OCC Receives Anonymous $1-Million Gift

Orange Coast College has received a $1-million donation, the largest in the community college’s history and one of the biggest gifts ever given to any California two-year institution of higher education.

The donor has asked to remain anonymous and is not being identified, said Orange Coast President David A. Grant, who announced the gift during his annual “state of the college” speech on Tuesday to faculty and staff members.

“Orange Coast College is enormously grateful for this extraordinary gift,” Grant said.

The $1 million is in an irrevocable trust and cannot be used until the donor’s death. The donor has a specific purpose for which the money is to be used, but that also cannot be publicly revealed until the donor’s death, officials added.

California has 107 community colleges and, though no central records are kept of all donations to the two-year institutions, State Community Colleges Chancellor David Mertes called the bequest “one of the largest donations ever made to a (California) community college.”

Douglas Bennett, executive director of the Orange Coast College Foundation, said that Santa Barbara City College is the only two-year institution he knows to have received a larger single donation.

“Santa Barbara got a $2-million donation in land,” Bennett said. “But I don’t know of any other community college which has received a (cash) donation of $1 million or more.”

Bennett made arrangements with the donor’s lawyer creating the $1-million trust.

“When the lawyer came to me about this, I was blown away,” Bennett said. “I’ve handled $100,000 donations (to Orange Coast), but I’ve never had anything like this.”

There are few clues to the identity of the donor. Bennett would not even disclose whether the person is a man or a woman. He did, however, say that the donor has previously given smaller amounts of money to Orange Coast and those were not all anonymous.

The Orange Coast College Foundation is the institution’s private, nonprofit, fund-raising arm. In the last fiscal year, the foundation raised $909,000. The $1-million donation revealed on Tuesday means that the foundation has already exceeded last year’s total. And Bennett said he hopes more major bequests will be forthcoming.

“It’s our first $1-million donation, but I’m hoping it won’t be our last,” Bennett said.