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Galen Smith

Director, Community Philanthropy

Galen Smith is director for community philanthropy. He provides philanthropic advising services to help fundholders hone their grantmaking strategy, identify high-impact funding opportunities across North Texas and evaluate the effectiveness of grantmaking efforts. Galen also supports local foundations engaged with CFT to manage their grantmaking processes. He supervises CFT’s internal grant operations and serves as CFT’s content expert in human-animal connections.


Prior to joining CFT in 2017, Galen was the senior director of community financial stability at United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, where he helped coordinate United Way's $2 million-plus portfolio of more than 20 grants and programmatic initiatives. Galen was also instrumental in establishing a common set of metrics around United Way’s financial stability portfolio that have been adopted by other local foundations.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in diplomacy and world affairs from Occidental College and a master’s in international studies from the University of Denver.
 

Joined CFT

2018

Favorite Aspect of CFT

"CFT provides a unique opportunity to work hand in hand with nonprofit leaders, generous donors and an incredible CFT team to move the needle on the issues that matter most to North Texas families."

Favorite Quote

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

— Barack Obama

Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) works with families, companies and nonprofits to build thriving communities locally and across the state through a variety of charitable funds and strategic initiatives. The foundation professionally manages over 1,000 charitable funds and runs several key initiatives like Educate Texas, North Texas Giving Day and the W. W. Caruth, Jr. Fund. CFT has awarded more than $1.7 billion in grants since its founding in 1953.

© 2018 Communities Foundation of Texas. All Rights Reserved. Communities Foundation of Texas is a 501c3 EIN 750967565. All donations are tax deductible.