Community Foundation for Oak Park

A Letter from the President

This statement has not been approved by the Board of Trustees. Opinions expressed here belong solely to Community Foundation President David Ross and do not reflect the positions of the Foundation or its Board of Trustees. Factual statements can be verified by an examination of the Foundation's documents.

15 June 2007

To the community of Oak Park:

Each year, your Community Foundation is asked by Guidestar — a non-profit organization that maintains a Web site for a national database of charities — for a summary of our past accomplishments and our future goals. To prepare that summary, I first create this letter to you — for whom the Community Foundation was created — with a little more detail.

Accomplishments

As usual, most of what we did was accomplished through our activity committees.

• Both the Medea Creek Middle School and Oak Park High School Parent-Faculty Clubs continued their excellent support of their respective schools, involving both volunteers for school programs and grants where limited education funding could not provide desired materials to enhance learning.
• The Oak Park Performing Arts Alliance supported an excellent program of music, drama, and comedy at Oak Park High School.
• Together, four of our school based activity committees — the three already cited plus the Oak Park Neighborhood School Parent Advisory Board — provided a combined total of $154,812 in grants to Oak Park schools, programs, and students in calendar year 2006.
• The Oak Park High School Grad Night Committee conducted another safe celebration for graduating seniors.
• The Friends of the Oak Park Library operates a very successful used book store within the Oak Park Library. In 2006, revenues from the book store funded grants to both the public and school aspects of the Library for book purchases and programs in the amount of $7,877.
• The Oak Park Gardeners not only operates the community garden at the corner of Kanan Road and Sunnycrest Drive. This activity committee also presents programs of interest to gardeners at its monthly meetings.

Your Community Foundation issued small grants for scholarships to students graduating from Oak View High School, for training our Community Emergency Response Team, and for training school staff in the use of defibrillators. Additionally, the Foundation and its activity committees expended funds directly for our own programs that benefit our community.

Our financial statements for 2006 are on our Web site. Our overall resources increase by 13.9% compared with 2005.

• Our overhead costs were 4% of revenues.
• Our fund-raising costs were 30% of the funds raised.
• The cost of soliciting donations was 4% of the donations received.

We conducted our second orientation meeting in October 2006 for leaders of our activity committees. The results included a noticeable improvement in communication between the Community Foundation and its volunteers. This will likely be an annual event.

The Community Foundation completed the creation of the Millie Andress Memorial Scholarship Fund. Ms. Andress joined our Oak Park schools as the Principal at Oak Park High School and then served many years as the Principal at Oak View High School. About a year after retiring, she died suddenly while doing something she really enjoyed: skin diving in Hawaii.

The Community Foundation conducted a public forum for the November 2006 election with participation by candidates for the Triunfo Sanitation District (which owns the Oak Park Water Service) and speakers for and against school bond Proposition H.

We expanded our Board of Trustees from 10 to 11 members and appointed Mary Pallant (in 2006) and Elaine Benditson (in 2007) as new trustees.

Goals

Early in 2008, the Community Foundation will have to select a new President from among the Board of Trustees. I announced at the February 2006 Board meeting that this would be my last year as President.

Seeking to become more proactive, the Community Foundation will explore conducting a full-spectrum community needs assessment for Oak Park.

Of course, not everything is rosy for your Community Foundation.

• After very serious discussions, our Board of Trustees authorized the Medea Creek Middle School and Oak Park High School Parent-Faculty Clubs to make campaign donations to the school bond elections for the Oak Park Unified School District amounting to 3.1% of the Community Foundation's revenues. On behalf of the Foundation and all its activity committees, the Board also endorsed a "yes" vote for both elections. Although permitted by law (within a limit of 20% of revenues), these actions proved very controversial. In the end, only one of three bond propositions were approved by the voters.
• To fill a vacancy on our expanded Board of Trustees, we appointed an Oak Park resident who then resigned and moved away before attending a single Board meeting.
• The Craig D. Hastings Memorial Fund was closed. This fund provided scholarship grants to students graduating from Oak View High School. However, it was never funded to be permanent. When attempts to contact the Hastings family were unsuccessful, we donated the fund's balance ($137) to the student body at Oak View High School, which was one of the original purposes of the fund.

Sincerely,
David Ross, President

Community Foundation for Oak Park • P. O. Box 291 • Agoura, CA 91376-0291

Copyright © 2005 by Community Foundation