The Giving Issue

Philanthropy In The Gables

Editor’s Note

It has been a heck of a 2025 in Coral Gables, which we are happy to recall in our annual “Year in Review.”

Probably the biggest news was the city election, which fundamentally shifted the balance of power in the City Commission. After two years of divisive, impolite wrangling at City Hall, the April vote saw the return of Mayor Vince Lago and Vice Mayor Rhonda Anderson, and the replacement of Commissioner Kirk Menendez with Commissioner Richard Lara. That vote broke the 3-2 strangle hold of Menendez with Commissioners Ariel Fernandez and Melissa Castro, who, together, doubled their salaries, fired a competent City Manager, hired an incompetent replacement, endangered the city budget with reckless staff and retirement benefit expansions, killed tax reductions, and demoralized the city administration with groundless accusations of corruption, losing several stellar employees in the process. Most of this has since been fixed.

The other big news was the changing of the guard at two of the city’s leading civic organizations. In February Mark A. Trowbridge, the beloved CEO and president of the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce, passed away from a heart attack, followed the next month by the resignation of Mary Snow, CEO of the Coral Gables Community Foundation. Since then, we have a new Chamber chief in Jorge L. Arrizurieta and a new Community Foundation leader in Mauricio Vivero. We have high hopes for both.

We chose to put Vivero on the cover, not only as a symbol for the New Year, but also because we annually highlight residents who have been exemplary in their support of local charities every December. This year, the focus was on those who use the Foundation’s donor advised funds for their giving.

In 2025, Coral Gables again surpassed Beverly Hills as the most affluent community in the country. But whatever that may imply in terms of the self-indulgence of wealth, as a community Coral Gables is enormously generous when it comes to charitable giving. Maybe it is because so many of its residents, especially those whose families recently immigrated to the U.S., have created their fortunes from scratch, with little besides hard work and good ideas. Recognizing how difficult it was for them to succeed opens a certain window of empathy for others – an empathy passed down through generations.

Coral Gables is an exemplary generational community – not a transient stop to somewhere else, but a destination city for your family, where once you arrive you never want to leave.