Former entertainer turns the spotlight on nonprofits in new CSUF post

Like most aspiring entertainers, Zoot Velasco toiled for years at a day job while auditioning and performing in his free time.

Then he realized his day job was what he really enjoyed.

“It’s like falling in love with your best friend,” said Velasco. So he quit show business and devoted himself to teaching theater in juvenile halls, prisons and hospitals.

That experience eventually led him to the position he is in today – the new director of Mihaylo College’s Gianneschi Center for Nonprofit Research.

On Aug. 13, Velasco will oversee the center’s biggest production of the year, the G3X Conference, which he has renamed (from the former Summer School for Nonprofits) and re-engineered to inject new speakers, topics and formatting. The goal is to make the conference more curated, more interactive and more fun.

“When I was asked to take it over, I really thought we should shake it up,” Velasco said.

“I think some people might be upset with me,” he added, as he described what more closely resembles TED Talks than lectures.

The reinvigorated conference is one way Velasco is attempting to better serve the needs of nonprofits in Orange County.

“When I was offered this as an interim job, I realized if the center will be successful, we have to figure out what in Orange County isn’t being served,” he said. (Previous Gianneschi director Susan Cadwallader continues at Mihaylo as an associate professor of marketing.)

Talking with leaders in the nonprofit sector pointed Velasco toward a lack of leadership programs for that sector. One of the biggest problems, he said, is that talk of getting young people of color involved is still mostly talk, with the jobs going to those from elite universities.

“We need to bring people up through the ranks and provide more leadership opportunities to senior staff,” Velasco said, and that includes funding them. He added a leadership day to the conference, with keynote speakers including Jan Masaoka, CEO of the California Association of Nonprofits, and Paul K. Chappell, an international peace educator.

On his last job, he said, he wished there had been a nonprofit leadership program to which to send staff.

From 2007 to 2016, Velasco was CEO of Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

When he took over, the Muck had a budget of less than $500,000 and was deep in debt. It drew about 10,000 visitors each year to its arts programs and only 1,000 students. The neighbors complained about noise from weddings.

Velasco is credited with embracing the community, bringing in free music festivals, boosting the budget to $1.3 million and attracting more than 37,000 patrons annually. (He left to do something similar for Kern County Museum in Bakersfield.)

He launched programs to reach those in shelters, prisons, schools for homeless kids and social service agencies. A community quinceañera program afforded under-privileged teens the chance to celebrate their 15th birthday.

Janette Pyun, who took over as the Muck’s interim CEO after Velasco’s departure, praised his “passion for the arts, education, for providing opportunities to those who wouldn’t normally have access to them.”

“Zoot not only has transformed the Muck,” she continued, “but he took the time to mentor and train the staff. I would not be where I am today without Zoot.”

Such civic endeavors stretch back to the work Velasco was doing back when he opted to give up his early career – touring as a break-dancer, even though he had damaged the muscles in one foot in a burn accident as an infant. He appeared in a music video with Prince and an MTV special with Michael Jackson.

He grew up in the East, moving to Los Angeles to work in films and music videos. But around 1992, he realized he preferred his job teaching theater in juvenile halls, prisons and hospitals. He went on to run a prison art program, build four centers in the harbor area for the city of Los Angeles and raise money for a theater in Long Beach, among other things.

“My wife and I grew up moving around a lot,” so they haven’t minded the relocations, he said. They live now in downtown Los Angeles.

Last year, Velasco produced a TEDx conference in Bakersfield. That was part of his inspiration in changing up CSUF’s annual Gianneschi summer conference to include shorter, more curated talks and choosing relevant topics, then getting the best speakers for those topics. Feedback had told him attendees wanted some new topics and new speakers.

Three youth leaders will be showcased at the G3X Conference, including two from Mihaylo’s entrepreneurship program.

And the conference is including meals so attendees can network more.

Velasco is looking ahead to the future of nonprofit education now that the center is housed in the business school vs. its home until 2014 in the Center for Internships & Community Engagement. He envisions more integration with the business curriculum, including a program or minor in social enterprise, which is becoming more of an interest among millennials.

The speakers at the Aug. 13-16 conference, for example, include the founders of Apprentice Builds, a nonprofit started by two recent Mihaylo grads to get at-risk kids off the street.

He is also trying to create more opportunities for innovation, such as an innovation lab similar to the MIT Media Lab.

His personal mission is to help smaller nonprofits – those with a budget under $1 million – which make up 80 percent of the sector.

“What would happen if those organizations could get the funding to grow?” Velasco asked. “That’s what I think about when I do podcasts and lectures. There are lots of resources out there for the million-dollar organizations. I want to do things for the part of the sector that doesn’t have the money to go to those things.”

Changing the funding model for nonprofits is vital or many smaller ones won’t exist in 20 years, he said. “What will that mean for these house museums or art programs run out of someone’s garage?”

The younger generations don’t donate money the way previous ones did, he said, and organizations are slow to keep up with such changes.

“Creating those endowments for these small organizations is going to be crucial,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to kill an organization if they have a pot of money waiting for them.”

MANY HATS

You might think heading the Gianneschi Center, raising money for it and boosting the fortunes of O.C. nonprofits would be a full-time job.

Zoot Velasco actually has a full-time job, and it’s not at CSUF. This summer he took over as CEO of the Orange County Educational Arts Academy, a dual-language immersion, arts-and-technology-focused public charter school in Santa Ana.

Velasco also teaches business and marketing at CSUF’s Mihaylo College of Business and Economics. And he teaches nonprofit management at Cal Poly Pomona and Cal State Long Beach, using as a textbook his book, “The First 100 Days: Leading Small Non-profits Out of The Wilderness.”

He provides leadership training camps and workshops, and creates STEAM (STEM plus art) curricula for schools and Arts in Corrections programs for the California Arts Council and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

He leads a reentry arts program for the Riverside Arts Council at Riverside County jails on weekends. Oh, and he produces a podcast series on nonprofits, 501(c)(3)(b)(s).

Velasco still maintains his Screen Actors Guild card and performs for benefits. He leads food and travel adventures to raise funds for his favorite charities and tours as a lecturer on Rotary history to clubs worldwide.

Velasco holds a bachelor’s in dance from St. Mary’s College of California and an MBA in nonprofit management from Hope International University.

G3X Conference

When: Aug. 13-16

Where: Mihaylo College of Business and Economics, CSUF

Registration: $150 for one day, $350 for the week. CSUF students and faculty get in free.

Keynote speakers: Jan Masaoka, CEO of the California Association of Nonprofits; Paul K. Chappell, peace literacy director, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation; Todd Hanson, vice president, Center for Engaged Philanthropy, Orange County Community Foundation

Information: business.fullerton.edu/center/gianneschinonprofitresearch/g3x-conference

Staff writer Brian Whitehead contributed to this report.