Saturday, May 9, 2026 | 2 a.m.
Editor’s note: Este artículo está traducido al español.
Taylor Chaney didn’t set out to start a nonprofit. She just couldn’t stop thinking about her sister.
While Chaney weighed college options and career paths, Lindsay, her younger sister by 16 months who has Down syndrome, faced a far narrower horizon. The support systems that could have opened doors for her simply didn’t exist.
That disparity stems from a hard deadline baked into federal law: Students with disabilities can receive special education services only until age 21, or 22 in Nevada.
That’s when access to life skills classes, workforce training and other critical resources largely disappears, leaving adults with disabilities and their families to navigate an abrupt and lonely transition.
It was that gap that moved Chaney to act. In 2017, she founded the Garden Foundation, a Southern Nevada nonprofit dedicated to expanding learning and workforce opportunities for adults with disabilities.
But as Las Vegas has grown, so has the demand for services. The Garden Foundation is capped at 30 participants with a waiting list of 100 more.
That will soon change.
A $1.7 million donation from Jan Marson, president of the Serving Our Communities Foundation, has allowed the Garden Foundation to purchase a new campus in the southwest valley — one with the space to finally begin chipping away at that waitlist.
On Tuesday, Chaney, now 38, stood in a grassy courtyard between two buildings on the new property, tears in her eyes as she thanked Marson and spoke about what the space could mean for the people her organization serves.
The foundation has called the 5-acre horse ranch off Windmill Lane its home since January.
“We’re just grateful to be able to be a part of that solution and to finally be able to provide services for people because there’s definitely not enough in town,” Chaney told the Sun. “The space is unlike anything in Vegas (and) it’s just such a beautiful outdoor space with so much usable space for our people to really grow in opportunity.”
Chaney had been searching for a new home for the foundation since 2022, when the waitlist began to grow and it became clear the former location — a strip mall off the 215 Beltway and I-11 in the northwest valley — couldn’t accommodate the expansion she envisioned.
Over the years, she pursued other spaces across the city, but deal after deal fell through. Then they learned the Collaboration Center Foundation was looking to sell its ranch.
The property — a sprawling compound with a main house, guest houses and a large building that once served as stables — came with a price tag in the millions. Chaney declined to share the exact figure.
Raising that kind of money was a significant hurdle. Then Marson stepped in.
Marson is an occupational therapist who runs the Serving Our Communities Foundation, a family foundation that partners with community leaders to support workforce development, public health and education initiatives across Nevada and Missouri.
The foundation’s resources trace back to her husband, Dave Marson, who in 2011 co-founded Nature’s Bakery in Carson City with their son, Sam. The company, known for its fig bars and soft-baked goods, was acquired by Kind in late 2020.
Rather than pocket the windfall, the Marsons chose to invest it in organizations and causes they believed in — and they built the Serving Our Communities Foundation as the vehicle to do it.
Their work has supported organizations like the St. Louis Education Fund and the Carson City Rural Child Advocacy Center, which provides trauma-informed care to children and families in rural Northern Nevada affected by abuse and violent crime.
Investing in the Garden Foundation first in Southern Nevada was a deliberate choice, Marson said. While the family is based in Carson City, the majority of Nevadans live in Clark County, and she wanted their philanthropy to reach people where they are.
Chaney first met Marson in 2021 through UNR’s NvLEND program, a collaboration between the university and the Nevada Center for Excellence in Disabilities that trains participants on issues affecting people with disabilities.
Four years later, a mutual friend brought the Garden Foundation back to Marson’s attention, telling her about Chaney’s search for a new home for the program. Marson reached out in November and within months, the donation and ranch acquisition were underway.
“When you hear Taylor talk, it’s for real. Her heart is there, and I just thought, this is the next generation of serving and philanthropy,” Marson said. “She’s the kind of person that’s going to get things done.”
Chaney told the crowd the Garden Foundation “wouldn’t be here without” the Marsons. The donation doesn’t just mean a new address — it means room to grow.
The Garden Foundation will be able to triple its class capacity and expand what it offers participants. Take its GROW program providing classes in yoga, relationship building, grooming and computer skills.
The new campus adds dimensions the old strip mall never could.
Former guest houses now host classes on life skills — laundry and making a bed — while a turtle habitat on the grounds opens the door to animal care training.
Additionally, a coffee shop founded by Chaney, Dig It! Coffee Co. gives participants hands-on vocational experience, from pulling espresso shots to handling customer service.
“This beautiful campus and this partnership that we’ve created represents so much more to me and to the families and to the people we serve than just a building,” Chaney said. “It represents sustainability. It represents serving a wait list that we’ve had for over three years, that we’re finally so excited to be able to touch and to serve, and it also represents that we’re able to create more possibility and more opportunities for people with disabilities who are so ultimately deserving.”
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