Cause San Diego brings community leaders together for lasting local impact

On a bright San Diego morning, there is a particular kind of energy humming through our communities: the sound of a city relearning how to connect. For years, San Diego’s philanthropic landscape has been generous but fragmented. 

Nonprofits, businesses, and civic leaders have all contributed to meaningful change, yet they often operated in “silos of compassion,” says Staci Reidinger, a retired Marine Major and Co-Founder of Cause San Diego.

Cause San Diego “is built on the premise that San Diego’s greatest challenges require coordinated, cross-sector solutions,” Reidinger says. Rather than treating philanthropy as a series of isolated acts, the organization functions as a year-round civic engine that aligns corporate resources, academic expertise, government policy, and nonprofit execution.

This evolution stems from the legacy of the long-running Cause Conference, founded in 1998 by marketing and media leaders seeking clearer alignment between nonprofit organizations and corporate sponsors. But when the American Marketing Association prepared to sunset the event during the pandemic, a small coalition of leaders — including Reidinger and original founder Parker Pike — stepped in to preserve it.

Their solution was not simply to save a conference, but to build an organization capable of driving impact all year long.

The 28th Annual Cause Conference, held at the Sharp Prebys Innovation and Education Center in September, highlighted this new vision. Attendance was intentionally capped at 400 to foster genuine human connection — a remedy to the transactional feel of many large-scale events.

Instead of broad philanthropic themes, the conference focused on three urgent regional priorities: supporting seniors, combating food insecurity, and addressing social disconnectedness and political polarization.

The event was a working forum where leaders across industries could collaborate, share insights, and work on solutions together. It was not just a conference; it was a civic laboratory.

One of the striking aspects of Cause San Diego is that it is 100 percent volunteer-run. There is no paid staff. Instead, Cause San Diego operates through a multi-generational team that includes college students, mid-career professionals, executives, and retirees in their 80s.

This diversity is intentional. The organization integrates people with lived experience in the very issues it seeks to address, and their volunteer-powered model reflects the organization’s belief that community transformation must be community-led.

The organization also invests directly in emerging talent, awarding $10,000 annually in social impact scholarships to local college students. It runs a robust Social Impact Awards program celebrating everyday heroes across the region, as well.

“Nurturing new voices is essential, as is cultivating the next generation of civic leaders,” says Reidinger.

To understand Cause San Diego, one must understand Reidinger, who hails from Morgan City, Louisiana, a Cajun town on the edge of the Atchafalaya Basin. She grew up in a family deeply rooted in military tradition, but none of the men in her multi-generational Marine and Navy family ever spoke to the women about serving.

Needing her mother’s signature, Reidinger broke the mold at 17. She joined the Marine Corps, beginning as a junior enlisted Marine working in food service — a job she took simply because her grandmother was an excellent cook.

An early marriage left Reidinger a single parent, after which she was even more driven to set an example for her daughter. She worked full-time on active duty while attending night school, where her sharp intellect and drive caught the eye of her mentors, leading to a prestigious officer program.

By the time she arrived in San Diego, Captain Reidinger was serving as the Public Affairs Director for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at MCAS Miramar, orchestrating communications for global deployments.

Remarried and now the mother of two daughters, Reidinger retired in 2017 after 24 years of service, settling with her family in Poway. But retirement did not mean rest.

“When I retired, I felt like my sense of purpose had dropped,” she says. “My give-back to the community was to use my skills and experience for good.”

That opportunity arrived during the pandemic, when the American Marketing Association approached her while she was serving on the board of the San Diego Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. 

As Cause San Diego prepares to unveil its next chapter of regional expansion, its foundational message remains beautifully clear: In a world that often prioritizes the bottom line, doing well and doing good do not have to be mutually exclusive. causesandiego.org