20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY NOVEMBER 12-18, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com After 16 years at the helm, Dan Baldwin, president/CEO of the Community Foundation for Monterey County, will pack up his office and begin his retirement Dec. 15. Previously, Baldwin spent 15 years as a museum professional and then ran the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation before landing in Monterey in 2010. He’s an Iowa native with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa, married to author and artist Anne Ylvisaker. They share three children. Under his leadership, the Community Foundation for Monterey County’s assets grew from $130 million to $450 million, and its charitable funds went from 300 to more than 900. Monterey County Gives!—a project in which the foundation, the Weekly and the Monterey Peninsula Foundation, are partners—grew from $565,000 raised in 2010 to more than $17.2 million in 2025. Baldwin says a foundation should be measured by what it gives away, not by its assets. In 2025, the foundation granted a record $46.2 million. Weekly: You first punched a time clock at the age of 16. What did you learn early on? Baldwin: In one of my early jobs, I worked for an engineering company that did test borings and I ran a drill rig; we had these augers to take core samples. I wasn’t really aware of it then, but looking back on it I learned about work ethic, to work hard, and that not everything’s easy. People showed confidence in me and gave me responsibility on very expensive equipment. Have you ever been fired from a job? Yes. At 29, I was living in Dallas, Texas at the time. It was a company that fired everyone at one time or another. They would manufacture all these flimsy reasons, and then they would bring someone in and pay them a little bit less than they were paying us. It was a pretty traumatic moment, but there was the silver lining. I found a job doing publications and programs at an outdoor history museum, and that launched my next career, a museum career. I’ve heard more than once that you love taking a red pen to someone else’s writing who works for you. What’s your best advice to a writer? It’s not just a single thing. Know sentence structure and grammar, get that part right, because people can be judged by not having a complete understanding of the fundamentals. I like writing that feels like it’s really moving. Run with momentum; get your idea and then get it moving. John Steinbeck’s writing breaks the rules. I can imagine that if you had been his editor, he would have been very unhappy with you. I don’t think I would have touched a darn thing. I revere Steinbeck, and Steinbeck had a huge influence on me in my appreciation of good writing. Do you have a favorite word these days? This would be a little ironic. One of my favorite words is nomenclature. What do you like about that word? It’s chewy. Words create nuance. They create special meaning. And in nomenclature, what I like about it, it’s specific. An interesting choice of words these days, because nuance is being lost. What does the Midwest do better at giving-wise than California? And vice-versa. My immediate thought is, really nothing. I mean, not everyone is really generous, but there’s a level and a spirit of philanthropy here, and a real recognition that our nonprofits just aren’t feel-good kind of operations. They are delivering much-needed services in ways that, frankly, local or county government cannot. Lynn County, Iowa, has publicly traded companies there. So people [who live and work there] have had a lot of stock options, and there were a lot of management levels for big corporations. Here are mostly dynastic farm families. The other thing that’s different here, is that the value of real estate is so much higher here so gifts can be made that utilize that real estate. Do you find yourself more of a Midwesterner at this point in your life or more of a Californian? I’m a Monterey person. When I came to work here, we were getting a lot done, and the board leadership kept talking about my “Midwestern work ethic.” Maybe there is something to that. One of my kids is a trans man, and here is simply normalized whereas Iowa passed the first anti-trans bill in the country. I just feel way more aligned in this state than I did there. You’ve had the experience of having many one-on-one meetings with some of the wealthiest individuals LONG VIEW As he prepares to retire from Community Foundation for Monterey County, CEO Dan Baldwin reflects on giving, writing and leadership. By Bradley Zeve Before arriving in Monterey County, Dan Baldwin led a community foundation in Iowa. “One thing that was so refreshing when I came to CFMC was a willingness to be entrepreneurial,” he says. “In Cedar Rapids, there was concern about staying in your lane. Here there’s a willingness to be a little bit more of a risk-taker.” DANIEL DREIFUSS
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