The Samueli Foundation today announced the recipients of its inaugural Build OC Fund.
The foundation is providing a total of $6.2 million in grants to eight Orange County nonprofits and organizations to support new construction, major renovations and land acquisitions—among the most requested types of funding, according to Lindsey Spindle, president of the Samueli Foundation.
“We heard over and over again from nonprofits that that is some of the hardest money to raise for them,” Spindle told the Business Journal.
The announcement comes just two weeks after the Samueli Foundation, founded by Henry and Susan Samueli, announced it would be giving more than $11 million to 138 nonprofits for another grant initiative called the Breakaway Fund.
Both funds are direct products of a first-of-its-kind needs assessment report that the Samueli Foundation commissioned in the spring to identify gaps in the local nonprofit sector. The report compiled data from 607 nonprofit leaders from more than 400 local organizations, who were surveyed over two months.
Spindle said that the Samueli Foundation has already committed to another year of Build OC and Breakaway Fund grants for 2026 but will take some time to reflect on its pilot year to make any necessary changes.
“We’ve gotten some great feedback from both people who were recipients and those who weren’t, so we really want to go through all the data,” she said.
The Samuelis rank as the wealthiest couple in Orange County, having amassed their fortune after Henry’s company Broadcom, then based in Irvine, went public in 1998. The couple has gifted over $1 billion for STEM education, integrative health and Jewish culture over the past 26 years.
The Samuelis are also owners of the Anaheim Ducks and are backing the $4 billion OCVibe development surrounding the Honda Center in Anaheim.
Opening the Front Door
The creation of the Build OC fund coincides with a building boom taking place in Orange County.
Active construction is underway on multi-million-dollar hospital facilities, such as the 144-bed acute care hospital UCI Health—Irvine, as well as housing projects and mixed-use developments such as the Samueli-backed OCVibe.
“But we don’t want to see the nonprofit sector get left behind in that building boom,” Spindle said.
What struck Spindle the most was how simple some of the proposals were from nonprofits.
A daycare center requested $55,000 to replace 15-year-old carpeting, while another nonprofit asked for a van to pick up homebound seniors.
“These organizations have very simple needs, but funding these needs can unlock so much community benefit and improve services, particularly for some of our most vulnerable,” Spindle said.
To cast a wider net, the Samueli Foundation created for the first time an open-application process that made the foundation more accessible to nonprofits, especially those they had never heard of.
The result: 240 applications for the Build OC Fund were logged by the end of June, totaling $170.5 million in requests. Of those, 25% of the applicants were new to the Samueli Foundation.
“So, this hunch that we had if we opened a front door, we might get exposed to new people was 100% true,” Spindle said.
The foundation also invested in an AI-powered tool allowing other philanthropists to search through a database of unfunded proposals. Testing on the database began last week with plans to make it available to the public soon, according to Spindle.
Picking ‘Shovel-Ready’ Proposals
The eight nonprofit recipients range in focus from providing after-school programs for at-risk youth to caring for aging adults with mental health disorders (see story, this page).
Each grant is between $500,000 to $1 million.
Spindle said they looked for “shovel-ready” proposals when picking applications.
“We looked for proposals where we knew our funding would make the difference. It would close that last mile gap between them hanging in limbo and being able to complete the project,” Spindle said.
Of the recipients, the Shea Center, is receiving $530,000.
The San Juan Capistrano-based nonprofit helps people with disabilities through therapeutic horseback riding. It was founded in 1978 originally as the Orange County Riding Center by Nancy and Derek Lewis for their son Michael, who was born with cerebral palsy.
“One of the things I appreciate about this process so much is that there are infrastructure and real-life projects that really move the mission forward that may not be as high profile and glamorous as shiny capital projects, and the Samueli Foundation understands that,” Shea Center CEO Dana Butler-Moburg told the Business Journal.
The grant from the Samueli Foundation will allow the Shea Center to make necessary safety improvements and renovations such as replacing the top layer of the riding surface in the horse arena, which needs to be replaced every five to seven years.
It will also fund a new solar system that is expected to save the center $35,000 a year in electricity costs.
The Shea Center has had a 20-plus-year relationship with the Samuelis, according to Butler-Moburg.
