Our Story
In 1955, Ralph and Goldy Lewis built their first homes in Claremont, and made their first gifts to the community around them. Seventy years later, both traditions continue.
A family tradition
The Lewis family never treated philanthropy as something separate from the work. A neighborhood needs schools, clinics, parks, and stages as much as it needs houses.
Ralph and Goldy Lewis founded Lewis Homes in Claremont in 1955 and grew it into one of the largest homebuilders in the United States. From the beginning, they gave: to schools, hospitals, synagogues, and civic institutions across the Inland Empire. Their conviction was simple: success in a community creates an obligation to that community.
Their four sons, Richard, Robert, Roger, and Randall, carried both the company and the tradition forward. Today, the Randall W. Lewis Family Foundation, established by Randall and Janell Lewis, focuses that tradition on the things Randall has championed for decades: community health, education and entrepreneurship, and the cultural life of the region.
The Lewis Group of Companies has planned and built communities across San Bernardino and Riverside counties for three generations, including some of the largest master-planned communities in California. The foundation gives where the family builds, because that is where the relationships, the knowledge, and the obligation are deepest.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals. Giving grows out of long-term partnerships with universities, hospitals, cities, museums, and community organizations, often sustained over decades. We prefer to fund people and programs, to stay involved, and to measure success in the health of the places themselves.
Seven decades
Ralph and Goldy Lewis found Lewis Homes in Claremont, California, and begin a family tradition of giving to the communities where they build.
Lewis Homes grows into one of the nation's largest privately held homebuilders; family giving expands with it across the Inland Empire: schools, hospitals, and civic institutions.
The homebuilding operations merge with Kaufman & Broad; the family continues as the Lewis Group of Companies, focused on planned communities, apartments, and retail.
The Randall Lewis Health Policy Fellowship is established, placing graduate fellows inside the cities and agencies of the Inland Empire.
Named gifts take shape across the region: entrepreneurship centers on six campuses, health and wellness centers, community health institutes, and cultural institutions.
The foundation gives over $1 million annually to health, education, and the arts, continuing a tradition now in its eighth decade.
“When you are successful in a community, you have an obligation to give back.”Ralph M. Lewis, co-founder, Lewis Homes, 1920–2008
Continue
The Health Policy Fellowship