The Laguna Beach Community Foundation will manage the local Boys and Girls’ Club’s $1.1 million endowment, an agreement representing the largest fund in the foundation’s young history that increases its assets by nearly half.
Since its founding in 2004, the foundation has distributed more than 300 grants from the 37 charitable funds with nearly $4 million in assets it manages for individuals, families, private foundations and businesses.
The announcement this week represents a shift by the Boys and Girls Club from its investment handler, Beacon Pointe Advisors, which had managed the club’s funds since the endowment’s inception in 2005, Executive Director Pam Estes said.
“Our endowment committee decided that it was time to go out to bid,” Estes said.
The Newport Beach investment firm Beacon Point was established in 2002 and managed $6.2 billion in assets as of Dec. 31. Its clients include more than a score of nonprofit organizations.
Though the club’s endowment committee did not find fault with the firm’s investment performance or service, the local foundation was very competitive and “we liked the thought of keeping the funds in the community,” Estes said.
“We chose the Laguna Beach Community Foundation because we felt secure in having our funds managed locally by financial professionals that understand the nonprofit arena,” Estes said in a statement. “As members of our community, we knew they could provide direct, one-on-one personal advice and access to us. Partnerships like this help solidify ties and strengthen the fabric of communities.”
The club’s decision to shift investment managers represents growing traction by the young community foundation, whose mission is to encourage philanthropy to Laguna Beach charitable organizations and provide charitable guidance to local residents. With the addition of the club’s funds, the foundation’s assets near $4 million, foundation project coordinator Rachel Lindsey confirmed. They include funds such as the Claes Andersen Hospitality Scholarship Fund, in honor of the late hotel operator, and the Trisha and Michael Berns fund, to establish and maintain an amphitheater and trail study loop in Crystal Cove State Park.
“I think it’s a great model of what could be done by other organizations,” Maya Dunne, a philanthropy and nonprofit advisor who lives in town, said of the club’s decision. “Placing the endowment with the community foundation is a great way to give back to the community,” she said.
A volunteer investment committee made up of two trustees who are professional wealth managers for high net-worth clients oversee the foundation’s assets. Laura Tarbox and Jim Fletcher, both local residents, determine the foundation’s investment strategy, balanced 60-40 in equity and fixed income investments, says the foundation’s website. In the five years ended 2013, the committee achieved annualized investment returns of 13.2 percent, the website says.
Greater returns on foundation assets throw off more income for grants. In 2014, the foundation’s donors made grants of $680,000 to organizations that ranged from the Friendship Shelter to Laguna Playhouse.
As might be expected in a community of under 25,000, the Laguna Beach Community Foundation is among the small fry of the nation’s 474 community foundations, half of which control assets exceeding $10 million, says a report by the Foundation Center, based in New York. As a group, community foundations gave away $4.2 billion in gifts in 2010, about 10 percent of charitable giving nationwide, says the report, the most recent statistics available.
“This agreement with the Boys & Girls Club of Laguna Beach punctuates a very exciting and promising time for the Laguna Beach Community Foundation,” its newly arrived executive director, Daniel Pingaro, said in a statement. “Over the past 8 months, we’ve come a long way, adding new staff and executive committee and putting into place a strategic plan to help us grow as an organization that reaches beyond just our South Orange County home. This fund agreement with the Boys & Girls Club is a wonderful sign of early success.”
