Rooted in Place, Giving Back in Kind

After school on Wednesday afternoons, Nancy Giberson and her family used to drive up from Watsonville to the beach in Aptos, where her father had built a tiny single-board cabin. “Originally, it was more like a shack,” she explains. “If you drove up the road, the lights would shine through the slats in the wall. It was freezing in there, and we collected driftwood for the little potbelly stove, which worked hard to heat the place.”

Now known as Potbelly Beach, it was the preferred spot for Nancy’s father, a well-known local doctor, to do his regular 45-minute ocean swim. Doc Giberson was a firm believer in the power of exercise. A track star before he was struck by polio as a teenager, he remained an athlete for the rest of his life, and his passion for the outdoors shaped much of Nancy’s childhood.

“He would swim no matter the weather, and it drove my mother crazy,” she laughs, adding that when she and her brother were old enough, they had to join him.

Those early lessons in discipline, endurance, and respect for the natural world would stay with Nancy—lessons she’d later bring to her life as an educator and philanthropist.

Property into Purpose

Decades later (and after a complete rebuild), the Giberson property at One Potbelly Beach Road helped cement Nancy’s charitable legacy.

“I’m not a stock market person,” Nancy explains, “I put my money in property, which is something I learned from my family. It’s my savings account.” It’s also the way Nancy has been able to give back to the place she loves.

Back in 2017, when she sold the Potbelly house, the Community Foundation team helped Nancy use a portion of the sale to establish a Charitable Remainder Trust that provides her with annual payments while also ensuring that after she passes away, the remaining balance will go to the Foundation and other nonprofits she and her family care about.

For Nancy, it wasn’t just a financial decision—it was a way to keep her family’s story and love for this place alive long after she’s gone.

“I’m the type of person who’s always got 90 irons in the fire. Working with the Community Foundation simplifies everything. Charitable giving, especially if you don’t have a lot of liquid assets, can get complicated. But the Foundation has really become a trusted partner and has worked with me to transform portions of real estate sales into tax-smart ways I can give today…and tomorrow.”

Protecting the Land that Raised Her

When Nancy wasn’t swimming out at Potbelly Beach, she had childhood adventures in the Elkhorn Slough area. She wandered through her grandmother’s garden, hunted for arrowheads with her brother, helped Doc Giberson walk out to the famous duck blind that he had built, or rode horses with her childhood friend Diane Porter Cooley. Diane became a beloved civic leader, environmentalist, philanthropist, and important mentor in Nancy’s life. She recalls rides that she and Diane would take through the oak-studded grasslands of the 363-acre Porter Ranch. “Oaks are still my favorite tree, just from being a child growing up on this beautiful land.”

Nancy’s great-grandparents were some of the first European settlers in the area, building the original ferry that crossed the slough and working as dairy farmers. Her family network is as vast and connected as the wetlands themselves, with cousins still living in the area and on the original homesteads.

Nancy first got connected to the Elkhorn Slough Foundation (ESF) while she was helping her brother manage the Giberson land. To ensure proper stewardship, they created a conservation easement for the most environmentally sensitive piece. Nancy worked closely with Mark Silberstein, Executive Director of the Elkhorn Slough Foundation on that project. “ESF is a champion for conservation, helping protect a unique and precious environment,” she said.

She used a portion of a real estate sale as a gift to her Donor-Advised Fund. She then made a grant from her DAF to support the restoration of the more than 120-year-old farmhouse at the heart of Porter Ranch, which the Porter Family donated to the Elkhorn Slough Foundation (ESF) in 2012.

Today, when Nancy visits the restored farmhouse, she says it feels like visiting an old friend—one she’s helped bring back to life.

A Full Circle of Leadership and Love

Nancy moved away from Santa Cruz County to go to school and pursue a career of increasing leadership in public education. “I always intended to come back here eventually,” she relates, and in the early 1990s, after her mom passed away unexpectedly, Nancy returned home to care for her father. She accepted a position as assistant superintendent with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education and jumped back into civic life back home, serving on multiple local boards including the Elkhorn Slough Foundation, the Community Foundation, the Cultural Council (now the Arts Council) and many other nonprofit organizations.

For Nancy, giving back isn’t a single act; it’s a way of living in rhythm with the community that raised her. What began with childhood swims at Potbelly and horseback rambles in the slough have grown into a lifetime of giving back—investing in conservation for people to experience the wildness and order of nature’s waters, wildlife, and land. It is a current of generosity that continues to flow through the places that Nancy has always called home.

Header photo: View of Elkhorn Slough. Credit - Paul Zaretsky