Golden West College donor Paul Motenko, a successful
restaurateur, is forging a lifelong partnership with the College
Paul Motenko, who co-developed BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse into a national chain, always seeks to forge strong ties to the communities in which he opens his restaurants.
Motenko’s latest venture is Stacked: Food Well Built, which was a pioneer in restaurant technology when he launched it in January 2009 with longtime business partner Jerry Hennessy. Guests use tabletop touchscreens to order fully customized meals at STACKED, which is famous for its mac and cheese and burgers.
The latest STACKED location, in Huntington Beach, opened in 2016. It was pretty much a no-brainer, Motenko says, to select Golden West College as the recipient of funds raised at several pre-opening parties.
But that gesture, to Motenko’s surprise and delight, has evolved into a much closer, and much lengthier partnership than he expected.
“When we decided to open a restaurant in Huntington Beach, we looked around for a community organization to support, and the college being so close to the restaurant, we decided that it was a natural thing,” he says. “We love to support education, and it just made a lot of sense.”
ENTHUSIASTIC RESPONSE
Motenko reached out to Bruce Berman, executive director of the Golden West College Foundation.
“He was so gracious and so enthusiastic,” Motenko recalls. “But instead of him just saying, ‘Well, sure, we’ll take your money,’ he said. ‘Let me show you around this place.’”
Berman gave Motenko a tour of GWC and talked about all the things that were happening at the college and the impact it has on the community of Huntington Beach and beyond.
“I was hooked,” Motenko says. “What started with just me telling him we’ll make a donation from pre-opening parties has turned into a lifelong commitment to the college. The more I know about the things that happen at the college and all the students that get their start there, the more I realized this was something I wanted to get more and more involved with.
“Normally,” Motenko adds, “I don’t do things like this, but I was just really taken by the passion of the people who lead the college. President Tim McGrath is an amazing and motivating leader who is just doing so much for the community.”
SCHOLARSHIP FOR STUDENTS CLOSE TO HOME
Motenko has become a generous donor to GWC and currently is president of the Board of Directors of the Golden West College Foundation.
In that capacity, he recently helped hand out awards at the college’s annual scholarship ceremony.
One of the recipients was Hailey Bonillas, 22, who is working on a degree in ASL (American sign language) at GWC after having already earned a Communications Studies degree (she since has transferred to Cal State Long Beach, where she continues to work on her bachelor’s degree in Communications.)
Bonillas also happens to be a three-year employee at STACKED in Huntington Beach. Motenko estimates that about 25 percent of his employees at STACKED in Huntington Beach are GWC students.
On May 7, 2019, Motenko presented Bonillas with two gifts: the Herman R. Tate Memorial Scholarship in Speech Communications, and the Roughton Hopkins Communication Scholarship. The year before, Bonillas won a Brunilda “Bruni” Cronk Memorial Scholarship.
“The staff and faculty at Golden West College are amazing,” Bonillas says. “And I love working at STACKED. It’s so family-oriented. Everything is built around teamwork and togetherness, and they have given me so many opportunities.”
Bonillas, who has a nephew with autism and aspires to become an interpreter for hearing-challenged children, had high praise for Motenko. “He’s absolutely wonderful and very generous,” she says. “He’s done so much for the college and the community.”
Motenko, similarly, has high regard for Bonillas. “Hailey is one of our best team members and a superior student at Golden West College,” says Motenko, 64, a resident of Mission Viejo.
He loves handing out scholarships. “To see the gratitude from these young people is very special,” Motenko says.
GENEROUS COMMUNITY PARTNER
In 1991, Motenko and Hennessy bought the three original BJ’s and built the chain into a powerhouse. He and Hennessy launched STACKED and remain co-CEOs. Recent financing has poised the chain to grow nationally.
STACKED provides a lot of food for events at Golden West, and the college often uses STACKED for catering events. The restaurant has a loyalty program, STACKED Friends, in which guests can designate Golden West College as the recipient of a portion of the money they spend at the restaurants. “It’s one of those things that’ll grow over the years,” Motenko says. “Right now it’s pretty small, but as we get more and more STACKED Friends affiliated with Golden West, it will just continue
to grow.”
A Strong Foundation
Golden West College Foundation Reaches Assets Milestone and Expands Board
The Golden West College Foundation is kicking into overdrive. The foundation, whose mission is to support the college and its students by soliciting and managing gifts, recently reached a financial milestone by exceeding $10 million in assets, says Bruce Berman, who for the past five years has served as executive director of the foundation and community relations. What’s more, the foundation continues to grow its board of directors, currently with 18, with plans to add at least six more members from the community. Five are mandated to come from GWC.
“We’re looking at new and innovative ways to bring attention to the college and bring funds to the college,” Berman says. “We have a lot of high hopes. We want the community to know who and what we are. And we want the community to know that we’re not just a college located in the community. We’re a college that’s part of the community.”
Every year, on average, the foundation gives out about $550,000 in scholarships to students and between $250,000 and $300,000 in program support to GWC academic programs.
HEALTHY ASSETS
Of the $10 million in assets the foundation currently has, nearly $8 million is in investments and close to $2 million is in cash and cash equivalents, Berman says.
A lot of the foundation’s scholarships are endowed, which means a gift lasts forever and the interest or capital gains earned off the invested money goes toward scholarships. A $10 million endowment, for example, would generate about $500,000 a year for scholarships.
The goal, Berman says, is to build endowments larger “so that regardless of the ability to generate annual scholarships, we know that we’ll always have a baseline of scholarships that’s a substantial amount that we can offer to our students.”
The foundation also works in partnership with many outside organizations to raise money for scholarships. One of GWC’s largest external partners is the Assistance League of Huntington Beach.
“These women are phenomenal,” Berman says. “Everyone’s a volunteer and they raise about $1 million a year, and we get about 11 or 12 percent of that. We get in excess of $100,000 in scholarship support for our veterans, for our nurses, for students in our CARE program, for our veterans in the police academy.”
NEW FACES
Although Paul Motenko, the foundation’s current president, has been on the board for three years, there are some new faces—with more to come.
Recent additions to the Board of Directors of the GWC Foundation include Deena Dinh, community banking district manager at Wells Fargo; Weikko Wirta, Southland operations and maintenance manager and site leader at AES Huntington Beach; and Kelly Rodriguez, assistant police chief of Huntington Beach—the first female to hold that position.
Board members meet every other month and serve for three years. “We want people who believe in the mission of Golden West College and understand that by supporting students, we’re bettering the communities the students are from,” Berman says. “And the more educated a community, the better a community.”
AN ARTISTIC EVENING OF GIVING BACK
The foundation appreciates and gives back to their GWC donors. At the foundation’s annual donor reception, gift-givers were treated to a reception where they could mingle with each other and then attended a performance on campus of “The Pirates of Penzance.”
The foundation also honors donors with plaques on pillars (for those who have given at least $25,000) and plaques on premium pillars (those who have gifted $100,000 or more). Every October, four significant alumni are recognized at a “Courtyard of Honor Ceremony.” And the foundation holds an annual gala to raise unrestricted funds that can be put to where they’re best needed on campus. “We’re averaging about 400 attendees each year and we net between $120,000 and $140,000 per year,” Berman says.
