Around Town with Roxie Jerde

By Lisa Codianne Fowler | Photo by Nancy Guth | July 2023

She’s the dynamic leader of Community Foundation of Sarasota County with a smile that lights up every room she enters. In her 12 years as President & CEO, she has made a significant impact on the foundation she leads, on many local nonprofits, and on our community. Meet Roxie Jerde— a good listener, a change-maker, a great visionary, and all-around great person! 

You are leading a new standard for philanthropic giving in our region. To what do you attribute the success of the foundation?

For a community foundation to be successful, it must embrace a few key priorities. The first is listening—a foundation can’t create impact if it doesn’t know what the community it serves needs, and there’s no better way than listening. When I first interviewed for this position and met the transition team, I was deeply impressed at the work they had done with the community to understand how, as a foundation, we could best achieve impact. The transition team had sought feedback from the community for more than a year, between surveys and focus groups. They thoughtfully collected input from our community about the direction those living here envisioned for our community foundation. Listening is the bedrock of assessing needs and aspirations, and it is key for community foundation success.

The second is for an organization to have a strong set of shared values and vision. I was fortunate in that there was a consistency of leadership prior to my arrival. I am only the second CEO in the 44 years of the foundation’s existence. Stewart Stearns, the founding CEO, laid the foundation and, with a terrific board, the team developed strategic drivers and a framework for what they wanted to accomplish. The blueprint that had been established was one that I believed in.

True success for any organization relies on a terrific team of people who all bring unique talents and ideas to shared goals. I often say all of us are smarter than one of us, and this is evident in the impact this team can achieve. When you’ve got great direction, you’re grounded in your values, and when you work with great people, amazing things happen!

You have built upon a well-established tradition to empower donors to ignite change through causes they care about. How do you support the work of nonprofit partners?

Our support for nonprofit organizations all starts with our donors. We have more than 1,600 funds that generous people have started with us to fulfill their vision of doing good in our community. Since many of our funds come from donors who have passed away, we take their wishes very seriously. They have spent their lifetime building wealth and we are overseeing the legacy of their intentions. With that in mind, we support nonprofits with grants that align with donors’ intentions, whether that’s supporting educational opportunities, environmental protection, the arts, or welfare, to name a few sectors donors are passionate about. 

Along with granting critical dollars to nonprofits, we also offer training opportunities. It’s important for nonprofits to build capacity to be able to fulfill their missions. Our nonprofit partners receive a monthly newsletter that is full of opportunities, upcoming trainings, and key information for strengthening nonprofit organizations. 

Finally, we host an uplifting and empowering event—the Giving Challenge—roughly every other year. The next one is April 9-10, 2024. The Giving Challenge is a 24-hour giving event that nonprofits can participate in to receive a surge in funding. It’s truly a community event, rooted in the notion that everybody can be a philanthropist. We partner with The Patterson Foundation, which offers a 1:1 match on all dollars given, up to $100.  The match really inspires giving. Through the challenge, donors give directly to their favorite nonprofits, so the match is very empowering to donors. Our last Giving Challenge in 2022 raised $16 million in unrestricted funds, which really gives nonprofits a boost. Since its inception, the Giving Challenge has raised $75 million.

How are you focused on how the foundation can evolve to better serve the community?

One strategic driver in our framework is what we call Excel. It’s how we can excel to be the best that we can be, so we set annual goals that allow us to aspire to new levels of donor engagement and donation stewardship.  Excelling for us means recruiting talented people and building a great culture so that we can do the work we’ve been entrusted to do. Do we have the best technology? How are we getting more efficient? Do we have the financial stability that is needed to sustain this organization? We’re constantly evaluating and looking at all these indicators of success.

We also consistently monitor how we can evolve our initiatives to achieve as much impact as possible. One initiative we have that directly serves the community, personally serving those in need, is Season of Sharing, which we do in collaboration with the Herald-Tribune Media Group. For 23 years, Season of Sharing has been a vital community safety net to our most vulnerable neighbors—people facing acute financial difficulties. Those in need can receive Season of Sharing funds with no red tape, so it’s efficient. These funds assist with rent or mortgage payments, childcare, utilities, and car repairs. Season of Sharing supports basic needs that allow people to stay in their homes. In its 23-year history, it has evolved to become more direct and efficient, so it can be a safety net in its truest sense, helping people rebound from crisis.

The Community Foundation is dedicated to work being grounded in data. How are you doing this?

It’s all about perception and reality. We want to understand where there are disparities in our community, where the needs are, and what is preventing people from thriving here. We can know anecdotally some of this information, but to truly target help to where it’s most needed, we must rely on objective data. With this in mind, we are getting ready to launch a community indicator dashboard based on what are called the social determinates of health: education, economics, housing, and health. We have partnered with an outside company that has access to data from the U.S. Census, Centers for Disease Control, Florida Department of Education, and other reliable data collection agencies. The dashboard gives us insights that will help us address the disparities in our communities, and as importantly, it is a useful tool for donors seeking ways to amplify their philanthropic dollars as well as nonprofits that want to ensure their missions are aligned with current needs and community desires. Since the beginning, the Community Foundation of Sarasota County has been a trusted source of knowledge about our community, and this tool allows us to level up in that arena.

What are the key volunteer leadership roles you have held?

I’ve been fortunate to serve on many boards. Since coming to Sarasota in 2011, my board service includes the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce, International Women’s Forum Suncoast, and Philanthropy Southeast (an association of 350 foundations across the Southeastern US).  I currently serve as an Ex Officio Board member of the Community Foundation, of course, and I am on the Lee Wetherington Foundation Board. 

In Kansas City, I was Chair of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation affiliate, Chair of the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault, Chair of the Greater KC Kappa Kappa Gamma Alumnae Association, Chair of Hand-in-Hand Folk Art Collection and served on the board of the Junior League. 

When you have free time, how do you spend it?

I spend a lot of time cycling—it’s one of my favorite hobbies. My husband Mike and I have been doing the Register’s Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa for 25 years. I also enjoy doing yoga.

Do you have summer travel plans?

Other than our bike ride across Iowa at the end of July, I’ll be traveling to Ireland with some of my college friends. We have a few days in Dublin and then we’ll stay at a charming house in the quaint town of Dingle. It’s a peaceful place for walking and just enjoying my dear friends, and, oh my, the people in Ireland could not be any nicer.