Never losing sight of a brighter future to be forged, Chuck and Margie envisioned a community in which everyone had opportunities for health, growth, and success. Our community is changing for the better, yet enduring issues still obstruct progress on improving the quality of life in our region. Our initiatives employ data and collaboration to bolster systemic social safety nets.
Our Work
Our Initiatives
We believe bold philanthropy is uniquely positioned to raise the flag on issues that threaten the future of our community. From creating a coordinated network of mental health providers to increasing access to care for mothers and babies, we are catalyzing efforts around systemic issues that require complex and long-term solutions.
Transforming the community
from every angle.
Social and Community Well-Being
Community News Collaborative
Overview
The Community News Collaborative (CNC) is a nonpartisan, journalism team created to address the growing void of high-impact journalism in Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties.
The initiative was created out of a partnership between Barancik Foundation and WUSF Public Media. With an editor and four multimedia reporters, CNC is dedicated to finding, investigating, and reporting community stories that affect the wellbeing and advancement opportunities of families and citizens. Through impartial and informative reporting in print, digital, video and audio mediums, CNC aims to spark awareness of issues, drive engagement, and hold people and organizations accountable.
With a focus on advancing economic security, expanding educational opportunities, embracing diversity, providing second chances, and stewarding the local environment, CNC’s team is committed to rendering the community and its systems more fair, transparent, humane, and effective.
Advisory Board
The CNC advisory board is comprised of local and regional professionals with subject-matter expertise involving the intersection of non-profit work and the journalism field. Tim Clarke, William L. “Bill” McComb, and Maria D. Vesperi joined the board in November 2022. Learn more about each by reading their bios here.
Launched
2022
Why
Shrinking resources have limited the news coverage of many of the region’s news organizations, preventing them from engaging with many ongoing stories that they were able to follow in better economic days.
Partners
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Observer Media Group, Venice Gondolier/The Daily Sun, The Bradenton Herald, Tempo News, ABC 7 WWSB, WEDU Public Media, WSLR, iHeart Radio, Solmart Media, Sarasota Magazine, Sarasota Scene Magazine and West Coast Woman.
Healthcare Access & Quality
First 1,000 Days Suncoast
Overview
The earlier the investment, the greater the return. This is Barancik Foundation’s philosophy on the life-changing importance of investing in prenatal care and early childhood development. This philosophy is what drove us, alongside 70+ partners, to explore how our community can better provide families with the foundational support they need during babies’ critical early years. Each year, First 1,000 Days Suncoast reviews barriers facing families in Sarasota.
Strengthened by leadership from Sarasota Memorial Hospital, the initiative delivered on its promise to launch a public parent portal to promote the benefits of helping to boost a baby’s brain. Families can also enter themselves into a referral system, powered by Unite Us, if they need parenting assistance or help getting basic needs.
Read more about the history of the First 1,000 Days initiative by following this link and enjoy the team’s 2022 annual summary here.
Launched
2018
Why
The majority of a child’s brain develops within the first 1,000 days of life. Supporting families during this critical early childhood development period has lifelong impacts on health and wellbeing.
Partners
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System and 78 community partners.
Student Success
Barancik Early Learning Initiative
Overview
In 2020, everyone became deeply aware of childcare’s relationship to the labor market—you can’t reopen the economy without early learning centers. A fragile system before the pandemic, the industry is now on life support.
Preschools are the converging point of many of our society’s biggest challenges and greatest opportunities. They hold promise to stimulate intergenerational cycles of opportunity.
We have convened key partners and will be working together to create more opportunities for high-quality childcare. We thank the YMCA of Southwest Florida, which has been instrumental in identifying areas that can be improved in our system.
Launched
2022
Why
We believe that by transforming the system of early learning in our community, we can create a more prosperous economy and a more educated workforce.
Partners
Community Foundation of Sarasota County, Local preschool directors and teachers, Sarasota County Schools, United Way of the Suncoast, YMCA of Southwest Florida, and our research partners: Kempton Research and Planning and the University of Florida.
Student Success
Time to Inspire Margie’s Educators – TIME Fellowship
Overview
Chuck and Margie Barancik loved our community’s children and teachers. As a former teacher, Margie knew what research clearly states: a motivated and highly effective classroom teacher is the most important factor for a child’s academic success.
To honor Margie’s chosen profession, the TIME Fellowship (Time to Inspire Margie’s Educators) will support as many as 25 fellowships to Sarasota County School District educators, each awarded up to $12,000, to help refresh and renew their commitment to teaching.
