A Family Foundation's Legacy of Supporting Latino Communities Will Live on Through a New Fund
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From left to right: Carmela Castellano-Garcia, Armando Castellano, Alcario Castellano, Carmen Castellano, Maria West; image courtesy of carmela castellano-garcia
After more than 20 years of supporting Latinx communities in Silicon Valley, the Castellano Family Foundation (CFF) has closed its doors, sunsetting this past July. The foundation’s story is a unique one: In 2001, Alcario and Carmen Castellano won the lottery, and shortly thereafter, established CFF. Since then, it has been a stalwart supporter of Latinx nonprofits, focusing its giving on arts and culture, education and leadership. Throughout its 20-plus year history, CFF awarded a total of $10 million in grants and leveraged additional funding through its work.
In 2012, the second generation of Castellanos joined the foundation's board. "I'm really proud of my parents," said Carmela Castellano-Garcia, who served as the foundation's president from 2016 until the foundation sunset. Prior to that, she served as CFF's vice president from 2012 to 2016.
“My dad won the lottery, and they could have done so many other things, but they decided that they wanted to invest their time and effort,” Castellano-Garcia said. “I'm proud of the fact that they took it on, and the fact that they did it with such incredible vision, and how they were ahead of their time on the diversity and equity grantmaking issue. Basically across the board, they were ahead of their time in how they practiced their philanthropy.”
Despite the foundation's sunset, CFF's legacy will live on through a newly endowed fund housed at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF). The Alcario and Carmen Castellano/SVCF Community Fund launched earlier this year, seeded with $500,000 each from CFF and SVCF. Castellano previously partnered with SVCF on the LatinXCEL Fund, a $10 million, three-year initiative to support Latinx organizations in Silicon Valley.
“For a number of many years, my family has had a relationship with [SVCF]…. We feel really good that we are leaving behind an opportunity for a fund in Silicon Valley that will both support our local community and can serve as a model for other places in the country of what community-based entities like SVCF can do to support local ethnic and Latinx communities,” Castellano-Garcia said.
The fund will focus on supporting Latinx communities in Silicon Valley, building on the recommendations made in CFF's report, titled "Blueprint for Change: A Call to Action for Silicon Valley Philanthropy," which looked at inequalities Latinx-led organizations in Silicon Valley face. The fund's first round of grants will be awarded by the end of the year.
“To continue the legacy of the Castellano Family Foundation, we and the family decided that it would be great to start an endowed fund, a new fund that will specifically support the two central counties in Silicon Valley… and the Latinx communities in those two counties, and to do that in perpetuity, which is pretty unique in the world of philanthropy,” said Nicole Taylor, president and CEO of SVCF.
A winning history
In 2001, Alcario Castellano, who at the time was working as a grocery clerk at a Safeway, did the almost impossible: he won the lottery. At $141 million, it was, at the time, one of the highest lottery wins in history.
There are countless stories about how people who win the lottery end up losing everything within a few years, with many even filing for bankruptcy. The Castellanos did no such thing. According to Castellano-Garcia, almost immediately after her parents won the lottery, Carmen Castellano suggested they establish a foundation to support Latinx organizations in the region.
“The reason this happened is because my parents actually had a long history of volunteerism in the Latino nonprofit education sectors of Silicon Valley in San Jose. They had worked as volunteers and leaders in the community for a long time,” said Castellano-Garcia.
Castellano-Garcia notes that her father was involved in decision-making and meeting with grantees, but credits her mother for running the foundation, calling her the “workhorse behind the foundation,” who took care of the legalities and paperwork and served as the face of the operation. Carmen Castellano, who worked in a secretarial role at San Jose City College prior to the family winning the lottery and continued to work there for a time after, was indeed ahead of her time when it came to philanthropy.
“My mother, as the visionary behind the grantmaking in 2002, she was practicing the idea of core support, trust-based philanthropy, hearing what the needs were from the community and then giving them the support to address the needs that they defined,” said Castellano-Garcia. “She was really practicing these values and principles long before they became acceptable and valued practices in philanthropy.” She added that CFF also provided funding for small organizations that were often overlooked by philanthropy in Silicon Valley.
