A $15 million philanthropic commitment will put the long-term funding of Ventura County’s NextGen Ventures under community-foundation stewardship while leaving the program’s daily operations with a separate company. Dawn and Dave Gross are transferring the assets of their NewCo Foundation to the Ventura County Community Foundation, according to the Moorpark Acorn.
Under the arrangement, VCCF will oversee the NewCo Foundation Charitable Fund, and Intentional Schools LLC will run NextGen Ventures. The foundation says the fund is intended to carry the program forward, but the available announcements do not detail the fund’s spending policy, the composition of the transferred assets or the specific terms governing the operator. Those unanswered points matter: a stated commitment is not, by itself, a public accounting of how annual funding or oversight will work. VCCF’s announcement and the Acorn identify the roles of the two organizations.
A business-learning model, not just a classroom exercise
NextGen Ventures, launched in 2017, pays high school students to develop and operate businesses. The Acorn reports that the program has provided more than 1,000 internships totaling over 140,000 hours, and that student ventures have generated more than $1 million in sales. Those figures describe the program’s reported activity; they do not establish how many students or businesses will be supported by the new fund in a typical year.
The paid, operating-business approach is one model among different forms of school entrepreneurship. DECA describes school-based enterprises as student-managed learning laboratories in school settings, but its description does not say whether students are paid or who owns the ventures. That distinction makes the comparison useful but limited: the DECA definition alone cannot establish that all school enterprises operate like NextGen, or that they differ from it in practice. DECA’s description provides the framework for the comparison.
National indicators need careful reading
The Pacific Coast Business Times has placed the local commitment alongside a reported rise in Gen Z business applications, citing a Bank of America study that found a 66% year-over-year increase as of June 2026. But Bank of America Institute says its new-business-formation measure is a proxy built from aggregated, anonymized payment data—not a direct count of businesses launched or sustained. The figure offers broader economic context, not evidence that the trend caused the Grosses’ gift or that young applicants will go on to operate lasting businesses. The Business Times editorial and Bank of America Institute describe the claim and its measurement basis.
The Grosses have supported other local education and community projects, the Acorn reports, and plan to direct profits from their business, Hiatus Craft House, into the charitable fund. Their stated intention adds a possible source of future support, but the public accounts do not specify its amount or schedule. The practical test of the new structure will be whether it sustains paid opportunities for students over time, and how clearly the fund’s stewardship and results are reported.