Project proposals from both individual applicants and collaborative groups of two or more may be submitted. Each project idea should be intellectually revitalizing and personally renewing. The idea proposed should also seek to creatively expand an educator’s experiences through projects that are of a unique quality and provide opportunities for personal fulfillment that might otherwise not be available.
Launched
2022
Why
A motivated and highly effective classroom teacher is the most important factor for a child’s academic success. This effort will help rejuvenate educators’ passion for education and teaching.
Partners
Sarasota County School District
Student Success
Teacher Recruitment|Retention
Overview
Everyone remembers their favorite teacher. Outside of family, teachers have the greatest influence on a child’s academic performance and future success. They can make all the difference in the world. That’s why we want to keep good teachers and attract new ones. Knowing their vital role and that teachers create all other professions, Barancik Foundation has invested more than $7 million in funding for Sarasota County Schools professional development. In partnership with our school district, we launched a Teacher Retention | Recruitment initiative to explore ways to ensure the need was met.
The program identifies volunteers, parents and district employees, already with their college degree, who demonstrate characteristics of a future teacher. The program helps with certification costs, provides career guidance, and helps future teachers navigate the application process. Cohorts dubbed “Emerging Educators” ensure that no new educator enters the classroom without a network of peer support.
Launched
2017
Why
Many factors contribute to a student’s academic performance, including individual characteristics and family and neighborhood experiences. But research suggests that, among school-related factors, teachers matter most.
Partners
Sarasota County School District and State College of Florida
Financial Empowerment
Affordable Housing
Overview
Imagine the work that could be accomplished – the families saved from homelessness and the mental well-being of workers who no longer would have to worry about meeting their rent requirements – if there were a recurring funding source that could support such a workforce housing lift each year. It would not be sufficient to meet all the demand for housing, but it would ease the problem.
A coalition of foundations and community and business leaders convinced the Sarasota County Commission to add $20 million to a $5 million allocation of American Rescue Plan Act dollars for workforce housing. That money would be used for leveraging $137 million in projects creating 623 workforce housing units.
Together with our partners, we are exploring more ways to address this issue and bring more funding to the table.
Launched
2022
Why
Sarasota County has not kept pace with the demand for workforce housing. Now the county and region find themselves with a crisis in both rental housing and single-family availability.
Partners
Gulf Coast Community Foundation
Social Wellness
Health Equity
Overview
Barancik Foundation’s first exploration of health equity came through the Shots In Arms initiative, which successfully boosted the number of COVID-19 vaccinations among Sarasota and Manatee counties’ African American and Hispanic residents. That initiative taught us that the gulf of health disparities between those neighbors and the general population of the community is vast.
Working with the Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County, CenterPlace Health, Sarasota Memorial Hospital, the Multicultural Health Institute — and dozens of other partners in a coalition that the Foundation helped assemble — a Sarasota County Health Equity Plan was developed in 2022.
The plan focuses on increasing knowledge and prevention of diabetes, which can lead to a host of other maladies. It also seeks to boost in-home care for economically challenged residents, their establishment with a primary care doctor, the future launch of a mobile health clinic, and the development of more healthy eating opportunities for residents who are at risk for diabetes and other diseases.
Launched
2022
Why
Black and Hispanic residents in Sarasota County are far more likely to suffer from diabetes than their white counterparts. Black residents, for example, were hospitalized for diabetes at five times the rate of their white counterparts in 2020. They visited the emergency room for diabetes-related illnesses at four times the average rate.
Partners
Florida Department of Health in Sarasota County, CenterPlace Health, the Multicultural Health Institute, Sarasota Memorial Health Care System, and 39 other organizations.
Social Wellness
Recidivism
Overview
Every day there are neighbors of ours who languish in jail and prison and cannot provide for themselves or their families or become productive members of society. They face challenges that include poverty, a lack of education and work alternatives, and addiction. These factors often lead to recidivism, the tendency of a convicted person to re-offend.
Barancik Foundation is supporting a series of programs that support these men and women to find a way to avoid crime when they leave custody.
In partnership with the sheriff’s offices in Sarasota, DeSoto, and Manatee counties, the foundation supports reentry navigators: employees – some with social service or case management experience – who, months before release, help individuals leaving custody with whatever they need: transportation, identification, counseling, employment, housing, and more.
Together with our partners, we are exploring more comprehensive and creative ways to address the issue and bring more help to the effort.
Launched
2022
Why
Recidivism affects not only the individuals who return time again to custody, but their families, our community through the offenses they commit, and everyone who owns property through the cost of incarceration.
Partners
Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto County Sheriff’s Offices, Florida Department of Corrections, 12th Judicial Circuit, and Project 180.
“Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation—a major catalyst for improving
the lives of the less fortunate in the community.”
– Sarasota Herald-Tribune