Charity Begins at Home
By Michael Gottlieb
California Real Estate Journal 
May 1999

Take out a home loan, help support kids with cancer. That’s the premise behind The Breeze Fund, a charitable fundraising program lunched last month by Anaheim-based Sea Breeze Mortgage Services Inc. During the loan process, applicants are invited to make a contribution to the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation, an organization that funds studies for the care and treatment of children with cancer and other malignant diseases. Sea Breeze will match a percentage of the contribution. The donations are tax deductible.

“Participating in the program won’t boost mortgage seekers’ chances of getting their loan approved or lower their interest rate,” says Curtis Green, Sea Breeze executive vice president. But it does provide an easy and convenient way for clients to support this cause. “All they do is check a box,” he says. “We can automatically deduct (the donation) from the loan proceeds. It’s paperless.”

Green is the moving force behind The Breeze Fund. Cancer has struck close to home on two occasions, he says, explaining why he decided to get involved in the fight against the disease. In 1986 he lost his mother to cancer. Several years later, John Weiner, a friend of Green’s from college, learned that his 15-month old daughter had leukemia. Samantha Weiner’s illness is now in recession thanks to research and treatment funded by PCRF, Green says.

Among the local institutions that receive financial support from PCRF are Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, UCLA and UC Irvine. Sea Breeze has promised a $12,000 commitment to the organization in 1999 with the goal of increasing that amount each year. Green says a number of the firm’s loan officers have joined in by donating a portion of their commissions.

He believes the home loan is a good avenue for raising charitable contributions. “The mortgage business is a trillion-dollar industry. I figure if I can get a system down and show Sea Breese how to do it, then maybe I can show other mortgage companies how to do it.”