San Antonio’s Inga Cotton set out to tinker with a blog and some big ideas about education only to discover a new career in social entrepreneurship.
Story by Inga Cotton
It was supposed to be a hobby.
Six years ago, just after getting a fresh laptop, I started a WordPress blog and called it “San Antonio Charter Moms.” Now I have an active online community numbering in the thousands, grants from multiple foundations, and I’m currently transforming my blog into a new non-profit advocacy organization.
Now, picture this scene in 2011: A sunny family room at my friend’s house, baskets of building blocks spilling on the floor, crayons and easel paper rolling off the table. Four kids between the ages of one and five bounced around the room while my friend and I talked about education philanthropy. Her aunt had recently retired from the board of a local foundation. My friend, looking at research showing what the best charter schools can do for their students, chose to focus their grantmaking on helping those successful schools grow. She had identified some promising schools in other states and wanted to help them expand in San Antonio; the missing piece was communicating with parents. I had heard about blogging and decided I would teach myself how to do it.
The goal?
To explain what charter schools are and to tell families about the new school options coming to San Antonio.
For several months, I wrote lots of short posts that very few people read. Experienced bloggers and PR gurus like Colleen Pence of San Antonio Mom Blogs, Amy Johnson of Maker Mama, Debi Pfitzenmaier, and Jen Hatton have mentored me and helped me to improve my writing. I started learning to reach readers through social media—a double-edged sword, because the playing field is always changing, but it has worked for me.
Today, the San Antonio Charter Moms discussion group on Facebook has over 3,600 members who help answer each other’s questions and have a respectful dialogue about controversial issues.
So, how did I grow my blog? I simply showed up to stuff.
Often I brought my kids with me when out and about, especially my son, F.T., during the year that I homeschooled him (2013-14) and my daughter, G.N., before she started kindergarten. (Now, F.T. is going into 6th grade and G.N. is going into third grade, both at a charter school that I assisted in bringing to San Antonio.) I reported on what I saw, timely and local, and maintained an active online presence for my readers: replying to comments, answering questions, putting them in touch with people in the know. I also joined Alamo City Moms Blog as a contributor so I could share my ideas about education and parenting with a wider audience. If I had stopped to think about it, my inner skeptic would have objected that this is not the right time to dedicate myself to a project, that I should wait until my kids are older. Instead, I found ways to multitask by bringing my kids with me, meeting at a museum so they can play while I talk, using our membership to get ourselves and our guests into the museum for free, then waking up early to write blog posts about both the meeting and the museum exhibit.
As San Antonio Charter Moms has evolved from hobby to non-profit, its purpose has broadened. It’s still regionally focused on San Antonio and surrounding areas. The overall messager remains that parents can take charge of their children’s education.
Our family has used many different school models: private school, homeschooling, traditional neighborhood public school, and public charter school. Having a child on the autism spectrum has made our journey especially challenging. Parents should choose whatever works for their family, regardless of the model of the school. Beyond the classroom, our region—San Antonio and the Hill Country—has a rich cultural landscape, and I encourage families to take advantage of those enrichment opportunities as part of my work, too.
My blog—my social enterprise, really—is in a time of transition. I’m formalizing what I do, looking for new sources of funding, hiring contractors to help me, and measuring the impact of what we do. I am grateful every day to work on something that I am passionate about and that helps thousands of families. Sometimes I stop and marvel at the accidental ways that this project came about. I hope my story inspires readers to be open to the little signs and nudges that life is giving them, so they can find their passion and build something influential, too.
Explore More
To learn more about Inga Cotton and her work, visit San Antonio Charter Moms at SACharterMoms.com and follow the social media accounts (Facebook page, Facebook group, Twitter, Instagram). Inga Cotton is also a contributor and staff member at Alamo City Moms Blog, a group parenting-themed site in San Antonio (Facebook page, Facebook group, Twitter, Instagram).
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