofit budgets often rely on a patchwork of public and private support, that regularity is part of the story.

A volunteer structure, not a single gatekeeper

The chapter’s leadership is spread across a steering committee rather than centered on one person. The group lists Ellen Specter, Diana Martinez, Janet Lovato, Carol A. Clark, Angie Bratton, and Jennifer Wetteland on that committee, showing that the operation rests on shared volunteer labor.

That matters for transparency. A broad committee makes the giving circle more than a one-off fundraiser tied to a single organizer’s network. It also helps explain how the group has been able to keep the same basic structure going over many cycles: someone has to coordinate the nominations, the dinner logistics, the voting, and the follow-through that sends funds to the selected nonprofit.

From five founders to a countywide funding stream

The Los Alamos chapter was founded in August 2015 by Kristy Ortega, Stephanie Garcia Richard, Debbie Shelton, Marvel Kellogg, and Carol A. Clark. What started as a local version of a simple giving circle has grown into one of the county’s more consistent private grant channels.

The chapter says it has granted nearly $90,000 to a dozen local organizations. Earlier and later coverage pushes the total a bit higher, saying the group has granted over $90,000 to dozens of local nonprofits. Taken together, those figures show the same thing from two angles: the giving circle has outgrown its origins and become a meaningful part of Los Alamos County’s nonprofit ecosystem.

What the awards look like in practice

The best evidence of the model is not abstract. At the group’s 10th-anniversary gathering in August 2024, members voted to award $4,500 to Los Alamos Makers. The Family YMCA and the Los Alamos Arts Council were returned to the nonprofit pool for future consideration, which shows how the selection process keeps organizations in rotation even when they do not win on a given night.

That is a useful civic detail for readers who want to understand how private giving is allocated. Each dinner creates a short list of local needs, forces a decision, and leaves a public trail of which organization received support and which ones remain in the mix. Over time, that makes the group’s grants easier to measure than a general donation campaign with no fixed selection process.

Why the sponsor relationship matters

Enterprise Bank & Trust has supported the effort annually from the beginning, and that continuity is central to how the model works. These dinners depend on sponsorship to cover food and logistics, the practical costs that make the voting process possible without eating away at the grant pool.

Liddie Martinez, who has served as Market President and Director of Community Engagement for Enterprise Bank & Trust in Los Alamos for nearly a decade, is part of the local context behind that support. Enterprise’s own community materials describe its role as extending beyond banking into charitable organizations and community development, which helps explain why the sponsorship has been sustained year after year.

That institutional backing is now paired with another layer of support. Recent notices say the Los Alamos Community Foundation is serving as fiscal agent for both 100+ Women Who Care and 100 Men Who Care. In practical terms, that gives the giving circles a formal administrative home and adds another piece of local infrastructure around the volunteer-run model.

Why this matters in Los Alamos

The value of 100+ Women Who Care–Los Alamos is not just that it raises money. It shows how a small group of residents can create a dependable grant stream that is locally controlled, easy to understand, and closely tied to community needs. The chapter has already shown measurable results in the form of repeated grants, a growing membership base, and support that has reached at least a dozen organizations and likely more as the total has climbed past $90,000.

For Los Alamos County, that is the real accountability story. This is a private donation network that does not replace public funding, but it can fill gaps quickly, visibly, and with local decision-making attached. In a place where nonprofit capacity is always limited by time and money, that kind of recurring civic machinery is worth watching closely.