Meadows Foundation celebrates 75 years

With goals set to the future, The Meadows Foundation just celebrated its 75th year of providing grants to non-profit organizations across Texas.

Meadows Foundation CEO Peter Miller said that the foundation has provided over 20 organizations with donations that total approximately $11,200,900, with areas of funding focus ranging from arts and culture, civic and public affairs, education, environment, health and human services, educator preparation, water conservation, depression and homelessness.

Miller said Algur and Virginia Meadows–his great aunt and uncle–created the foundation using the funds that had been developed through Algur’s career in the oil industry.

Miller said when he passed, he left much of what he had amassed during his career to the Meadows Foundation.

“We only grant money in Texas,” Miller said. “He felt that he had made his money in Texas, and he wanted to give it back to the people of Texas.”

Miller said the foundation has granted $11.2 million to various causes in and around San Marcos–47 grants to 20 different organizations.

The first grant was to Texas State University in 1990. He said the most notable grants to the city were for acquiring and preserving 251 acres of Edwards Aquifer recharge zones, a grant to the San Marcos River Foundation toward acquiring a permanent conservation easement to protect the San Marcos springs and river and acquiring water rights in the Guadalupe River to be included in the Water Trust of Texas at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

Miller said the Meadows Foundation gave a grant in July 2012 that created the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, a champion of Spring Lake and its seven remaining endangered species and a Central Texas watchdog for river and spring flows.

'It’s got quite the history,” Miller said, noting that where the center is now was once the location of the long-remembered shows featuring diving mermaids that were accompanied by Ralph the swimming pig in the 70s.

Miller said the Meadows Center has provided 1,689 internships to university students who support research and education programs.

The center has trained 1,677 volunteer divers to join the AquaCorps, which help preserve and maintain the habitats of Spring Lake. Sinnce 2013, the Habitat Field Crew has planted 163,907 native species and removed 179,233 square meters of non-native species from Spring Lake and the San Marcos River to support the Edwards Aquifer Habitat Conservation Plan.

Miller said the foundation also made a large contribution to the arts in 1962. Algur Meadows donated his large Spanish art collection to the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in memory of his late wife.

'It's one of the largest collections of Spanish art outside of the Prado,” Miller said. “The SMU School of the Arts is called the Meadows School of the Arts. … Most of the art was either donated or we helped fund the purchases.”

Miller said the Meadows Foundation also supports mental health and wellness and established the National Domestic Violence Hotline in 1996 as well as The Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute for Texas in 2013.

“We have a 22-acre campus in Dallas. There are 30 nonprofits that are on our campus. … The people that are on the campus do not pay rent,” Miller said. “A lot of funding has occurred that probably wouldn’t have occurred had it not been for the establishment of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute.”

Miller said the Amarillo Area Foundation partnered with the institute to develop a $475,000 initiative in order to promote mental health screening, detection and real-time access to care in the Texas Panhandle.

He said the institute held the Global Health Security Innovation Week, which was a virtual conference that discussed the most pressing challenges in predicting, preventing and responding to global health security threats for pandemic preparedness and recovery.

Miller said the Institute also hosted 'Time for United Action on Depression,' the North American launch of the Lancet-World Psychiatric Commission, which was an effort to fight depression by “changing society holistically, improving care and prevention, filling knowledge gaps, and increasing awareness of the global burden of depression.”

He noted that any Texas non-profit that would like to apply for a grant from the Meadows Foundation can apply at mfi.org/howto- apply/.