S.B. Historical Museum

This 1961 photo shows the Santa Barbara Foundation’s Hill-Carrillo adobe headquarters on East Carrillo Street.

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Question submitted by Tracy Millward

For 80 years, the Santa Barbara Foundation has served the community through an ever-growing program of grants and loans supporting a wide range of institutions. The foundation was the brainchild of Max C. Fleischmann, one of Santa Barbara’s greatest benefactors. The idea for the foundation grew out of Fleischmann’s love of music.

Max C. Fleischmann was the son of the founder of the yeast company that bore the family name. He visited Santa Barbara in 1911 and, after the end of World War I, returned to the South Coast to live. Throughout the years, he would give funds to a number of causes including the construction of the harbor, expansion of Cottage Hospital, and support for the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, to name just a few.

During the first half of 1925, discussion had arisen about funding a series of band concerts for the summer months. The earthquake that struck the city in June of that year effectively postponed any implementation of the idea. The proposal again became a topic of conversation as the summer of 1926 approached. Fleischmann was an enthusiastic booster of the idea; he remembered fondly the concerts he had enjoyed in his hometown of Riverside, Ohio. Fleischmann was never one to simply pay lip service if he felt a project had merit. He gave the city $5,000 to hire and outfit a band of between 25 and 30 players to perform a series of concerts in August.

The concerts turned out to be immensely popular and Fleischmann continued his financial support for the next two years. By the summer of 1928, Fleischmann wanted to place the concerts on a more formal footing. He also saw the need for an agency that could step forward and fund other worthy causes. The result was the Santa Barbara Foundation.

Fleischmann had his attorney, Francis Price, extend invitations to 25 prominent citizens to form the organization. The list reads like a who’s who of the city’s movers and shakers and included men like Harold Chase, Thomas Storke, Bernhard Hoffmann, and Dwight Murphy. The foundation was to “be in perpetual existence and devoted to charitable and eleemosynary purposes.” Fleischmann became the foundation’s first vice president. It formally incorporated in September 1928. Fleischmann gave the foundation 3,400 shares of stock of his family’s business as seed money. Other gifts from the community began to trickle in and, in January 1930, Fleischmann deeded the Hill-Carrillo adobe at 11 East Carrillo Street over to the foundation. He had purchased the adobe two years earlier to save it from demolition. It serves as foundation headquarters to this day.

Naturally enough, the first grant awarded by the foundation was to fund the Santa Barbara Band to be administered by the Music Branch of the Community Arts Association. As the Great Depression began to tighten its grip in the early 1930s, the foundation began to fund a wider variety of projects. For a short period, band funding was halted as the foundation sought to help those in financial need. Provisions for 400 families were provided through the Emergency Unemployment Relief Committee, an agency set up by the federal government. The Salvation Army received aid to help transients, the Community Chest was given money to run a women’s sewing project, and the Red Cross received funding to fashion clothes out of some 40,000 yards of fabric. In 1932, the first scholarships were given out, which today is a major part of the foundation’s program.

Today, the Santa Barbara Foundation enjoys assets of more than $300 million and has, during its 80-year history, distributed well over $75 million in Santa Barbara County. What began as an exercise in music appreciation has developed into a community foundation that has benefited a wide range of good causes both great and small.

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