Foundation Going Out With a Bang: Its Last Bucks

The Harry and Grace Steele Foundation is dissolving after nearly 50 years during which it showered more than $120 million on arts, educational, environmental and other programs primarily in Southern California.

Before it shuts down at the end of next year, the Newport Beach-based charity will make one to three gifts totaling $20 million, “which will benefit the people of Orange County,” foundation attorney Wilbur Layman said Monday. He would not elaborate.

In the past the Orange County Performing Arts Center has been among the beneficiaries of the foundation. However, the center, which is in the midst of an ambitious fund-raising campaign for a $200-million expansion project, is not a finalist for the major proposed gifts, Layman said.

The four trustees who oversee the Steele Foundation no longer want to run it, Layman said. “They’re getting on in years, and they want to give all the money away before they’re gone.”

In its two most recent fiscal years, the foundation has given $15 million to various charities and pledged $3 million for future construction at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian. Major recent donations include $1.5 million to Children’s Hospital of Orange County, more than $1 million to Orangewood Children’s Foundation and $752,000 to local public television station KOCE.

Earlier this year, the foundation began notifying major recipients of its plans.

The foundation will honor all “existing commitments,” Layman said, but will not make any new contributions beyond the planned mega-gift.

The family foundation was launched in 1954, with a fortune that grew out of a Los Angeles machine shop run by patriarch Harry Steele in the 1920s. Emerson Electric later bought out the business. Foundation officers include Audrey Steele Burnand, her husband Alphonse A. Burnand, Elizabeth R. Steele and Nolan H. Baird Jr.

The foundation has been a major donor to local arts organizations, including the Performing Arts Center.

It contributed $3 million toward the center’s construction during the mid-1980s and has recently been instrumental in underwriting the center’s internationally acclaimed dance series to the tune of about $500,000 per year.

“They had a love of dance, but a love of the county that superseded everything,” said Terry Jones, the center’s vice president of development. “Their legacy here will be that they have primed the pump for other dance enthusiasts to move up and take their place.”

The foundation’s impending demise has elicited a mixture of sadness and gratitude from some of its longtime beneficiaries.

Jim Greenfield of Hoag said the hospital has received about $10 million over 25 years from the philanthropic organization. “They’ve been magnificent,” he said. “Their support has allowed us to buy equipment and renovate and add new facilities.”

Local groups that have grown dependent on the foundation’s largess may have to scramble to fill the financial void, said Karen Kallay of the Orange County Community Foundation in Irvine. “The Steele Foundation will be sorely missed.”

The foundation, which has maintained a low profile, has donated to organizations across the ideological landscape, ranging from the Boy Scouts to the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship to Planned Parenthood.

Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the foundation’s support allowed it to build a privately funded international program that has grown to 20 countries.

“We are very grateful for the extreme generosity of the Steele Foundation and for the focus they’ve had on serving the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world,” Feldt said.