Four Santa Fe non-profits will receive a total of $200,000 in grants from proceeds of Pancakes on the Plaza over the next two years. The Rotary Club of Santa Fe, sponsor of the July 4 Pancakes breakfast, has allocated $100,000 in both 2025 and 2026 for grants to local agencies. The four agencies and their projected funding amounts are
The grants are planned for distribution in $100,000 annual allocations after proceeds of the 2025 and 2026 Pancakes events are verified. The member-led committee that recommended the grants had this to say: “The unifying theme is that each non-profit provides auxiliary wrap-around services to keep the most vulnerable and under-resourced students in the public school system, and keep their families engaged in education, despite barriers. These services help challenged students and their families to hold it together. What they provide are matters of survival (suicide prevention, grief counseling); matters of necessity (shelter, transportation, mentoring, clothing, tutoring); and matters of joy (music).”
Pancakes on the Plaza, one of Santa Fe’s keystone events, is managed by the 80-member Rotary Club of Santa Fe with the help of more than 300 volunteers. While tickets for the breakfast mostly cover the cost of the event itself, sponsorships cover any shortfall as well as providing funds for Rotary grants. In 2024, the club celebrated its 100th anniversary in Santa Fe by making quarter-million grants to the Children’s Museum and to Youth Works. The exceptionally large grants were possible because of leftover pre-pandemic funds plus pooling of proceeds from Pancakes in 2022 through 2024.