The Ripple Effect: The Legacy of Charles and Margery Barancik

By Ryan G. Van Cleave | September 2022

While Sarasota is known for having a generous philanthropic spirit, certain issues—hunger, environment, education, to name just a few—remain a challenge for our community. That’s why Chuck and Margie Barancik decided to launch a family foundation in 2014. “We can’t change the world,” they realized, “but we can change little pieces of it and hope for a ripple effect.”

To create those needed ripple effects, they brought in a philanthropic expert: Teri Hansen.

When Teri first came to our community, it was to help Gulf Coast Community Foundation move from a nascent organization into a powerhouse for positive change. As president and CEO, she did exactly that, helping the foundation award nearly $200 million in grants and initiatives that received regional and statewide attention during her 13-year tenure.

“I’m a startup person,” Teri explains about her 2015 career change when she joined the Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation as its first CEO. “I like to build things and create a culture. I want to get the right people in play and show what an organization can do.”

She was impressed by the Baranciks both for their quiet, humble lives as well as their mission “to make a meaningful difference in the areas of education, humanitarian causes, arts and culture, environment, and medical research in Sarasota and beyond.” Teri knew she was the right person to help them create long-term, systematic changes.  

While some foundations seem to sit on money, the Barancik Foundation is responsive and engaged. They partner with government and local groups to make a difference, such as how they partnered with 70+ local groups and organizations to create the First 1,000 Days Suncoast initiative, which explored how our community could better provide families with the foundational support that’s so vital for babies during those critical early years. The Foundation also responded to the growing mental health crisis with Here4YOUth, which sought to improve the mental health system of care to more effectively meet the needs of children and youth.

As a former educator, Margie had a soft spot for schools, teachers, and children, which led to the TIME (Time to Inspire Margie’s Educators) fellowship. The financial support of this 2022 initiative—awarding as many as 25 fellowships to local educators—has the goal of honoring their efforts and helping renew their commitment to teaching. Through this fellowship, a teacher recruitment/retention program, and other initiatives, the Barancik Foundation has invested more than $7 million into professional development for Sarasota County Schools. 

After 60 years of marriage, Chuck and Margie met an untimely fate when they were both killed in a car crash in 2019. Their legacy of giving lives on however through the Foundation and their children, who work closely with Teri and the Foundation. With Teri at the helm, the commitment to shape our community and enrich the lives of all people continues. 

To note just one of many forthcoming efforts, the Foundation is launching a community news collaborative this fall—a not-for-profit newsroom with an editor and five or six reporters who will provide and push out content to distributors such as The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Observer, and Sarasota Scene Magazine. The goal is to ensure that our community has the journalism we need to cover things that are important to civic life. 

“Everybody’s cutting way back and we need somebody covering things like the school board and County Commission meetings,” Teri notes. “We need to ensure we have an informed citizenry, and this will provide a lot of real news for people to help make decisions about their community. Plus, it’ll be a not-for-profit, so it won’t have an angle. They won’t be worrying about whether someone will still buy ads from them—they’ll just cover what needs to be covered and do what needs to be done.”

Many people didn’t realize the kind of wealth the Baranciks had. Chuck, a Chicago native, had a knack for buying and developing companies that earned him hundreds of millions of dollars. But you wouldn’t know it from how they lived, since they preferred to help from behind the scenes. The spotlight simply didn’t appeal to them.

“A woman who played bridge with Margie for more than 20 years learned about their wealth when it was announced that I was leaving Gulf Coast to run their foundation,” Hansen says. “The woman admitted that ‘I had no idea they had that kind of money, and I’ve known them for 30 years.’” That was a goal they had—lead a normal life. They didn’t want to live in a huge estate or with the trappings of great wealth that might separate them from friends and family.

“One of the biggest compliments Chuck ever gave me was that he never dreamed the Foundation could be doing the kind of things it was doing,” Teri says. “He was SO happy.” Yet Teri knows that philanthropy isn’t the answer to everything—it’s just one piece of the larger puzzle. It takes philanthropy, citizenry, and government all working together. All three sectors have to be part of the equation, and the Foundation is eager to play its part.

As impactful as the Foundation is, perhaps the most telling legacy of Chuck and Margie is their three children. “Chuck got into philanthropy by watching his children get involved with volunteering,” Teri explains. “They were the ones who taught him philanthropy.” Had the children simply been living their own lives like so many other young people, the Foundation might never have been created.

Even more impressive is how they handled the $700 million estate. They didn’t squabble over how it was to be divided. Together, they agreed that the money wasn’t theirs to take. All along, their parents’ plan was to give it away, and the children always supported that plan. They simply wanted to remain involved in the Foundation to ensure that more “little changes and ripple effects” happen, just like their parents intended. Just like their children taught them to do.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about the Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation, please visit www.barancikfoundation.org