Creating Space for Adults with Disabilities to Learn, Work, and Thrive in Southern Nevada

When philanthropy meets urgency.

When students with disabilities turn 21, federal law ends their access to special education services. What comes next is largely up to families to figure out on their own. In Southern Nevada, The Garden Foundation has been filling that gap since 2017, offering adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities the life skills training, workforce preparation, and community they need to build meaningful lives. For years, the organization operated at capacity with a waitlist of more than 100 people and no room to grow. Serving Our Communities Foundation changed that. A $1.65 million commitment enabled The Garden Foundation to purchase a permanent, five-acre campus in southwest Las Vegas, allowing the organization to triple its class capacity, expand its programming, and finally begin serving the families who have been waiting. This is what it looks like when philanthropy meets urgency.

Taylor Gardner Chaney did not set out to start a nonprofit. She just could not stop thinking about her sister.

Lindsay, younger than Taylor by sixteen months and born with Down syndrome, faced a horizon that narrowed sharply at age 21. Federal law guarantees special education services through that age, and then the support largely disappears. No more life skills classes. No more workforce training. No more structured community. Just an abrupt transition that leaves adults with disabilities and their families to figure out what comes next on their own.

That gap is what 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 intellectual and developmental disabilities. For years, the organization operated from a strip mall near the 215 Beltway, capped at 30 participants, with a waitlist that grew to more than 100 families waiting for a spot that did not exist.

Jan Marson first met Taylor Chaney in 2021 through UNR’s NvLEND program, a collaboration between the University of Nevada, Reno and the Nevada Center for Excellence in Disabilities. The connection stayed with her. Four years later, a mutual friend brought The Garden Foundation back to her attention, and within months, Serving Our Communities Foundation committed $1.65 million to help The Garden Foundation find a permanent home.

That home is a five-acre former horse ranch off Windmill Lane in southwest Las Vegas, a sprawling property with a main building, former guest houses, a grassy courtyard, and outdoor space unlike anything the organization had ever had. The Garden Foundation has occupied the campus since January 2026.

The new campus does not just add square footage. It transforms what is possible. Former guest houses now host life skills classes in everyday essentials like laundry and home care. A turtle habitat on the grounds introduces animal care training. The GROW program, which offers classes in yoga, relationship building, grooming, and computer skills, now has the physical space to serve far more participants. And Dig It! Coffee Co., a coffee shop founded by Chaney that gives participants hands-on vocational experience from pulling espresso shots to customer service, has a new and permanent base from which to grow.

With the new campus, The Garden Foundation expects to triple its class capacity and begin working through a waitlist that has represented three years of waiting for the families it is meant to serve.

Serving Our Communities Foundation’s investment in The Garden Foundation reflects a deliberate commitment to reaching Southern Nevada, where the majority of the state’s residents live, with the same level of strategic philanthropy the foundation brings to its work in Northern Nevada and Missouri. The Marson family built Serving Our Communities Foundation to put resources where leadership and vision already exist. In Taylor Gardner Chaney and The Garden Foundation, they found exactly that.

To support the Garden Foundation directly, visit thegardenfoundationlv.org.