Packard Unveils Plans for $750-Million

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, in Los Altos, Cal., has announced that it will spend at least $375-million to slow population growth and another $375-million for conservation efforts over the next five years.

The foundation, with $8.6-billion in assets, is the country’s third largest private foundation. Packard will distribute $75-million next year in the first phase of each of the two programs, which are expansions of grant-making programs already in place.

The new commitment makes Packard the largest grant maker in both the conservation and the population fields.

Money for the population effort will go to a wide range of projects, including those that offer family planning and reproductive-health services in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Packard also plans to support the expansion of young people’s access to such services.

In conservation, the foundation will support projects that preserve sites along the West Coast of North America and in the Pacific, with particular emphasis on areas that have significant biological diversity. It will also provide money to scientific research efforts to enhance conservation worldwide.

The $150-million the foundation will give to conservation and population efforts is part of the total $400-million in grants it plans to award next year — double what it distributed in 1997.

For more information, contact the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 300 Second Street, Suite 200, Los Altos, Cal. 94022; (650) 948-7658; http://www.packfound.org.