How Well Do You Know St. Joe?

How well do you know

By April Wilkes

Executive Director of The St. Joe Community Foundation

If you’ve lived here for very long, chances are that you’ve heard of The St. Joe Company. St. Joe has been a major landholder in this part of Florida dating back to the 1940s, and its corporate headquarters is located in Bay County. With more than 900 employees living in Bay and Walton Counties, there’s a good chance that you know someone who works for The St. Joe Company.

Maybe you’ve heard of the company’s 50-year sector plan, which was formulated with input received at nearly 20 public meetings, workshops, and open houses, with the aim of creating a long-term cohesive planning framework on 110,00 acres. The result? At a minimum, 53,000 acres, or nearly half of St. Joe’s landholdings in the 50-year plan, have been set aside for preservation or conservation, including the West Bay Preservation Area to protect West Bay and its tributaries for all future generations.

Recently, you might have heard that St. Joe donated the land for Panama City Beach’s new sports park (The Publix Sports Complex) and a new school on the east end of the beach (A. Gary Walsingham Academy), and if you’ve been here for quite a while, you might remember that St. Joe also donated land for the Sacred Heart hospitals in Walton and Gulf counties, as well as the land for Breakfast Point Academy and Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport. But as the company matures and grows right along with Northwest Florida, fewer people know that beyond land donations, St. Joe established a charitable foundation that is dedicated to making our area a better place for everyone to live, work and play.

Get to know the St. Joe Community Foundation

Since its inception in 1999, the St. Joe Community Foundation has donated more than $34 million to charities that serve Northwest Florida, and what’s really remarkable is that over $4.4 million was donated in 2021 alone! The foundation is built to be self-funded in perpetuity, which means that these donations aimed at improving life for locals will continue as long as the foundation continues to exist.

What do these contributions look like in your day-to-day life? Charitable organizations that are awarded grants generally fall into one of 4 categories: Education, Healthcare, Cultural/Community Improvement, and Environmental Stewardship. It’s quite likely that the groups receiving these grants have already improved your quality of life or will in the near future. They certainly are a deserving and wonderful representation of good people doing good work in our community.

If, for example, you’ve noticed an extra splash of artistic color as you walk around downtown Panama City, thank the Bay Arts Alliance, which used a $16,000 grant in 2021 to help fund local murals.

Fishermen and SCUBA divers will appreciate the $50,000 granted to the Mexico Beach Artificial Reef Association to help fund a super reef or the grants that have been used by the South Walton Artificial Reef Association and Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County to create nearshore snorkeling reefs and the USA’s first Underwater Museum of Art. Grants from the St. Joe Community Foundation even funded “FLOW,” Bay County’s Free Library on Wheels which provides free books to children.

Did you know that within 48 hours of Hurricane Michael making landfall, The St. Joe Community Foundation committed to donating over $1 million to groups working to aid in the recovery effort and help those who were impacted by the storm? By the following year, grants specific to that effort totaled over $1.6 million! Everyone in our community will eventually benefit from a $450,000 grant to buy training equipment to equip a new Regional Clinical Education Center at Ascension Sacred Heart Bay that will provide nurses with the skills and tools to bring a higher level of care to local patients. And students taking classes in the new Bay High School STEM Building or at Walton County’s Magnet Innovation Center will be learning on biomedical equipment that was purchased with grant money supplied by the St. Joe Community Foundation.

Perhaps most exciting of all, the Foundation has established the “No Ordinary Joe” scholarship program. The program provides for scholarships to be granted to local high school seniors to be used toward tuition at the college of their choice. Just last year, through the Bay and Walton Education foundations, this program awarded 42 local students with scholarships ranging from $500 to $13,000 per student.

These grants represent just the tip of the iceberg. The list of local 501(C)3 organizations that receive grants to do their good work in our community is as long as it is impressive, with over 160 grants awarded in 2021, and the number seems to be growing each year.

The organizations that receive these grants are varied, but they were each chosen because The St. Joe Community Foundation believes that by helping them succeed in their missions, the quality of life for all residents is improved – that’s because good schools, hospitals, recreational areas, and cultural experiences all help to make communities stronger. This is St. Joe’s home, and as the community goes, so does St. Joe. The rising tide lifts all boats.

Are you interested in learning more about the St. Joe Community Foundation, or do you know of a local 501(C)3 organization whose work benefits the community and could use an assist? Go to JoeFoundation. com to learn more about us and help us learn more about how we can help you continue and expand the good work you’re doing.

70 Years Undefeated Champion!