Here is something that surprises people who move here from almost anywhere else.
The biggest party of the year in Manhattan Beach is a school fundraiser. Not a city festival, not a concert, not a restaurant opening. The Manhattan Wine Auction sells out at more than 2,400 people and raises over a million dollars for public schools in a single evening. In Hermosa Beach the equivalent evening began in 1996 as a Valentine’s dinner for about fifty parents. In October, more than 21,000 people walk from one pier to another to raise money for children with disabilities.
If you are trying to understand how these cities actually work, this is the thread to pull.
Why the money has to come from somewhere
California funds its public schools at a level that leaves a gap between what the state provides and what these districts want to offer. That gap is not abstract. It is the music teacher, the science specialist, the counselor, the class size.
Communities respond to that gap in different ways. Some accept the state number. Some fight about it at board meetings. The South Bay beach cities built institutions to close it, and then made attending those institutions the social calendar. That is a specific choice and it has compounded over decades.
Every district here has an education foundation, and which district serves which address is less obvious here than most people expect. Manhattan Beach has two foundations. Between them they move millions of dollars a year into classrooms, and we have documented who they are and what each one funds on our South Bay Education Foundations page.
The four evenings that define the year
The Manhattan Wine Auction
The largest of them, and the one that has become a civic institution rather than a school event. It started in 1993 as a small gathering of parents. The 31st annual auction, held 30 May 2025 at the Bay Club’s Manhattan Country Club, sold out at more than 2,400 guests and raised $1.4 million.
The format is more than 45 restaurants, roughly 80 wineries, breweries and distilleries, over 20 live auction lots and several hundred silent auction items. Proceeds go to the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation’s endowment, which contributed $1.2 million in the 2024 to 2025 school year, about 19 percent of MBEF’s total grant to the district.
That endowment structure is the part worth noticing. Most school fundraisers live year to year. MBEF is building a permanent base, which means a bad year does not immediately become a bad year in the classroom.
Hearts of Hermosa
The oldest of them and the one with the best origin story. On 14 February 1996, about fifty parents put on a Valentine’s dinner to raise money for Hermosa schools. That dinner became the Hermosa Beach Education Foundation.
It runs now as an auction, dinner and dancing evening at Hermosa Vista School each spring, with food, drinks and auction items donated by local restaurants, bars, businesses and parents. It is smaller and more neighborly than the Manhattan auction, which is appropriate for a district of roughly 1,500 students rather than 5,900, and is the point rather than a shortcoming.
The Skechers Pier to Pier Friendship Walk
Every October, more than 21,000 people walk the three and a half miles from the Manhattan Beach Pier south to the Hermosa Beach Pier and back. It has run since 2009 and is the single largest gathering on this coastline, larger than any festival or tournament.
Proceeds split between The Friendship Foundation, which runs one to one peer mentoring and recreational programs for children with disabilities, local public education, and the Skechers Foundation scholarship program. Recent editions have carried fundraising goals in the range of $2.5 million.
A practical note if you live along the route: the Strand and the streets feeding it are heavily affected that morning. It is the one October Sunday to plan around, and the better plan is usually to walk in it. We track the rest of the year on our South Bay annual events page.
White Light White Night
The annual summer gala for Walk With Sally, a South Bay organization that provides peer mentoring to children whose families are facing cancer. It draws more than 1,000 guests, with live music and a long list of Los Angeles restaurants. Everyone wears white, which is where the name comes from.
It is typically held in August, and the venue moves year to year, so check the organization rather than assuming last year’s location.
It is not only the galas
The same habit shows up in smaller and less formal places, which is how you can tell it is real rather than performative.
When the AVP dropped its Hermosa Beach tournament in 2024, a group of local people restarted it independently as the Wedbush Hermosa Beach Open, with free admission and a purse funded largely through donations to Dig 4 Kids, the nonprofit founded by Olympic gold medalist Eric Fonoimoana. A professional beach volleyball tournament here now runs on community fundraising.
The Peninsula Education Foundation supports all 17 schools in Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified and runs Toast on the Coast each September. The El Segundo Education Foundation, branded simply as Ed!, was founded in 1983 by parents, businesses and district administrators together, and its Ed! Gala features more than 30 South Bay restaurants. Redondo Beach takes a different approach entirely, running an Annual Investor Drive built on sustained giving rather than one large night, which suits a district of 9,484 students spread across eleven campuses.
And it shows up at the ballot box. Manhattan Beach voters approved the Measure MB parcel tax in 2018. El Segundo passed a $92 million bond. Hermosa Beach passed Measure HV in 2024 for construction and modernization across its three school sites. These communities vote to tax themselves for schools with some regularity, and the foundations are part of the same civic reflex.
How to actually take part
This is the practical section, because “the community is generous” is useless advice and “here is the door” is not.
You do not need a child in the district. Every event above sells tickets to the public. If you are new here and wondering how people meet each other, buying a seat at one of these is among the more effective answers available, and considerably more pleasant than most networking.
Buy early. The Manhattan Wine Auction sells out. Get on the mailing list in winter rather than looking in May.
If you want to give time rather than money, the options are real and several have no minimum age. The Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy runs Outdoor Volunteer Days most Saturdays with no age minimum at all and verifies hours for school credit. Friends of Madrona Marsh in Torrance takes all ages for restoration work. Heal the Bay runs Nothin’ But Sand beach cleanups on the third Saturday of each month.
For teenagers specifically, service hour requirements are easier to meet here than most places, and we have laid out the organizations and their published minimum ages on our Things to Do with Kids page. The Beach Cities Health District Youth Advisory Council and the Torrance Youth Volunteer Leadership Training Program both grant hours, and the Torrance program is an explicit pathway into paid city recreation jobs.
And if you or someone in your family needs support rather than a way to give it, allcove Beach Cities at 514 North Prospect Avenue in Redondo Beach is a free integrated youth mental health center for ages twelve to twenty-five, open weekdays. It exists because this community funded it.
What it tells a buyer
We work with people relocating here constantly, and the question underneath most of their questions is whether a place will feel like home rather than like an address.
The honest indicator is not the beach or the weather, both of which are easy to verify and identical across five cities. It is what a community chooses to organize itself around. Here, a meaningful share of adult social life runs through raising money for schools, for children with disabilities, and for families facing illness. People show up, buy the table, walk the three and a half miles, and then do it again the following year.
That is not visible on a listing, and it does not show up on a market report. It is, however, most of what people mean when they say they love living here.
Event details, figures and dates verified against organization and district sources in September 2026. Fundraising totals, formats and dates change annually. Confirm with the organization before planning around any of them.
