Miguel Santana has had a long career in the nonprofit sector.
In late 2023, he was named chief executive of the California Community Foundation after serving as president and chief executive of the Weingart Foundation. Both are based downtown.
In his role as the top leader of the CCF, Santana is tasked with overseeing a budget of $2.3 billion in assets and an organization that partners with nearly 2,000 charitable foundations, legacies and funds.
Santana sat down with the Business Journal to discuss his time at the CCF, future plans for the organization and the passage of Measure A, which implements a sales tax to fund homelessness services and affordable housing programs.
What made you interested in nonprofit work?
In many ways, I’ve done a full circle. I started my career in the nonprofit space. My first job in this work was working for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, MALDEF. It was right after the civil unrest here in Los Angeles (the Los Angeles Riots of 1992), and MALDEF was really focused on trying to understand the causes behind the unrest, be part of coalitions that were trying to respond to it and really imagine and start creating a better Los Angeles. I was hired by Antonia Hernandez, who was, at the time, the president and CEO of MALDEF, to engage in that work. The reason why I say it’s a full circle is the person who I followed here at CCF is the same person. She left MALDEF 20 years ago and came to run the California Community Foundation.
What got you interested in CCF?
She obviously was a big part (in me joining CCF), but prior to coming to CCF, I had served as the head of the Weingart Foundation. The Weingart Foundation is a private foundation, and the source of funding came from Ben Weingart, who was a Southern California developer; he built the city of Lakewood, as an example.
I obviously was very familiar with philanthropy when I came here. I had served on the board of the California Community Foundation, as well as on board of the Weingart Foundation and I got to understand the differences between a community foundation and a private foundation, and what really brought me here was the ability to engage the broader community in advancing the civic agenda for Los Angeles.
Private philanthropy is much more focused and has certain limitations in that it can’t engage in advocacy. Its engagement with the community is really as a funder. At the California Community Foundation, because we are here to support the community, we act as a convener to advance the issues that are most important for Angelenos, and we partner with hundreds of donors throughout Southern California who are committed to making L.A. and the world a better place, and we do that by supporting nonprofits throughout the region.
We gave out over $350 million in grants last year, but we also do that by advancing solutions.
Such as?
A good example of that is the leadership role that we played with Measure A just recently. We played a role in drafting the language of Measure A. My name is actually on Measure A…The California Community Foundation invested over $5 million towards the passage of Measure A in both the campaign, but also in educating the public about what was at stake.
I serve as the co-chair on the leadership table. I’m one of Mayor Bass’ representatives at LACAHSA, which is the authority that’s going to be overseeing the financing of affordable housing.
You’ve now been CEO of CCF for a little more than a year. How has it been going so far?
It’s been a real honor to serve in this role. This role has allowed me to access my 30 years of experience in the public sector and the nonprofit sector and philanthropy, and put those lessons in practice, but it also allows me to access my own story, the experiences growing up as a as a son of undocumented parents, as a first generation college student, as someone who started a family at the age of 19 and finished college with one kid born and another one on the way, someone who was able to be here in part from the generosity of others, and kind of rely on government support. Those experiences, as well as my degrees and my resume in terms of what I’ve done professionally, all those different touch points are relevant in the work that I do and to lead an institution that has been really one of the anchor institutions that has created the Los Angeles that we have here today. There are not too many institutions in Los Angeles that have been around for more than 100 years. The California Community Foundation is one of them. We intend to be around for the next 100 years. To be here at this time, in particular, with so much focus and attention going to be placed in Los Angeles, with all these world events coming to L.A. including the Olympics in ’28, being at the California Community Foundation is a real privilege.
What have been some of the biggest initiatives or projects you have taken on in the past year?
Measure A. We couldn’t have been more involved, intimately involved, in that. We also partnered with the city and the mayor to launch strategies that tried to harness private investment in the development of affordable housing. We did so with the with an initiative called L.A. for L.A., really harnessing the private investment into affordable housing. The mayor announced this initiative, this partnership, at our State of the City address in this in April and four months later, the first development was opened, and we played a central role in that…
I’m also very proud of the work that we’re doing to support communities on the ground, those who are trying to find ways to help young people to move away from incarceration, to try to support them, so that the young people who are involved in the incarceration system or the foster care system have pathways out of those systems into more self-sustaining lives through a program called Ready to Rise, which is a partnership with the County of Los Angeles, as well as really advancing educational outcomes in the region.
We’ve been very fortunate that we have had a number of major milestones in the last year, we supported governance reform at the county and city of Los Angeles to bring greater transparency, accountability, to bring representation closer to people, to Measure G and the various measures that were at the city level for ethics reform, for removing politics out of redistricting so that it’s done by facts and not by politics. Those are all been things that we’ve been spending a lot of time supporting and in the last year, we raised close to $250 million and gave out over $350 million in grants.
Where does your funding come from?
Most of our money comes from fellow Angelenos. It comes from donors from throughout the region who are committed to making Los Angeles stronger, we haven’t given up on L.A., who believe in the promise of this community and the California Dream. We receive support from government on specific programs. And of course, we partner with philanthropy, with other foundations, who support specific initiatives.
Are there any specific rules or regulations, or even threats of certain rules and regulations, you’re concerned about, either nationally or locally?
We’re entering a new era at the national level. The role of philanthropy is going to be closely, closely scrutinized, and the policies that are going to be pursued are going to have a direct impact here in Los Angeles and the one thing that I would urge your readers, as the business community, is to really be well informed about those changes and understand that the policies that are being proposed will have a direct impact on not just individuals, but to the entire sector. The (potential) mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, regardless of how you may feel about it, will have real implications to our economy.
Our job in the next few years is going to be make sure that people understand the implications, the tradeoffs. They understand ways that they can make a difference, they can have an impact and come together. And so that’s going to be a priority for us, because we’re about supporting Angelenos and that means all Angelenos.
What do the next few years look like for you and CCF?
It’s really about focusing on results, getting to build and help facilitate and collaborate with others to create the Los Angeles we all want to see. Our strategic framework will make audacious goals. We believe that you can, in fact, end street homelessness in the next 10 years. It requires everyone focused on that goal. It requires the public sector, the nonprofit sector, philanthropy, all growing in the same direction. It requires accountability and transparency and a commitment to align resources that are outcome driven.
We are going to focus on making sure that the promises that have been made in Measure A get met, that is going to be central to our agenda.
We also care about education, wanting to make sure that every person has the opportunity to realize their potential by either going to college or getting workforce skill training, creating greater pathways to careers and upward mobility and advocating for legislation that allows for better access to pathways that result in upward mobility. We care a lot about our immigrant community…and those who are disproportionately represented in poverty, wanting to make sure that we are prioritizing services to support those individuals and families who have been really historically under-resourced and to help them move out of poverty.
