The Northern New Mexico Youth Fund is a new participatory, youth-led public-private partnership created by the Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table to strengthen initiatives that support young people ages 13-29 in the region to thrive at school, work, and home.
As part of our effort to showcase efforts advancing worker-centered workforce development programming and practices at Further Together 2025, we hosted a breakout session about the Fund and its work featuring Dr. Bonavita Quinto-MacCallum (LANL Foundation); Deputy Secretary Marcos Martinez (New Mexico State Department of Workforce Solutions); and Veronica Ramirez (Northern NM Youth Fund Regional Youth Advisory Council). These key leaders from the Fund shared about how the Fund got started, how it works, and how they have authentically centered young people in equitable grantmaking to advance career-connected learning in chronically-underfunded Tribal and rural communities.
Philanthropy sets an inclusive table
In 2021, the LANL Foundation convened key regional funders to explore ways to expand and improve access to college, career, and community pathways for the region’s underserved youth and young adults. This group of funders formalized their efforts as the Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table (Strategy Table) and commissioned a first-of-its-kind, rural-focused fiscal mapping report by the Children’s Funding Project that analyzed available philanthropic and public investments in the region. The report revealed that there were many gaps and disparities in funding regional programs because philanthropic and public investments were both insufficient and also not aligned, strategic or equitable. The Strategy Table then spent nine months engaging stakeholders across the region who recommended that philanthropic and public funders better coordinate their funding, create shared application processes leading to larger and longer term grants and provide technical and operational support. They also recommend that the Strategy Table prioritize career pathways, work-based learning, youth leadership development and transition supports..
The Strategy Table then set out to expand resources for these workforce development priorities. Their goal was also to simplify funding for organizations by combining multiple funding streams into larger, braided funding opportunities —saving time and reducing administrative costs. Over time, the Strategy Table grew to include 15 regional and national funders. In March,2025, it launched the Northern New Mexico Youth Fund to broaden career pathways for underserved youth. A key objective of the Fund was to transform how funding decisions are made in the region. To achieve this, the group created a Grants Committee composed of Strategy Table members, public funders, youth representatives, and community stakeholders.
To date, with support from public and philanthropic partners and input from young people and other community stakeholders, the Fund has awarded more than $1.83 million to 20 grantees across Northern New Mexico, including Tribes, schools, and non-profits to expand career technical education and career pathways for underserved young people. Moving forward, the Strategy Table aims to pool $13.55 million in philanthropic, public, federal and corporate funding by 2027 to expand work-based learning and Career Technical Education, integrating youth leadership development with support to help young people successfully navigate the transition from K-12 to postsecondary education and the workforce.
Public funder involvement expands impact
Deputy Secretary Martinez shared about the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions’ engagement with the Youth Fund. The state agency was excited to work with the Strategy Table to learn more about community needs, what works in participatory grantmaking, and serve a population and part of a state that they historically had a harder time reaching. The deputy secretary also talked about the restrictive nature of public workforce dollars and the importance of partnering with philanthropy. While the Strategy Table had not expected to be able to leverage public funding in the first year, they were ultimately able to secure $500,000 each from the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions and the New Mexico Department of Public Education. The hope is to be able to eventually sync up with the state’s WIOA Youth Program by making a case for impact through this pilot effort.
Authentic youth voice builds a long term leadership pipeline
From the beginning, the Strategy Table was committed to a participatory grantmaking approach for the Northern New Mexico Youth Fund that would authentically center young people in decisionmaking roles alongside CBOs, funders, and state agency representatives. The Strategy Table created a workgroup that specifically focused on youth engagement and engaged a partner that had more than a decade of connection and investment in youth voice and engagement even before this pooled fund launched.
The Strategy Table established the Regional Youth Advisory Council (RYAC), which engages youth from multiple communities across Northern NM in an advisory capacity for the Youth Fund. The RYAC advocates for the importance of youth programming in rural areas and for funding projects that are holistic, culturally meaningful, and impactful. Youth members sit at the Strategy Table along with other stakeholders and have voting power and responsibility in guiding decisions. Youth on the Council receive stipends and are also supported by a local youth leadership development program in Albuquerque that receives a separate grant to support the youth and provide training and professional development. As Veronica put it, “It’s important for young people to shape the decisions of the Youth Fund and ensure that we can have input into the opportunities and programs that affect us and our communities.” For now, the RYAC focuses on the Northern New Mexico region, but the hope is to also give young people opportunities to engage in state advocacy opportunities.
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