About the Foundation
The Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation is a private family foundation whose mission is “to improve the quality of life within the geographical areas associated with the career and legacy of California pioneer, Henry Mayo Newhall.”
Henry Mayo Newhall was a New England Yankee who caught gold fever in 1849 and landed in San Francisco in the Gold Rush. Unable to find gold, he started an auction business, which thrived. He then established the first railroad from San Francisco to San Jose and used the proceeds to buy Spanish land grants in California.
Along the way he became a founder and benefactor of many charitable, social, and educational institutions in 19th-century California. (For further information, see the link “About H.M. Newhall”). In 1963, his fourth-generation descendants established the Henry Mayo Newhall Foundation as a tribute to their patriarch.
The foundation is headquartered in San Francisco and is governed by a 13-member board, all of whom are family members. The board meets in the spring and fall to review and approve grant requests from non-profit organizations and conducts site visits throughout the year with prospective grant recipients.
The corpus of the foundation includes gifts and bequests from Newhall family members for support of philanthropic activities in the communities where H.M. Newhall lived or had business interests. These communities are the city of San Francisco, the Santa Maria Valley on the central California coast and the Santa Clarita Valley in northern Los Angeles County.