Sara Miller McCune
/NET WORTH: Unknown
SOURCE OF WEALTH: SAGE Publications
FUNDING AREAS: Southern California Community, Media
OVERVIEW: Sara Miller McCune cofounded the McCune Foundation with her late husband George McCune. The foundation supports projects that address critical issues in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties by empowering and mobilizing excluded populations.
BACKGROUND: Sara Miller McCune graduated from Queens College. She and George McCune founded the independent academic publishing company SAGE Publications in the 1965.
ISSUES:
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY: McCune is founder and president of the McCune Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Ventura County, California, where SAGE’s home office is based. The foundation supports productive change through building social capital in Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties. The McCune Foundation states that it “supports groups which are “doing with others” rather than “doing for others” – grassroots, bottom-up organizations in which “clients” are the initiators and involved in decision making.” Grantees have included Cuyama Valley Family Resource Center, Just Communities Central Coast, Pacific Pride Foundation, and Westminster Free Clinic.
Sara Miller McCune is a major patron of UCSB, where she received an honorary degree. She has given the institution millions, home to the SAGE Sara M. McCune Dean of Social Sciences, SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, and the Miller McCune Executive Director of Arts & Lectures, among others. She has also supported Fielding Graduate University, Ensemble Theatre Company (ETC), and Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts, where she was on the board for more than a decade. Last decade, she also gave a $2.5 million gift to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
MEDIA: In 2007, McCune founded The Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy (now The Social Justice Foundation) in Santa Barbara. In 2008, she launched Miller-McCune magazine both in print and online, which was re-titled The Pacific Standard. The magazine recently shuttered, however.
LOOKING FORWARD: Expect McCune’s strong support of grassroots organizations in Southern California to continue.
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