Charity Must Be in the Water

The 500 people lunching under the white tent on the Montecito lawn had waited two years for this moment. Now they had her. Oprah Winfrey was making her “coming out gig” on behalf of a local charity.

It was the philanthropy coup of the year. The Santa Barbara charity set had finally bagged one of the richest and most famous women in the world. Their new neighbor. And, hopefully, their new friend.

Winfrey was the guest speaker at a $500,000 fund-raising lunch in late April at the estate of Marlene Veloz for the local chapter of Girls Inc., a group that runs after-school programs for girls.

Others had plotted how to lure the billionaire television star to their own causes. But Winfrey had made it clear that anybody approaching her should talk first to Veloz, her new jogging partner and the previous owner of the $50-million, 42-acre estate that Winfrey now calls Tara II.

Her speech was another high point for one of the nation’s most remarkable philanthropy scenes. Santa Barbara, a city of 90,000 people, is home to about 600 nonprofit organizations and 900 social and cultural programs. And charity is a way of life.

Santa Barbara’s art museum, zoo, natural history museum, ballet and opera companies, symphony and chamber orchestras compare with those of cities with populations in the millions. But the nonprofit community doesn’t stop with cultural amenities for the rich. There are four major homeless shelters, environmental groups, health and education programs. Name the problem, there’s a group trying to fix it.

“Philanthropy accounts for a tremendous part of the well-being of the entire Santa Barbara area,” said County Supervisor Naomi Schwartz. “For a small community, the amount of giving is amazing. It’s probably off the charts.”

Santa Barbara is 90 miles from Los Angeles, and has always taken care of itself. Philanthropy isn’t just an activity here. It’s what defines you as a member of the community, whether millionaire donor or working-class volunteer.

The millionaires and the few billionaires sprinkled around Santa Barbara create a misconception that the whole town is rich. In fact, the median income for a family of four in Santa Barbara is $57,880, lower than the state median of $63,761. Santa Barbara’s nonprofit engine also is fueled by middle-class wage earners.

There is a charity ball or other philanthropic event almost every day and night. Many groups hold their fund-raisers on the same day every year so key donors won’t get confused.

Though Winfrey has made only one major appearance so far, there is plenty of other celebrity glitter.

Jeff Bridges, Kenny Loggins and John Cleese are among the most active these days. So are Jonathan Winters, Fess Parker and Bo Derek. Though he’s not on the party circuit, Michael Jackson donates trips for children’s groups to his Neverland estate in the Santa Ynez Valley.

But celebrities are everywhere in Southern California. What most distinguishes the charity world in Santa Barbara is how closely its members and other wealthy donors work together with volunteers. And how much they accomplish.

Rushworth Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics in Washington, D.C., is a national expert on philanthropy. He says Santa Barbara is unique in the emphasis it places on teamwork.

“I don’t know of anyplace else in the country like it,” he said. “In much of the rest of the nation, there is a barrier between donors and volunteers that creates a feeling of arrogance. In Santa Barbara, they are all in it together.”

Two rules define the charity scene in Santa Barbara. According to Erin Graffy de Garcia, author of a tongue-in-cheek book titled “How to Santa Barbara,” rule No. 1 is involvement.

“In Santa Barbara there is an unwritten understanding that to take your place in the community, you must be an integral part of a local nonprofit,” her book declares. “If you are not able to donate beaucoup bucks, not to worry. All your spare time will also suffice.”

Santa Barbara’s cultural institutions were well established by the end of World War II. One of the community leaders over the next two decades was George Castagnola, a fisherman and restaurant owner whose favorite charity was St. Francis Hospital.

Hazel Blankenship, one of a newer generation of Santa Barbara philanthropists, credits the late civic leader with bluntly setting forth rule No. 2:

“This is how the game is played. I have my favorite charity and you have yours. When you ask me for a check, I write it. When I ask you for a check, you write it. The first time you don’t, you are out of the game.”

At the center of it all is the Santa Barbara Foundation, one of the 50 oldest community foundations in the United States. With assets of $184 million, it tops all Southern California community foundations in per capita giving and coordinates the charity activities of 38 local family foundations known as the Roundtable.

Over a recent four-year period, the Santa Barbara Foundation averaged a donation of $26 a year for each of the more than 400,000 residents of the county. That ranked it 19th of the 50 largest community foundations in the nation. By comparison, the Boston Foundation averaged $13.18 per person and the Philadelphia Foundation averaged $3.36. Topping the list was the Marin Community Foundation, with assets of more than $1 billion, which had a per capita giving average of $91.84.

The leaders of the Roundtable foundations meet regularly to go over the hundreds of requests for aid from groups throughout Santa Barbara County. Collectively, they distribute about $60 million a year.

“We have always been isolated from huge population centers, so we have developed an independent approach to taking care of ourselves,” said Charles Slosser, president of the Santa Barbara Foundation. “This goes back to the early 1900s.

