JACKSONVILLE, Florida – March 23, 2016 – Trailblazing philanthropist Delores Barr Weaver has established a $20 million endowed fund at The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida, adding to her already legendary history of giving back to the Jacksonville area and beyond. The Delores Barr Weaver Legacy Fund will take on major challenges and make gifts to nonprofits that are transformative in nature when grantmaking begins.
“With her usual boldness and foresight, Delores Barr Weaver has surpassed her own high bar to define a new and richer legacy of philanthropy in our community,” said Nina Waters, president of The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida. “With the addition of this new endowment to her already robust history of charitable gifts, Delores Barr Weaver has directed more than $100 million worth of philanthropy, nearly all of which has stayed in Northeast Florida.”
An original co-owner of the NFL franchise Jacksonville Jaguars, Delores Barr Weaver led the Jaguars Foundation, which granted more than $15 million from its inception in 1994 until the team was sold in 2012. That year, she established the Delores Barr Weaver Fund at The Community Foundation with an initial value of $50 million, the Foundation’s largest gift to date. She and her husband, J. Wayne Weaver, were also partners in the Weaver Family Foundation, which was converted to a fund at The Community Foundation in 2012. Over the years, she along with Wayne established dedicated endowments for 33 local nonprofit organizations, and introduced numerous charitable giving challenges that have multiplied the ultimate benefit to organizations well beyond her gift.
“My greatest hope is that others will join me in supporting important efforts with their charitable dollars,” noted Mrs. Weaver. “If I can help people see what a difference their donations can make, and encourage them to feel greater ownership in improving our community, then I will feel like my giving has made a difference beyond the agencies I have personally supported.”
She often points to the years when she had little to contribute, and notes that ‘no one ever told me that whatever I could give would help make a difference.’ That’s one reason she often structures her recommended grants as challenges—the nonprofit must raise matching funds from others in order to secure the full amount. According to her, “you never know when someone will become a large donor because they were asked to help earlier and so learned ‘the joy of giving back’.”
Delores Barr Weaver’s charitable focus crosses many dimensions. She is passionate about helping young people, and invests substantially in initiatives that support their success, such as education (Teach for America, the Kipp School, and Quality Education for All), behavioral health (Baptist Foundation) and prevention of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (Straight Talk). She supports young girls and women on every level, from her founding grant to establish the Delores Barr Weaver Policy Center led by Dr. Lawanda Ravoira, to co-founding the Women’s Giving Alliance, to her staunch backing of local shelters for victims of domestic violence. She is especially sensitive to the plight of the fragile elderly, and established the Senior to Senior Fund at The Community Foundation to provide short term, emergency financial assistance to those elders in need through ElderSource. In recent years, she’s become focused on similar needs of military veterans through the American Red Cross, and she has provided strong support for Protect Our Defenders, which addresses rape and sexual assault in the military.
“This new Fund is an extension of Delores’ philanthropic legacy; she has created a model for local philanthropic giving with each new chapter defined by her passion for the work, a deep commitment to results, and above all, a determination to bring as many people as possible to the effort,” Waters noted.
“It is her desire to leave a lasting legacy in our community alongside truly visionary women philanthropists like Jessie Ball duPont, Lucy Gooding and Ninah Cummer. Our entire community has benefited, and we are all grateful for her presence and her generosity.”
The Delores Barr Weaver Legacy Fund will reside at The Community Foundation in perpetuity. Delores will continue to make grants annually through the Delores Barr Weaver Fund (established 2012), allowing the corpus of the Delores Barr Weaver Legacy Fund to grow over the next several years.
About The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida
The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida (www.jaxcf.org), Florida’s oldest and largest community foundation, works to stimulate philanthropy to build a better community. The Foundation helps donors invest their philanthropic gifts wisely, helps nonprofits serve the region effectively, and helps people come together to make the community a better place. Now in its 52nd year, the Foundation has assets of $313 million and has made grants of nearly $369 million since 1964.