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Cord Shiflet was preparing to enjoy a typical Fourth of July last year when he heard the horrific news: Overnight, as local residents and summer campers slept, an especially intense rainstorm had dumped as much as 12 inches on the headwaters of the Guadalupe River in just three hours. The flood waters arrived like a wave in Hunt, Texas, and its environs.
The 29-foot surge would kill 27 girls and an adult at Camp Mystic along with a few dozen others in riverside campsites and RV parks.
“My son and I drove down the next day to see what had happened, because I grew up going down there,” Shiflet recalls. “As soon as I got there, it was like a war zone, and immediately I knew I had to do something.” The “something” was a quintessential move for the well-known Austin agent: a plea to his 10,000-strong Facebook fundraising network that ultimately would yield a half-million dollars in aid.
But he didn’t stop there. He went to find the volunteer coordinator at the fire department in the riverside community of Centerpoint and asked where he could help if he mustered 50 people with 50 chainsaws.
“He pointed to a place across the river. I put on Facebook, ‘We’re at this location and we need machinery, money and manpower.’ We had hundreds show up, and we cleared this piece of land in half a day,” Shiflet says.
‘A Light in a Dark Place’
Suitably impressed, the coordinator directed Shiflet and crew to Camp CAMP, a half mile down the road. (CAMP stands for Children’s Association for Maximum Potential.) There, Shiflet located the facilities chief known as Coach Ken, who “was running around like a madman” dealing with the flood’s aftermath. Although the camp had been on break and no one was harmed, the riverfront and its facilities were a disastrous mess.
“I asked him what the camp was, and he said it was for the most challenged disabled kids. I told him we’d have a big crew there tomorrow, and he said kind of skeptically, ‘Yeah, yeah, see you then.’” Shiflet hit up the Facebook network for helpers and equipment, and over the next day hundreds showed up and kept coming, with as many as 2,500 onsite at one point. “It was a light in a dark place,” he says.
“People want to be in his orbit, and they want to feel like they are a part of it.”
—Monica Painter
Coach Ken, whose last name is Kaiser, was wowed by the turnout. “It was dire down there. I thought, if he’s got a few people here with maybe a Bobcat or excavator that would be incredible.” It turned out Shiflet’s Facebook post was shared thousands of times, and when helpers came, they brought Bobcat-style skid steers, chain saws, excavators and more.
The team removed hundreds of tons of uprooted trees, debris and earth; rebuilt 1,000 feet of fence line; and built new picnic tables and benches.
Inspired to Deliver for Foster Kids
Though Shiflet’s flood response was epic, that sort of rapid resource-raising for those in need is par for the course with him, says Monica Painter, who met Shiflet [through real estate connections?] seven years ago when she and her wife found themselves with four foster kids, mere hours after they qualified to be foster parents.
Unprepared to take long-term responsibility for all four, Painter and her wife decided to adopt two of them. But when an uncle made a last-minute move to take the kids and return them to their abusive biological parents, Painter asked Shiflet for help raising money for an attorney—in a hurry.
“In 24 hours, he raised $25,000 and paid for the attorney and literally saved our kids’ lives,” Painter says.
A former director of a nonprofit, Painter loaned her talents to Shiflet to set up Cordonate (a portmanteau based on his first name and the words “coordinate” and “donate”) with the goal of raising money quickly for those in need, and with no overhead. “With every dollar, my wife and I kick in an additional 3%,” she says.
Shiflet was inspired to create Cordonate after using a conventional donation platform to raise money to help a friend’s mother provide a funeral for her son. Though donors pledged $20,000, the actual payout to the mother was only $13,000. “It bothers me when you give money to huge nonprofits and so much goes to overhead,” he says.
“When something happens that I need to raise money for, I’ll dedicate a few hours, days or a week. But when the floods happened this year and last, I’d taken a month off. That was unheard of.”
—Cord Shiflet
While most of Cordonate’s fundraising is ad hoc based on immediate needs, the nonprofit provides ongoing support for Santa’s Cause, an annual Christmas party where foster kids are celebrated, and a similar Valentine’s Day event.
“The kids make lists ahead of time,” says Painter, “something you need, something to read and your ‘moonshot’ gift you’d really love to get. We have a huge party with face painting, hot chocolate … and while we’re doing that, the foster parents bring their cars around, and they are loaded up with presents.”
An Uber-Connected People Person
Shiflet succeeds as a prodigious fundraiser not only on account of his vast network of affluent friends and associates formed over decades selling high-end homes, but also because he draws people from all walks to his compelling personality, Painter says. “He deals with the ultra-wealthy, but he also makes people with nothing feel at ease.”
Although the Texas rainstorm and flood of 2025 was thought to have a 1% chance of recurring, the Guadalupe swelled over its banks again this July, though without the significant loss of life.
“When the flood happened again this year, my first text was from Cord asking if we were OK and needed anything,” Kaiser says. “Last year was such a unique experience, and we really bonded and we have kept in touch. … I remember that sometime that first day last year, he could tell I was overwhelmed, and he asked if I thought they were going to be able to meet my expectations. I told him they had done that before lunchtime.”
Cord Shiflet of Moreland Properties Inc., in Austin, Texas, has provided assistance to more than 2,500 children in foster care and aid to thousands of victims of natural disasters throughout Central Texas.
