Divorce. Yuck.
And yet, it happens—although, at a much lower rate than previously thought. Apparently, if current trends continue, nearly two-thirds of marriages will never end in divorce, according to data a University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers gave The New York Times blog UpShot.
But still. Yuck. Imagine if Bill and Melinda Gates got divorced. What would happen to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Would it live on and continue to support all the global causes it strives to fund for the betterment of the world? The foundation is currently seeking grant proposals for HIV treatment and prevention, tuberculosis treatment and diagnostics, improving information systems for child health, data innovation in U.S. education, and agriculture-nutrition impact studies, among others.
What if the power couple decided to sunset their foundation and its philanthropic efforts just as a new grant cycle was beginning? That is pretty much what’s happening in Santa Barbara County with the Orfalea Fund and the Orfalea Family Foundation, which umbrella under the Orfalea Foundation. It will be caput at the end of the year. And the head honchos—Paul and Natalie Orfalea—who were together at the onset of the philanthropic organization’s founding, are no longer married. But a spokesperson for the organization assured Noozhawk Staff Writer Lara Cooper that divorce has nothing to do with it.
According to the Orfalea Foundation’s website, Paul and Natalie will be continuing their giving ways in the form of their own, separate, individual foundations. Between the foundation’s two arms, it funded more than $175 million in grants between 2003 and 2015 for childhood education, school food reform, and disaster readiness. And as Natalie wrote in a letter on the website: “only by partnering with others can we achieve positive, lasting improvements in our communities.”
Just not partnering with Paul, I guess. In the world of nonprofits and foundations, money is tight, hard to come by, and often comes after a relationship is formed. The relationships formed by the Orfalea Foundation enabled it to do things like help fund an Outdoor Classroom Project for Allan Hancock College’s early childhood education program. The project provides consulting and educational services for child-care providers and educators, as well as a sweet outdoor space where children can learn and play in a natural environment through trial and error and a little bit of freedom.
Projects like that are fundamentally important in an area like Northern Santa Barbara County, where early education is an invaluable piece to breaking economically driven class barriers and money found in places like the city of Santa Barbara can be hard to come by.
I hope the Orfalea family’s new individual foundations don’t compete for the relationships and funding that were so solidly behind the Orfalea Foundation. I hope the fight for two separate pieces of the limited nonprofit pie doesn’t affect the impact that one solid organization can have on this county.
The Canary is disheartened but mildly hopeful for the future. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 1-8, 2015.