Newport Beach-based LEAD OC receives $25,000 grant

Nate Fikse may have moved to Colorado about 18 months ago, but he hasn’t forgotten that he’s from Orange County.

Fikse, an Esperanza High School graduate who went on to play football as a kicker at UCLA and in the NFL, is one of the co-founders of Newport Beach-based nonprofit LEAD OC.

On Monday, Fikse was back in town. The financial advisor presented a $25,000 check to LEAD OC at the group’s charity golf tournament at SeaCliff Country Club in Huntington Beach.

The donation was made as part of Fikse winning a Northwestern Mutual Community Service Award, one of 16 awarded nationwide by the financial company each year.

“It was a no-brainer,” said Fikse, a financial advisor with Northwestern Mutual. “When we originally created the organization, the focus was, how can we organically make sure that Orange County would be taken care of? How can we make sure that our legacy is going to be continued, not only when we’re around but our kids?”

LEAD OC was founded in 2012. Co-founder Brian Davis, who lives in Huntington Beach, said the group seeks to alleviate financial burdens of nonprofits in the Orange County area that support children and military families. They seek to provide a platform for local executives to combine resources to support these organizations.

Because LEAD OC technically has no staff and is run on a volunteer basis, the overhead is nonexistent, Davis said. All of the money raised at Monday’s golf event, estimated at more than $200,000, went to benefit UCLA Operation Mend, which provides support for U.S. military who have been wounded in combat or are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injuries.

Davis said that LEAD OC has raised nearly $4 million since it began.

“Our gala every year is for children’s charities, then we have our golf tournament that focuses on Wounded Warriors and our warrior community,” he said.

“We don’t pay any money to consignment companies, and we don’t do anything without everything being paid for in advance. A lot of charity events, you’ll have these trips and crazy auction items, but a lot of that money goes to the auction companies. We choose to have a much more modest event, but every single penny that’s raised at our events goes directly to the charities.”

Ross Bourne, a co-founder and past president of LEAD OC who lives in Costa Mesa, said the more hands-on approach has helped the organization.

LEAD OC has partnerships with nonprofits like Big Brothers Big Sisters of Orange County, Think Together, Olive Crest and Ronald McDonald House.

“I’m in real estate, and [Davis] does a lot of real estate stuff,” Bourne said.

“There’s a ton of real estate organizations we could be involved in and network, [but] we were kind of done with the networking thing. It really wasn’t any organizations that helped the community or focused on the community. It was all about business cards, that type of stuff. That’s really how LEAD OC came about.

“We started going to our friends and saying, ‘Hey, let’s start something where we’re going to have a platform.’ Since we were all starting to have kids, we said, ‘Let’s start something for kids, where we can raise money for children’s charities.’”

Fikse, the former kicker, was happy to help kick off what has been almost a decade of giving.

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