Sacramento arts advocate Dennis Mangers will direct a $25,000 civic leadership award to regional arts organizations. Mangers, 85, is the 2026 recipient of the Mort Friedman Civic Leadership Award.
The honor recognizes a Sacramento-region leader whose public service has made a lasting community impact. Its award funding comes from a Friedman family fund at the Sacramento Region Community Foundation.
Sacramento Arts Advocate Chooses Award Recipients
According to Abridged’s award report, Mangers designated $5,000 each for Sacramento Ballet, Broadway Sacramento Youth Conservatory and the Dennis Mangers Fund for Young Performing Artists.
Mandarins Drum and Bugle Corps will receive $1,500, while Sacramento Symphony receives $2,500. Crocker Arts Museum Education programs and the CLARA will each receive $1,000.
Capital Stage, B Street Theater and Sacramento Master Singers will each receive $1,000. The Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus is also designated to receive $1,000.
Mangers said the recognition honoring his longtime friend was unexpected. He described joining the award’s earlier recipients as humbling.
Mort Friedman, the Sacramento businessman, attorney and philanthropist for whom the award is named, died in 2012. His son Mark Friedman praised Mangers as a civil rights pioneer.
The award connects public leadership with charitable support. Separate coverage examines an education entrepreneurship scholarship gift as another example of funding directed toward learning opportunities.
A Public Career Across Education and the Arts
Mangers has spent more than five decades in public life, according to the report. A Navy veteran, he began as an elementary school teacher in Long Beach.
He became one of California’s youngest school principals in 1968. From 1976 to 1980, he represented Orange County in the state Assembly.
Mangers later spent nearly three decades with the California Cable & Telecommunications Association, eventually becoming its president. He also advised then-Senate President Darrell Steinberg.
He became the first non-lawyer to chair the State Bar’s Regulation and Discipline Committee. In 2020, he retired as Mayor Steinberg’s strategic adviser for arts, culture and the creative economy.
His board leadership included Sacramento Ballet and Broadway Sacramento. Readers can find a separate example of governance appointments in coverage of event venue board leadership.
Friends Describe Cultural and Civil Rights Contributions
David Felderstein, a longtime friend, credited Mangers with guiding Sacramento’s mayor toward support for arts organizations during Covid-19. The report says Mangers helped secure significant relief funding for the cultural community.
Felderstein also described Mangers’ role in preserving the aging Community Center Theater. The facility underwent a $100 million renovation and became the SAFE Credit Union Performing Arts Center.
Mangers has advocated for LGBTQ communities and participated in the state’s response to the AIDS crisis. He also helped start the Sacramento Gay Men’s Chorus, according to the report.
He married Michael Sestak, his partner of 35 years, on June 17, 2008. The marriage followed California’s legalization of same-sex marriage.
Broader questions about sustained leadership appear in related coverage of strategic thinking and leadership.
The Sacramento arts advocate’s award will now support the organizations he selected. The designated recipients include performing groups, youth training and museum education programs.