“The result today is what I call a big little city,” he added. “The people who came here from all those big cities back East wanted the same amenities here, so Santa Barbara has all the cultural elements of a city five times its size.”

In Santa Barbara, Max Fleischmann was one of those pioneering philanthropists. Head of Fleischmann Yeast Co., he was known as the “Yeast King.”

When the 1925 earthquake devastated Santa Barbara, Fleischmann helped restore the Santa Barbara Mission. Needing a place to berth his yacht, he built the breakwater that created the city’s harbor. And he and other civic leaders established the Santa Barbara Foundation in 1928.

“But the important point is it wasn’t one man,” Slosser said. “There were a couple dozen men and women like him. They were active in everything from building museums and theaters to protecting our enormous public beach area from any development.”

One of the city’s leading philanthropists today is Michael Towbes, chairman of the Towbes Group and owner of Montecito Bank & Trust. He is known for creative financing approaches.

Recently, for example, Towbes helped save Santa Barbara’s classical music radio station KDB-FM. The Santa Barbara Foundation is acquiring the station with proceeds from the sale of a shopping center he donated. But though Towbes is typically low-key, Santa Barbara’s most prominent philanthropists for more than a decade are a couple with a flare for flamboyance.

Until a few years ago, they were known simply as Paul and Leslie Ridley-Tree. Then they began calling themselves Lord and Lady Paul and Leslie Ridley-Tree, explaining that a distant Irish relative had died and that Paul Ridley-Tree had inherited the title.

At the same time, the Ridley-Trees were dishing out millions of dollars to virtually every worthwhile cause in town. They estimate they have given about $30 million in all to local charities.

“The more you have, the more you have to share,” she said recently at her Montecito home. “It’s such a joy to be able to give.”

The Cacique Street Center, one of the city’s four homeless shelters, has been a top priority for Santa Barbara philanthropists in the last three years. And the Ridley-Trees head the list of donors.

A one-stop service center for the homeless, the facility offers hot meals, beds for 30 people in the summer and as many as 212 people during winter, job placement, and social service and health counseling. It will soon add a detox wing and is pushing for more beds to take care of the center’s nightly homeless overflow.

Sue Adams is a social activist who fought for the center, and David Peri is a certified public accountant who raised most of the $6 million needed to build it. Of that amount, $4 million came from private donors, $2 million from government.

Touring the facility at lunchtime, Peri pointed to a new state-of-the-art kitchen that cost the Ridley-Trees about $500,000. Added Adams: “Leslie Ridley-Tree comes over frequently. She takes her rings off and goes to work in the kitchen with the other volunteers.”

That’s a common sight in Santa Barbara. At Transition House, which provides housing for homeless families, actor Jeff Bridges is both donor and volunteer. At the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, which treats men and women drug abusers and maintains a separate 100-bed facility for the homeless, a prominent donor and volunteer is the Baroness Leni Fe Bland.

“We have about 600 volunteers who work here, and many of them are donors,” said mission director Steen Hudson. “One of the most generous donors is the baroness. She comes down every two or three weeks, just mingling with the people we treat, asking them about their lives. Her heart is obviously very attached to the group.”

The Ridley-Trees, Katherine and Stewart Abercrombie, Pierre Claeyssens and Fe Bland are part of what’s known as the “Old Guard” of the Santa Barbara philanthropy scene.

“I really admire them,” Graffy said. “They just don’t age properly in Santa Barbara. They are like Energizer Bunnies, running from one event to the next.”

Of all Santa Barbara’s nonprofits, about 350 get help from the Santa Barbara Foundation. But, like charity organizations throughout the country, even this city has felt the impact of tough economic times.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art slashed its $6.5-million budget by $700,000 last month, cut eight staff jobs and ended a policy of free admission on Thursdays. Almost all nonprofits are struggling.

In both good and bad times, it’s the energy at all levels of the Santa Barbara charity scene that makes it different from other places, said James E. Canales, president of the giant James Irvine Foundation, a statewide organization.

“Just because there’s a lot of money in Santa Barbara isn’t what makes it different,” Canales said. “What distinguishes Santa Barbara from Beverly Hills and Carmel and La Jolla is the foundation’s vibrancy.”

Sometimes newcomers don’t catch on. Or they just don’t care how other Santa Barbara residents view them.

Despite the hoopla over April’s lunch, Winfrey hasn’t written any checks yet, several Montecito residents pointed out. Said one: “She’s not really in the game until she does.”

But Winfrey distributes millions of dollars annually through her own foundations to causes around the world.

She told Santa Barbara magazine last year that she would take her time looking at local charities: “I will involve myself as I feel that I can best be used, not as people can best use me.”

But the philanthropists are optimistic. At the Cacique Street Center, Sue Adams said she has written Winfrey with a request for funds. And she says other groups have too.

Towbes urged patience.

“I think Oprah will become more involved as she spends more time here,” he said. “You can’t take it with you.”