One Group’s Winning Bet
Thirty-five years ago this month, a man at a poker table wanted to leave his estate to the community he loved. There was nowhere to leave it. So his friend Roy Lave and a group of neighbors built somewhere, and in 1991 the Los Altos Mountain View Community Foundation (LAMVCF) opened its doors.
His estate became the opening funds for what is now MVLA Scholars, a fiscally sponsored project of the Foundation that distributes more than $700,000 in scholarships to local students every year. In the 35 years since, this community has moved $125 million out into the world through the Foundation’s Donor Advised Funds alone.
“We notice the donations attached to a name on a building. The ones that improve our communities mostly don’t have one,” said Crysta Krames, CEO of LAMVCF. “Someone in Los Altos Hills has been quietly funding scholarships for twenty years and has never once asked us to mention it. That’s not a fundraising statistic. That’s a portrait of the place we live in.”
The Foundation’s history tracks the moments this community decided to act together. In the weeks after September 11, 2001, LAMVCF convened a fundraising response for a country in shock. And over the years LAMVCF has served as the launching pad for organizations such as: Mentor Tutor Connection, Fondo de Solidaridad de Mountain View, and Living Classroom, which all began under the Foundation’s fiscal sponsorship and went on to become independent nonprofits. Volunteer-led efforts including GreenTown Los Altos and TACO have a home here along with seventeen other community-led projects operating under the Foundation’s Local Impact Collective.
“We’re never going to be the biggest foundation in the Bay Area,” said Krames. “Being small enough to know people by name is exactly why a neighbor can call us with an idea and get somewhere to put it the same day. Big is impressive. Anchored is useful.”
Krames found the Foundation the way many residents do, by accident. “I moved here in 2006, and I discovered this place by watching our former board chair Mary Prochnow speak to students in the Los Altos High School Gay Straight Alliance, after a parade plenty of adults had tried to prevent from happening,” she said. “I brought my children that day. Twenty years later I’m still here because of that empowering afternoon.”
The Foundation’s newest Changemaker Initiative, the Mountain View Affordable Housing Fund, reflects where it sees the next chapter. “The good we can see is a fraction of what’s sitting in this community waiting for somebody to say yes to it,” Krames said.
LAMVCF is marking its 35th anniversary throughout the year, with community celebrations including Oktoberfest on September 26 at Lincoln Park. Neighbors can also get involved by opening a fund, backing a Local Impact Collective project, or joining one of LAMVCF’s Changemaker Initiatives.