Pasadena Community Foundation Funds

Yes, Virginia Endowment

Five young children play as large snowflakes fall during a holiday party hosted by Door of Hope in Pasadena, CA.
Children play at Door of Hope’s Winter Family Fun Festival, a party hosted with the help of a Yes, Virginia grant at an Altadena park.

In 1897, Frank Church, editor of The New York Sun, responded to eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, who wrote to the newspaper to ask “is there a Santa Claus?” More than a century later it remains the most reprinted editorial ever to run in any newspaper in the United States.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!”

For 30 years, the Yes, Virginia Fund has supported children in need in the Pasadena community at the holidays with the Yes, Virginia Grant Program. The fund provides grants to local nonprofit agencies to provide toys, books, gifts, and special experiences for the holidays, in an effort to help all children feel valued and supported in their lives.

Since 1994, the Yes, Virginia Fund has granted more than $390,000 to local nonprofit agencies to help address the needs of our community’s children. In 2019, the Yes, Virginia Fund reached its endowment goal, and now, as the Yes, Virginia Endowment, it will make its holiday grants to local nonprofit agencies every year, for decades to come.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” means that no child is meant to go without. We are committed to our credo: “Some things have to be believed to be seen.”

2023 Grantees

  • Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena
  • Door of Hope
  • Elizabeth House
  • Families Forward Learning Center
  • Flintridge Center
  • Friends Outside in LA County
  • Harambee Christian Family Center
  • Impact House
  • Learning Works
  • Pasadena Altadena Coalition of Transformative Leaders (PACTL)
  • Pasadena Altadena Links
  • Treasure Little Children Foundation

Fund description updated December, 2023.

A smiling woman behind a table hand a red gift wrapped package to a smiling woman on the other side of the table.
Elizabeth House’s Annual Holiday Party, 2023.
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