She said that Susan was one of the first to come through the gates and do a ride along.
“Over these many years, they’ve helped us start programs, invested in our capital development program when we were rebuilding the Shea Center, and they’ve just been a steady, consistent, wonderful partner,” Butler-Moburg said.
For Beyond Blindness, it’s the first time it’s receiving funding from the Samueli Foundation.
Founded in 1962, the nonprofit was named the Blind Children’s Learning Center to help children with visual impairments before the board of directors changed its name to expand its reach to children with other disabilities.
Through Beyond Blindness’ model, people can bring their child every day to its campus in Santa Ana, where kids will have access to speech therapy and occupational therapy outside of their regular medical care.
“That gives the family time back in the evenings and on the weekends to help them recharge, so they can go to work every day and support their families” Beyond Blindness CEO and President Angie Rowe told the Business Journal.
Beyond Blindness received a $655,000 grant for the renovation of two inclusive playgrounds—a project in partnership with Orange County Head Start, a provider of childhood development programs and services.
Rowe said that a grant from the Samueli Foundation will help Beyond Blindness finish some of these large investments and replace reserves it tapped into when taking the risk to serve another population outside of children with visual impairments.
“We’ve been operating on the margins for a long time, but this is an opportunity to really significantly shore up the organization financially and have a strong partner,” Rowe said.
The Breakaway Fund
Of the $15 million the Samueli Foundation pledged to split evenly across three new initiatives, $5 million was set aside for another initiative called the Breakaway Fund, inspired by the hockey phrase of the same name.
It was created to provide nonprofits “easy to access, unrestricted” funds to take “more unimpeded shots” on traditionally underfunded areas.
“Breakaways in hockey are always the most exciting moments in games, and we hope the Breakaway Fund generates an equal level of community excitement,” Henry and Susan Samueli said in a statement.
By the end of the six-week application window, however, the foundation received more than 1,000 applications, compelling the Samuelis to “dig deeper and give more.”
They more than doubled the amount from the initial $5 million to $11 million for 138 nonprofits in OC.
More than half of the funds went toward the basic operations that keep programs running, with the rest going to investments in specialized skills, talent and leadership and aspirational goals.
Recipients included some of the largest local nonprofits, such as Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County and the CHOC Foundation.
About 77% of the recipients have never received funding from the Samueli Foundation. n
Build OC Fund Recipients
– Beyond Blindness ($655K): Santa Ana-based Beyond Blindness serves children with visual impairments and other disabilities. It will use the grant to renovate two inclusive playgrounds for children with disabilities as part of a partnership with Orange County Head Start to expand inclusive learning environments.
– Human Options Inc. ($1M): Human Options is a domestic abuse treatment center in Irvine. The grant will help the nonprofit renovate its emergency shelter and Family Healing Center, which have served more than 40,000 survivors of domestic violence to date.
– John Henry Foundation ($850K): Located in Santa Ana, the John Henry Foundation “focuses on the unique needs of adults with Schizophrenia Spectrum Illnesses,” according to its website. With the funding, the foundation will expand its residential community program with six new ADA-accessible units for aging adults with Schizophrenia.
– KidWorks Community Development Corp. ($500K): KidWorks operates four community centers in at-risk neighborhoods within central Santa Ana. The grant will allow the nonprofit to update and replace infrastructure at its main office to improve service coordination.
– Magnolia Educational & Research Foundation ($995K): The nonprofit organization for Magnolia Public Schools, a network of charter schools in California geared toward Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math (STEAM). It will use the grant to make improvements to school buildings, as well as create a new playground for K-8 students.
– St. Jeanne De Lestonnac Free Clinic ($850K): The Lestonnac Free Clinic in Orange provides free health care services to low-income and uninsured residents in OC. The grant will help the clinic acquire surgical equipment for its new surgery center.
– The Shea Center ($530K): The San Juan Capistrano-based Shea Center provides therapeutic equestrian programs for people with disabilities, including veterans with PTSD. It plans to make several improvements to its horse-riding facility using the grant.
– Vanguard University ($830K): The Costa Mesa-based Christian university will update nursing simulation labs with more equipment to support increasing enrollment in prelicensure BSN and MSN programs.
