Stories

Building Resilience in the Texas Hill Country

Sunday, June 28, 2026 - 3:47 pm

Guadaloupe River outside of Kerrville, Texas.

In the early morning of July 4, 2025, the equivalent of four months of rain fell onto the Texas Hill Country. The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet within 45 minutes. While the rain still fell, and the sun had yet to rise, the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country moved quickly to establish the Kerr County Relief Fund.

"We are not a stranger to disaster," said Austin Dickson, CEO of the Foundation, which serves 10 counties in central Texas.

While the rains poured down on the Texas Hill Country, Americans poured in their support. Dickson had one message for them: centralizing aid was the fastest path to the people who needed it, and the Community Foundation was built to do exactly that.

“We made a conscious decision to be crystal clear with the American people that our community foundation was uniquely placed to steward generosity in this moment,” Dickson said.

In 28 TV news appearances over the next week, as the count of the missing and dead continued to rise, he made the case: when communities pool their generosity, recovery moves faster.

Centralizing Relief for Maximum Impact

Dickson also used those TV appearances to explain the role of a community foundation, instilling trust in donors and the confidence that their donations would make an impact on the communities that needed help.

“We receive donations and manage those prudently and professionally, and then make grants to local nonprofit partners that we already have relationships with. We do this with excellence and competence, and we’re here for the long term because we live in the community affected by the disaster,” Dickson said. “We were relentless in our communication about the power of community foundations to steward generosity into results.”

Americans responded to the call to help Kerr County in its darkest hour, and the Foundation’s relief fund raised $30 million in its first week. When Dickson held a press conference announcing the first $5 million in grants to local nonprofits, contributions from corporations and other foundations accelerated, as they saw they could support the work already underway. All told, 141,000 donors contributed to the relief fund, which raised $150 million in its first six months.

Led by Community

Across the Hill Country, recovery is being led by the organizations that know the community best. The Foundation's grants have supported housing, mental health counseling, environmental restoration, and long-term planning to strengthen the region's resilience to future storms.

"The stars of this recovery are the local organizations doing this work," Dickson said. Churches have expanded into case management, local financial institutions are distributing funds, and a history preservation organization is helping build new homes. "We strengthen them and put them at the center of the recovery."

Transparency has been central to the Foundation's work from the start. The Foundation publishes every grant and its recipients publicly at rebuildkerr.org, so donors can see exactly where their money went.

"When community foundations choose to be brave, that bravery requires things like transparency and accountability," Dickson said. "The donor wants confidence in where the gift is going. If you give us that money, we're going to tell you how it's being spent. We have demonstrated the power of community philanthropy to drive recovery and change."