Community Foundation Does Well by Doing Good : Charity: High-powered leaders help achieve $5-million goal six months ahead of schedule. Endowments target health, education, the arts and more.

Directors of the Ventura County Community Foundation recently faced a problem that charities normally never consider: With its goal of $5 million in assets achieved six months early, what to do next?

The foundation’s success in attracting dollars comes at a time when most other Ventura County charities have seen donations choked off by a tight economy.

“It was so easy to get the money, it’s almost embarrassing,” said Kate McLean, who heads the foundation’s tiny staff in a modest suite of offices in Camarillo.

Observers say the group, which is entering its seventh year, has managed to sock away millions of dollars in endowments because it has a committed, energetic board of directors and an experienced staff.

But perhaps more importantly, they say, the foundation has filled a gaping hole in the county’s philanthropic community.

Before the foundation was created, there was no place where wealthy Ventura County residents could set up charitable trust funds in a cost-efficient manner. As a result, when people died, they often left assets to organizations outside the county, said Beverly Viola, an official of the Ventura County chapter of United Way.

Through the Ventura County Community Foundation, individuals or families can establish a permanent fund that generates income from interest and dividends. Revenue from the fund is then disbursed annually in the family’s name in the form of grants to a variety of charitable causes, Viola said.

“The foundation has the expertise to set up endowments and to administer grants from them,” Viola said. “They are providing a service that no one else does.”

The group started in 1988 with a $50,000 endowment from the Teague family, longtime Ventura County farmers and ranchers. Dividends from that endowment provide a $2,000 annual scholarship to a student pursuing a degree in agriculture.

Today, the foundation manages 80 separate endowments worth $5 million. This year, it will award $55,000 in grants to youth and family service programs in support of a variety of philanthropic interests.

Last year, for example, poor children received dental care at Clinicas del Camino Real in Oxnard under a $1,000 grant provided by the Ag Land Services Community Fund. The Boys & Girls Club of Moorpark received $2,000 for a homework tutoring program, and the Ojai Shakespeare Festival received $3,250 that it used to encourage teen-agers to attend performances.

A group of fund-raisers associated with United Way decided in 1987 that Ventura County needed a community foundation, McLean said. Such umbrella trusts to benefit community needs have been around for nearly a century, and they are the fastest-growing area of philanthropy in the United States, a spokesman for the Council of Foundations in Washington said.

There are 400 community foundations in the nation today, he said.

Residents who eventually made up the Ventura County Community Foundation’s first board of directors were attracted by the ease and flexibility of establishing funds, McLean said. But a twinge of envy also helped get it off the ground, she said.

Neighboring Santa Barbara County has had a community foundation since 1928 and boasted $40 million in permanent endowments, McLean said.

“I don’t think our community leaders liked to hear that Santa Barbara County had $40 million in its community foundation and this county had nothing,” she said.

So the Ventura County foundation was launched, with the board of directors holding its first meeting in February, 1988. From the start, the foundation was able to lure some of the county’s most powerful and wealthy residents to its board.

Rancher Alan M. Teague is one of the founding directors and currently serves as president. Other directors include rancher-developer Tom R. Leonard, lawyer Laura McAvoy and citrus rancher John V. Newman.

Despite its stellar board, however, the foundation struggled to attract money in its first three years. At the end of 1990, it had just $420,400 in permanent endowments.

That changed dramatically over the next three years. By 1991, assets had more than tripled; 1992 and 1993 also saw explosive growth, with the foundation reaching its goal of $5 million in permanent endowments six months ahead of its June, 1994, deadline.

McLean attributes the success to the group’s increased visibility. As people began to learn about the foundation and what it could do, more donated money, she said.

“The money has always been here,” she said. “People were just waiting for a vehicle that they could trust and that could invest and manage their funds wisely.”

Others say much of the credit goes to McLean herself. The fund’s rapid growth began shortly after she was hired to run things at the end of 1990.

The foundation recruited McLean away from Interface Children, Family Services of Ventura County, a social services agency she helped found 20 years earlier.

“Kate is a dynamo,” Viola said. “She built (Interface) from a tiny organization into a multimillion-dollar group with nearly 50 employees.”

One of the first things McLean did was to urge each board member to establish a fund in the foundation.

“They had not done that,” McLean said. “I told them that until they were visibly committed to the permanence of the foundation, it was going to be difficult to convince others to be committed.”

McLean also persuaded trustees of other private funds and foundations in Ventura County to transfer their money to the Ventura County Community Foundation, where it could be more efficiently managed. And she made sure that estate planners knew about the foundation and would recommend it to interested clients.

But no foundation can prosper without the leadership and visibility of a strong board, McLean said. The foundation’s directors are movers and shakers representing every corner of the county, she said. And each one is committed to the idea of building a lasting establishment, she said.

Teague agrees that directors are in it for the long haul.

“We are making up for lost time,” he said. “The core is there, and the spirit is there.”

Current directors include cardiologist Dr. William L. Hart, banker Marshall C. Milligan and Otis Chandler, former chairman of the board of Times Mirror Corp.

“We have people who are seen as credible, honest, committed and visionary people,” McLean said.

Reaching the $5-million mark has bestowed the Ventura County Community Foundation with legitimacy among its peers, said Charles Slosser, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Community Foundation.

“It’s kind of an unwritten rule that once a foundation reaches $5 million, it has the stability and assets to keep growing indefinitely,” he said.

Ventura County’s foundation is “strong, growing, young and energetic,” Slosser said.

Since reaching that $5-million target, McLean says, the foundation’s directors have set an ambitious new goal: They want to have $40 million in permanent endowments by 2000.

“We’re on a roll,” she said. “I see no reason for it to stop now.”