Lake Avenue Community Foundation Becomes ‘Stars’

Pasadena’s Lake Avenue Community Foundation has changed its name to ‘Stars’ to avoid confusion with Lake Avenue Church and because people often assumed from the former name that the organization is a grant-giving foundation.

Stars’ new web address is www.gostars.org.

Stars Executive Director Nancy Stiles said that under its new name, “Stars will continue to be a faith-based organization with a strong partnership with Lake Avenue Church, and will continue to have the same vision, mission, and programs, but by clarifying the confusion we will be better positioned to take advantage of funding opportunities.”

She said Stars will remain the primary non-profit partner of Lake Avenue Church for education issues. “We will continue to recruit volunteers and donors from the LAC family, send our students to camp alongside LAC, and continue to build relationships between families, students, volunteers, staff, and church members.”

The Stars name is based on the organization’s more than 20-year-old STARS after-school program. The STARS acronym has been lowercased and its meaning broadened to cover all the work of the organization: after school programming for grades 1-12, mentoring, summer enrichment, camps, trips, college preparation and completion support, counseling, and partnering closely with the parents of students to help support the whole family.

The Stars programs are now being called Stars 123, Stars 45, Middle School Stars, High School Stars, Stars Mentoring, Stars College Support, and Stars Summer Enrichment.