The second generation of Castellanos — Carmela Castellano-Garcia, Armando Castellano and Maria West — joined CFF's board in 2012. Carmen Castellano continued to be a leader in philanthropy until her death in 2020.
Building on past work
Silicon Valley is a region rampant with ever-widening inequality. Shortly before the start of the pandemic in 2020, CFF published its “Blueprint for Change” report, which outlined how Latinx organizations receive a disproportionately small amount of funding despite making up almost a quarter of the region's population. The report called for philanthropy to increase its support for Latinx nonprofits, in particular, by making multi-year commitments rather than one-off grants.
A year after the report was published, CFF announced it had partnered with SVCF to launch the $10 million, three-year LatinXCEL Fund, which was created as a response to the report. Grants from the fund were designed to provide development support, capacity-building and infrastructure needs, as well as unrestricted funding for work that advances social justice and equity. More than $5 million has been raised for the fund to date.
The Alcario and Carmen Castellano/SVCF Community Fund will build on CFF's previous work to address the inequality facing Latinx communities in Silicon Valley. “There are significant gaps that everybody knows in wealth, education, housing, and the like affecting the Latinx community, particularly in our region, which is a very inequitable region. Over 51% of children living in poverty in our area are Latinx. And Latinx residents face a disproportionate rate of homelessness,” Taylor said.
LatinXCEL, she said, is focused on shorter-term, larger grants, while the new fund is meant to last for the long term.
"Our goal is to invest again in Latinx-led and Latinx-serving organizations and really working toward breaking cycles of poverty, solving community issues and equipping the next generation of community leaders," Taylor said. "We still have so much work to do in our region."
For Taylor, it's crucial that philanthropy not slow down or pull back its giving at this time, particularly for organizations that work on race-based inequality and those that work with communities that are trying to find their own solutions. “It's really important, and it's not the time to retreat. It's actually the time to double down and really ensure that everyone has access to the resources that they need to be healthy, to be able to sustain themselves and their families, to be able to have access to educational resources and live in communities that support them.”
While its endowment is $1 million, both CFF and SVCF hope funders are inspired to give to the fund in order to better support Latinx-led and Latinx-serving nonprofits in the area over a longer period of time.
“This fund will need to grow to be something truly valuable for our community,” said Castellano-Garcia. “It needs to be robust… and so it will be a further investment opportunity in our community. This is the vehicle that we have created, that we are leaving behind with SVCF.”
Catalyzing change
CFF has known when it would sunset since 2012, when Alcario Castellano stepped down and became an emeritus board member, and the second generation of the family joined the foundation's board. As Castellano-Garcia explained, CFF had awarded $5 million at the time. The family designed a 10-year vision to grant another $5 million. In particular, CFF wanted to inspire greater giving for Latinx communities in Silicon Valley.
“That was a big advocacy point of my mother, the lack of investment in the Latinx nonprofit sector, both in Silicon Valley and throughout the country,” Castellano-Garcia said.
Among Castellano-Garcia's biggest hopes for the new fund is that it will lead to greater investment and opportunities for the Latinx nonprofit sector, including greater support for the leaders of the organizations. Inequality remains a major issue for Latinos in Silicon Valley, and it has only worsened since the pandemic. Due to the high cost of living, stagnant wages and other economic difficulties, the nonprofit sector plays a crucial role in Latinx communities.
"The challenges are there," Castellano-Garcia said, "And I am hopeful that there will be continued and greater investment in the local Latinx nonprofit sector so that it can play an ever greater supportive role for our families with such tremendous needs."
One of the toughest lessons learned from CFF's work, according to Castellano-Garcia, is that change can often be slow. Even after the soul-searching that George Floyd's death and the uprisings that followed inspired in philanthropy, Castellano-Garcia says she feels not enough has changed.
“We saw and learned about change being slow,” she said. “But you have to be in it for the long haul. You know, and you can't get too disappointed and discouraged, that revolutionary change does not happen overnight.”
While the Castellano Family Foundation has come to an end, Alcario and Carmen Castellano's legacy — as well as their children's — will live on through the new fund and the many organizations it supported in its 22 years of serving Latinx communities in Silicon Valley.
