On Thursday, May 5, the Santa Barbara Education Foundation hosted the Hope Awards to celebrate individuals and programs supporting students […more…]

Model, film star and philanthropist will share the story of her illustrious family and multifaceted career UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) […more…]

The repurposed Santa Barbara store fronts at 4020 Calle Real, Suite 2, are serving our city’s homeless two meals a […more…]

Over the last couple of months (and as recent as this week), Montecito residents have been repeatedly reminded of the […more…]

Camp Chit Chat is a fun and socially interactive camp for preschool age children with mild-moderate speech and language delays. […more…]

Kevin Haeberle, the Santa Barbara native who heads a nonprofit called The Community Hot Rod Project and the self-described “gearhead,” […more…]

Community Arts Music Association of Santa Barbara, aka CAMA, is deservedly well-known and cherished for its commitment and ability to […more…]

Back in 2009 when Isabelle Gullö co-founded C.A.R.E.4Paws, she knew there was a desperate need locally for programs that reduce […more…]

We launched The Giving List to help the nonprofit organizations featured in this book spend less time fundraising and more […more…]

We are thrilled to present you with this year’s edition of The Giving List Santa Barbara. One of the things I love about Santa Barbara County is that it’s small enough to feel manageable, yet big enough to offer a robust and interesting tapestry of people, communities, and causes. In Santa Barbara you can make a difference in people’s lives through good work and innovative programs to tackle challenges that in larger regions seem too overwhelming; you can bring together groups to create invaluable partnerships to solve problems. Nowhere is this reflected more clearly than in Santa Barbara’s nonprofit and [...more...]

Philanthropy, incorporated for the public good, can and should make all its investments accordingly. In 2021, Senators Angus King (I-Maine) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced a bill to more tightly regulate donor-advised funds, commonly referred to as DAFs. While the Accelerating Charitable Giving (ACE) Act’s reforms were far from sweeping, the bill set off a bitter debate over who controls charitable funds: the donor or the public. The Act’s supporters plausibly argued that wealthy donors could use the increasingly popular philanthropic instruments for personal gain, and that DAFs allow them to hoard and perpetually control what becomes public money once [...more...]

Michael Towbes, who founded Montecito Bank & Trust (MB&T) in 1975, struck a different tone than most bankers when he proclaimed that, “banking is not about the MONEY, it’s about the PEOPLE.” This sentiment is echoed in terms of the bank’s philanthropy, which amounted to $1.6 million donated to local nonprofits in 2021.  And that’s not a one-time event; MB&T has contributed at least $1 million to local nonprofits every year since 2003 through numerous programs including its Community Dividends Program, which donates funds based on four “pillars” of corporate giving: arts and culture, health and medical, social services, and [...more...]

With nearly a century of experience serving the Central Coast, the Santa Barbara Foundation (SBF) has always been there when our community needed it most. From world wars, the Great Depression, droughts, fires, and through the pandemic, SBF has remained flexible and constant in its work to care for Santa Barbara County.  In the spring of 2020, when schools, businesses, governments, and nonprofits were struggling to respond to a new kind of virus, the Foundation moved quickly, in partnership with other funders, to offer emergency grants to local organizations whose income stream – perhaps even their existence – was on [...more...]

George Leis has been a prominent business and civic leader in Santa Barbara for decades. But he readily admits he left at least a piece of his heart in San Fernando. The Valley, that is. “I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t gotten an amazing education at Northridge,” the president and chief operating officer of Montecito Bank & Trust says, referring to California State University, Northridge. It is called Matador pride, a passionate sense of gratitude for the educational grounding and life lessons that has made CSUN a defining experience, particularly for students who, like Leis, [...more...]

Deb Langford:Head of Black Wealth Initiatives,J.P. Morgan Private Bank Deb Langford was mindful of the impact of giving long before taking up her role as Head of Black Wealth Initiatives at J.P. Morgan. In her current function, Langford guides affluent members of the Black community in the growth and preservation of their wealth, and in leaving generational legacies. Following a career of driving results, excellence, and inclusion in media and entertainment, Langford pivoted to deliver enterprise-level outcomes in diversity initiatives.  Most recently, Langford was named a 2022 NAACP Changemaker Award honoree. Now that she has made her foray into the [...more...]

Ayla Kalani: Westlake Village and Santa Barbara Market Team Lead,J.P. Morgan Private Bank When Ayla Kalani joined J.P. Morgan Private Bank 10 years ago, the bank had high-net-worth clients throughout Southern California but only two offices to serve them. Today, the Private Bank recently expanded its presence to Santa Barbara, and no outpost is growing faster than the one on State Street. As other companies retrenched during the COVID-19 pandemic, J.P. Morgan set up shop in new locations.  “Two years ago, we decided it was the right time to get closer to this community, to really understand what’s keeping people [...more...]

Jeff Kreisler: Head of Behavioral Science, J.P. Morgan Private BankJamie Hackleman: Family Governance and Senior Philanthropy Advisor, J.P. Morgan Private Bank With 16 people on four continents, the J.P. Morgan Philanthropy Centre team has deep and diverse expertise from the nonprofit world, business, government, and even the field of behavioral science. “My purpose is to help both clients and advisors understand how emotion and psychology impact decision making so that ultimately our clients can make better decisions to reach their goals,” says Jeff Kreisler, the Private Bank’s head of behavioral science, who works on both investment and philanthropy strategies. A [...more...]

Eva RhodesBanker for J.P. Morgan Private Bank, Santa Barbara A Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) can be a great strategy for charitable giving as it provides an easy, cost-effective way to give. One client who had been using a DAF had a $200mm liquidity event and engaged our team to not only work on the asset allocation, but to also discuss their philanthropic vision and desire to create high-impact programs. We immediately brought in a regional specialist from our Philanthropy Centre and set up an in-person meeting to discuss.  The family shared that they aspired to be more creative and independent in [...more...]

Wilma Melville is the most inspirational person I’ve ever met. She has done more during her retirement than most people have done during their entire careers. I recently had the pleasure of visiting her at the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation Training Center in Santa Paula, California, and then again in the hangar where she lives with her airplane. “Spark plug” is an overused term I have never used before. She is a spark plug. She is Annie Oakley. She is Amelia Earhart. Above all, Wilma Melville is an exhauster of my internal thesaurus of superlatives. One of the things [...more...]

When Nancy Sheldon was a little girl growing up in Milwaukee, her mother, Muriel, hosted dinners for Russian immigrants. It puzzled Sheldon, primarily because, as she recalls, “my mother hated to cook.” And yet, there she was, working away in the kitchen, creating beautiful dinners, to make these transplanted families feel comfortable. “I just remember not understanding what it was all about and why she was doing it, but feeling like there was a sacrifice,” she recalls. Although Sheldon could not completely comprehend the gravitas of the families’ plight at the time, her mother was actually helping to resettle “Refuseniks,” [...more...]

St. Vincent’s is not just a place or an institution. It is Santa Barbara’s longest-running social services organization, woven into […more…]