Santa Ana : Council Starts Formation of Nonprofit Foundation

The city has taken the first steps toward establishing a multimillion-dollar Santa Ana Community Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that would provide grants for the arts, building, research and social programs.

The City Council this week allocated $20,000 as a fee for hiring Marlene Jones, a New York-based consultant who established the successful East St. Louis (Ill.) Community Foundation.

Additionally, the council decided to establish an exploratory committeee to work with Jones. Committee members will be appointed by the mayor.

Cynthia Cave, the city’s intergovernmental relations manager, said it would take about six months for the foundation to get started and between two and five years for it to become self-sufficient, with assets of about $3 million.

Initially, she said, the city could apply to existing endowments, such as the Ford Foundation or the Mott Foundation, for start-up funds. Federal community development grants could also be applied, she said.

Briefing the council, City Manager Robert C. Bobb said there are about 250 community foundations nationwide, but none in Orange County. (The Los Angeles-based California Community Foundation, in operation since 1915, has maintained an office in Orange since last summer.)

Bobb, previously city manager of Kalamazoo, Mich., said the Kalamazoo Foundation has a staff of three and assets of $45 million, “the seventh or eighth largest” in the country. “I can cite example after example, all around the country,” where community foundations have worked, he said.

The foundation, which would receive tax-deductible donations from corporations and individuals, could become a alternate source of funding for controversial social programs such as relocation assistance for tenants displaced by the city’s crackdown on substandard housing, Bobb said. At present, such programs rely on city funds.