53.7 F
San Diego
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Burnham Gift to Generate a Look at Region’s Future

“If you take a seed and plant it just right, you can grow a pretty big tree,” said Malin Burnham, a former San Diego real estate executive, in describing why he just provided a $5 million endowment for a brand new nonprofit center that will help shape this region for realities of the future.

“In the next 40 years we’ll have 1.3 million more people living in San Diego on top of our population today,” Burnham said. “We’re all interested in jobs and we’re all interested in quality of life. How do we best accommodate those things?”

The Malin Burnham Center for Civic Engagement, a unit of the nonprofit San Diego Foundation, will focus on discovering what San Diego citizens want the community to look like in the next 25 to 100 years. Then, it will put dollars behind research and implementation of those ideas.

Burnham, a self-described “idea person,” said the center will be involved primarily in the visionary stage of planning, similar to an architect. “We will find existing organizations that can act as the contractors,” he said. “We don’t expect this to be involved in the political arena or the business community; it will be fully in the nonprofit arena.”

Before exiting the for-profit world in 1986 when he sold his business, Burnham was chairman of John Burnham & Co. Insurance and Burnham Real Estate. His real estate company was later acquired by New York-based Cushman & Wakefield Inc. Burnham’s $5 million endowment will generate an estimated $200,000 to $250,000 per year to fund the center’s operating costs. The center will get additional funding from its parent, the San Diego Foundation, an organization that helps facilitate giving and distribution of charitable funds to local causes. The foundation has assets of $570 million.

— Kelly Quigley

-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-