$700-Million Gift to a Foundation Endowment to Be Followed by More Money, Donor Pledges

Jon M. Huntsman Sr., a Utah businessman, and his wife, Karen, have endowed their foundation with nearly $700-million, and say they plan to add as much as $700-million more within the next 10 years.

“It’s been my goal in life to convert our business holdings to help build a charitable foundation,” said Mr. Huntsman, 70, founder and chairman of the Huntsman Corporation, a chemical company in Salt Lake City. “It’s inspired us to do better, to expand our business, to take more risk — knowing that the money was not going to our family, to our children, to ourselves, but the money was going to those who are suffering, and those who need it far more than we do.”

The move came as Hexion Speciality Chemicals, in Columbus, Ohio, offered this month to buy the Huntsman Corporation for $10.6-billion, outbidding a Dutch company at the last minute. The Huntsman family owns 57 percent of the business.

Mr. Huntsman said his foundation will no longer simply serve as a conduit for the couple’s yearly giving, but will be permanently endowed and will begin accepting grant proposals when the sale of his company is completed in the coming months. The fund will focus on those causes the Huntsmans have long supported in their philanthropy: cancer research and treatment, domestic violence, education, and homelessness.

Before putting the $700-million into the foundation, the Huntsmans estimate they had given more than $525-million, including $225-million to found the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah.

Fighting Cancer

A self-made man who grew up poor in Idaho, Mr. Huntsman said the root of his philanthropy is deeply personal, driven by a strong sense of duty to alleviate human suffering — in particular, to work toward a cure for cancer.

“I watched my mother die of cancer. She died, in my arms, of breast cancer,” said Mr. Huntsman, a three-time cancer survivor. He said his father and stepmother also died of the disease. “It became an issue of my own family, my own body.”

David Huntsman, one of the couple’s six sons, will lead the Huntsman Foundation along with Janet Bingham, president of the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, which supports the cancer institute. They also have three daughters. Another son, Peter, serves as chief executive of the Huntsman Corporation, and Jon Huntsman Jr. is governor of Utah.

Mr. Huntsman founded his Salt Lake City company, which makes chemicals for adhesives, aerospace equipment, electronics, paints, and other products, in 1982. This month, Hexion, an affiliate of Apollo Management, in New York, agreed to buy all of Huntsman Corporation’s common stock at $28 per share, and complete the deal within 12 months.

Mr. Huntsman’s recent gift to the Huntsman Foundation represents a sizeable chunk of his fortune. According to Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans — where he ranked No. 242 last year — he was worth $1.5-billion last year, before the sale of the Huntsman Corporation.

He said that giving away most of his fortune has been part of his plan from the beginning of his business career.

“Over the years the goal was, ‘If I can only make $100,000 and give this to a worthy cause,’” he said. “It’s just that we were able to catapult forward into higher numbers than we had envisioned.”

He said he plans to give even more to the Huntsman Foundation — as much as $500-million to $700-million — but has not yet decided when that will be.

“I’m keeping some money to get into other businesses, to try to expand that so the foundation will grow,” he said. “All that will go into the foundation upon my death — or sooner, if I decide to quit rolling the dice in business.”

Mr. Huntsman hopes the foundation will be a way for him to pass down his love of philanthropy — not his money — to his heirs.

“It is one of those driving factors in my life, along with my family and my faith, that makes me who I am,” he said. “It’s become for me a central purpose of life.”