NET WORTH: Unknown
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Continental Development Corporation
FUNDING AREAS: Education, Healthcare, Cultural
OVERVIEW: Melanie and Richard Lundquist are leading philanthropists in Southern California and have pledged more than $225 million over the last decade to support education, cultural and health care initiatives throughout the region. They have a charity, the Richard C. and Melanie Lundquist Family Foundation, though it accounts for only a small portion of their giving. The Lindquists are Giving Pledge signatories.
BACKGROUND: Richard C. Lundquist graduated from University of Southern California. He and a college friend founded a real estate development company that built speculative custom homes in the South Bay of Los Angeles County. In 1972, Lundquist joined Continental Development Corporation, founded in 1969 by his father, and worked his way up in the company. In 1988 he became president and CEO. By the mid-1990s, Lundquist completed his purchase of Continental Development Corporation, which has now developed well over 5 million square feet of building space.
ISSUES:
EDUCATION: The Lundquists searched for nearly two decades to find an organization that was working from the inside out and bottom up to help the nation’s most underserved K-12 public schools. Not finding such an entity, together with then-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, they co-founded the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools in 2007, an independent nonprofit organization, creating a sustainable transformation model across 18 high-need traditional public (that is, non-charter) Los Angeles Unified schools.
The couple are products of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) system, completing their K-12 education in Los Angeles public schools. As Melanie puts it, “I had a wonderful education and just had incredible teachers." To establish the Partnership, the Lundquists endowed a $50 million gift—the largest ever made to Los Angeles public schools by a private individual. And in January 2018, based upon the Partnership’s positive results, they committed to another investment of $35 million. The combined $85 million is the second-largest investment ever made by individuals in America’s K-12 public school education system.
Before agreeing to their new gift, Melanie asked for an independent study of student achievement at the Partnership’s schools. The resulting 60-page report, “The Secret to Sustainable School Transformation,” authored by Public Impact, found that a majority of the LAUSD public schools managed by the Partnership have surpassed other California schools in statewide percentile ranking.
The family has also given more than $3 million to the University of the Pacific’s Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry. Via their foundation, the couple have supported Ascot Elementary School and El Camino College Foundation. They've also supported the El Segundo Education Foundation, where Lundquist is a board member, and have given the foundation approximately $3 million in gifts. They pledged $10 million to News Literacy Project to help students and educators better understand misinformation and disinformation.
HEALTHCARE: Melanie Lundquist began volunteering at the Torrance Memorial Medical Center in 1985, where the couple have been patients as well as major donors. In 2006, the couple gave $13 million to establish the Lundquist Cardiovascular Institute and expand the medical center’s emergency department. In 2013, the Lundquists donated $50 million toward a new patient tower, and in 2017 made a $32 million gift. In 2019, the couple gave a $70 million unrestricted grant to the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute, which was recently renamed the Lundquist Institute. The gift will help the institute “to recruit and retain top researchers and provide the needed support and infrastructure.”
OTHER: Support has gone to other charities in the Southern California area and beyond, including over $2 million to South Bay Sports, Health, and Recreation for a new aquatics center in El Segundo. Via their foundation, they've supported animal advocacy organization SPCA, human services organization Feeding America, and Jewish Federation of Los Angeles.
LOOKING FORWARD: Expect the couple to remain laser-focused on education and healthcare in their philanthropy. California is likely to remain the couple’s geographic focus.
CONTACT:
Richard C. And Melanie Lundquist Family Foundation
2041 Rosecrans Ave, Ste 200
El Segundo, CA 90245
LINKS: