Throughout the last year, Pasadena Community Foundation has met the COVID-19 crisis with far-reaching assistance for local organizations and the dizzying emergence of community needs. This response falls on a continuum of PCF’s long, sustainable support for “current needs unmet and future needs unforeseen” – all made possible by PCF’s powerful endowment funds.
Endowments serve as PCF’s source of “renewable energy” by creating continuous and vital support for the Foundation’s local grantmaking. They are at the heart of PCF’s loyal and repeat funding to long-standing agencies throughout the greater Pasadena area, while also providing versatile support to new organizations or causes that arise, like COVID-19.
Endowments Support Local Causes
For those with a passion for the greater Pasadena community, choosing to invest in a named endowment means choosing to invest in PCF’s ability to fund broadly, flexibly, and repeatedly. Knowing that community organizations can come and go and that changing needs are always part of the landscape, PCF focuses its grantmaking on causes, focusing on six “area as of interest” to guide its funding: Arts & Culture, Community & Economic Development, Environment & Animal Welfare, Health & Safety, Human Services. PCF Endowment Builders have the flexibility to designate their investment to one or more of these areas or to create an “unrestricted” endowment to support PCF’s local grantmaking as needs arise.
Funding a Changing Charitable Landscape
To date, the Foundation has awarded an impressive $109 million in total grants to myriad community agencies throughout its history, but PCF’s roster of grantee organizations shifts with time and as priorities and needs change. Endowments afford that flexibility.
Early and Enduring Support
The following organizations are among several local agencies that have benefited from PCF funding since the Foundation’s earliest years. The dates indicate the year of first funding.
- Five Acres, 1954
- Hathaway-Sycamores, 1955
- Convalescent Aid Society, 1954
- Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena, 1954
- Villa Esperanza Services, 1964
- Planned Parenthood Pasadena & San Gabriel Valley, 1966
Newer PCF Grantee Organizations
PCF has the flexibility to add new organizations to its grantee fold. Examples from the last ten years include
- STEAM:CODERS, 2017
- Club 21 Learning & Resource Center, 2013
- A Noise Within, 2012
- Pasadena Village, 2012
- Arlington Gardens, 2011
- College Access Plan, 2011
- Pasadena Education Network, 2011
“Sunsetted” Organizations
The AIDS Service Center is an example of a need that arose at a point in time and was met with PCF funding beginning in 1990. Following medical advances in recent years, the organization ceased its operations in 2014. PCF transitioned funding to other organizations that support vulnerable populations.