Decade of La Canada Fund-Raising : Education Foundation Celebrates a Milestone

“It’s not like building a church,” said the president of the La Canada Flintridge Educational Foundation. “This we have to do year after year after year.”

The foundation, one of dozens that emerged in California after property tax-cutting Proposition 13 shattered traditional school financing, raises private money for public schools.

This year, the La Canada Flintridge group reached a milestone, its first decade. The tenacity of the group’s volunteers and the strength of its method have apparently made the foundation a permanent facet of school financing in the affluent suburb of 22,800 residents.

One of about 130 such organizations in the state, the La Canada Flintridge group has remained one of the most successful.

This year, it plans to top its goal of $225,000, bringing the total funds that it has raised for education to about $2 million, said Meredith B. Reynolds, foundation president.

Every-Day Effort

“We are actively raising money almost every day,” said Reynolds, who is about to step down from her one-year post. “But we’ll be back on their doorsteps come September.”

Through its efforts, the foundation contributes about the same amount of money as the California Lottery to the La Canada Unified School District’s annual $15-million budget, school officials said.

But unlike many other educational foundations that rely on professionals to run their operations--such as Beverly Hills and San Marino--the La Canada group is supported by volunteers.

“We have no paid staff,” Reynolds said. “We have some of the most important people in Los Angeles on our board, and most of them probably never stuffed envelopes before in their lives. But they do it for us.”

The professional and diversified expertise of directors is a key to the group’s success, Reynolds said.

New Volunteers

Each year, about a third of the 30-member board steps down, to be replaced by new volunteers selected as a cross-representation of the community.

The organization’s bylaws are designed “to keep the board fresh and truly representative of the community,” said Reynolds, who describes herself as “an attorney turned housewife.” The constant turnover brings “new ideas, new energy” to the team.

The number of educational foundations in the state has doubled in the last seven years as more and more districts search for new ways to supplement their ever-tightening budgets. But those that succeed represent only a smattering of the more than 1,000 school districts in California--usually in small communities “that are fairly affluent,” said Terry McAlpine, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Office of Education.

The La Canada group supports a close-knit district with only two elementary schools, one high school, a continuation school and a special education campus. Total enrollment is 3,100, school officials said.

A similar group formed to support the neighboring Glendale Unified School District, with a growing enrollment of more than 22,000 on 27 campuses, disbanded in about 1982 after only four years in existence, district officials said. The giant Los Angeles Unified School District also has no private fund-raising arm.

Year-Round Volunteers

Reynolds estimates that at least 100 volunteers actively participate in the La Canada organization year-round. Many of them offer professional services, such as specially designed fund-raising “pitches” that were written by promotional experts to “sell” the program to different classes of potential donors.

“We have one of the better school districts in the state,” Reynolds said, citing state test scores that consistently place district students in the 98th percentile or better in reading, writing and mathematics proficiency. “We know we have to look to our own community to keep it that way.”

Reynolds said fund-raisers rely on the district’s record to generate support for public schools from all sectors of the community, including donors without children, professionals, businesses and parents whose children attend private schools.

Typically, about 700 to 1,000 donors contribute to the annual fund-raising in the community, which has about 6,000 families, 2,000 of them with children attending local schools, Reynolds said.

Fund-Raising Events

As many as 350 volunteers are recruited to work in the group’s half a dozen fund-raising events each year, such as a back-to-school night program in which a spokesman for the foundation is placed in every classroom in the district.

“This definitely is a labor-intense organization,” said Reynolds, who pointed out that volunteers are common in the city, where the council and all of the commissioners hold unpaid positions. Parent volunteers account for more than 10,000 hours of documented work in the schools, she said.

Reynolds said other educational foundations have recently contacted La Canada, seeking the secret to its success. “The pressures are very great on educational foundations right now because the money is so tight from Sacramento,” she said. “Organizations are sitting back and saying, ‘How can we be more effective?’ ”

The Beverly Hills Education Foundation, one of the leading fund-raisers for lower public education, raises from $400,000 to $500,000 a year, but spends about $127,000 on its annual operating budget, according to Pat Berman, executive director.

Business Donations

The La Canada group, in contrast, spends less than $10,000 of the money that it raises each year on operations, largely for printing and mailing costs. Most other expenses, such as T-shirts for a jog-a-thon and food and wine for a fund-raising gourmet dinner, are donated by local businesses, Reynolds said.

Telephones, manned by up to 100 volunteers for some fund-raising programs, are provided by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a strong supporter of the foundation. Many JPL employees live in the city and their children attend local schools.

Corporate support for local school districts is becoming increasingly important nationwide, according to the National School Boards Assn., which estimates that more than 1,000 educational foundations supplement public school districts.

“There may not be a lot of individual money for schools, but there still is a lot of corporate money out there,” said William Tanner, a researcher for the national association. “During the last few years, we’ve seen more and more support from corporate America for the local schools, especially in California with all of its high-tech business.

“They see the children in the schools as their workers of the future.”