CAM’s endowment is the result of generous donors who wanted to make sure that CAM was able to be sustainable past their lifetime and an emergency fund that would protect the agency if we had loss of property or emergency funds were needed to serve people in need due to a disaster. This was a smart move and for the most part, it has grown a little and remains a positive means to protect our service in case of an emergency.

The endowment was somewhat small over 20 years ago and over the past 20 years it has grown naturally and for the past 5 years, we have tried to encourage overt growth through specific donations that target the endowment. It is at about $1.2 million now due to a generous donation of $200,000 from  a donor at the end of 2024.

As you can imagine growing an endowment is hard on us as an agency that is serving people in need today. It is hard for us to make the decision to put money there when we have someone at our doorstep hungry, naked, traumatized, struggling to pay bills, get to work or feed their children. We have to raise those dollars annually too (the dollars to support the budget for that year).

Yet we know that if we could raise important dollars that could build the endowment, at some point it could be large enough to pay for the operating costs of CAM with its interest; so that we could keep serving the San Antonio community for the next 50 years! CAM is a trusted local nonprofit with a model of proven success.  Think about the endowments that colleges have and the interest each year that support students and sports programs. Wouldn’t it be incredible if we had something like this for our citizens-vulnerable men, women and children.