April 18, 2002 | Read Time: 5 minutes
When officials at the Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation say they want to make big grants that make a big difference, they often point to their $261-million, 10-year grant to Conservation International as a good illustration of what they mean.
The grant’s goal is to prevent species at risk from becoming extinct in 25 regions of the world, and to protect large stretches of tropical wilderness areas. Conservation International says the Moore Foundation’s commitment will help it and a network of other groups, including local nonprofit organizations and nongovernmental financial institutions such as the World Bank, bring in $1.5-billion from private sources and $4.5-billion from governments that want to support the project.
“Big impacts usually require large resources,” says Gordon E. Moore, who co-founded Intel and has earmarked $5-billion for the foundation he created with his wife. “We are looking globally and long-term. Piddling grants will not create much ‘bang.’”
Removing Roadblocks
Mr. Moore’s ambitions are exciting for Conservation International, but also present a new source of pressure.
“It’s a challenge for institutions to figure out what have been the roadblocks to our success and how do we transform our efforts,” says Peter A. Seligmann, chief executive officer of Conservation International.
His group decided that the best way to overcome its obstacles was to build a global network of field stations and have a pool of money available to buy land instantly, he says, and that is what the Moore Foundation’s money will help to do. Mr. Seligmann’s advice to other nonprofit organizations that wish to approach the foundation: “Instead of saying I need X amount of money to finish my endowment campaign or Y amount of money to balance my books, think of this as an opportunity to transform your efforts to accomplish great conservation outcomes and in a truthful way describe that to the Moore Foundation. I think they are looking for people that are wide awake searching for new answers and new approaches.”
The Moore Foundation plans to give Conservation International more than just the money it needs to carry out its effort to protect biodiversity around the globe. Eighteen members of the foundation’s 57-person staff help monitor the grant. Mr. Seligmann says he constantly communicates with foundation staff members and considers their suggestions essential. And he says the foundation has pledged to help the group come up with new ideas if the approach it is now trying doesn’t work.
Such interaction after a grant has been made is fairly unusual. “Most foundations do a good job of seeing if a grant will work or not, but they don’t spend as much time as the Moore Foundation does with their grantees,” says Colburn S. Wilbur, former executive director of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, in Los Altos, Calif., who is advising the fund on organizational issues. “It’s not just, ‘Here’s the money, let us know a year from now what happened.’”
For grants of such magnitude, and even select smaller ones, the Moore Foundation draws up a contract between it and the grant recipient, outlining with great specificity how the money will be spent and what results will be achieved. For example, the contract with Conservation International spells out exactly how many acres of land will be preserved and how many field stations will be built by a certain date.
Promoting Cooperation
The Moore Foundation has also worked with Conservation International to promote another of its goals: increasing cooperation among charities. Foundation officials have set up meetings between charities doing similar or complementary work in an effort to maximize opportunities for working together.
For example, Moore Foundation officials helped arrange a meeting between Conservation International and Global Response, in Boulder, Colo., to discuss Global Response’s letter-writing campaigns in behalf of local environmental causes abroad. Global Response, a group with a $150,000 annual budget, lacks resources to thoroughly get the word out about how it can help rural areas and towns around the world that are facing environmental crises. Officials there asked Conservation International, which has an overseas staff, to help inform local grass-roots environmental groups that they can contact Global Response and ask for assistance, says Paula Palmer, Global Response’s executive director. After the meeting, Robin Murphy, the vice president of Conservation International, sent an e-mail to senior staff flagging Global Response as “a powerful tool” for conservation efforts. The e-mail then detailed Global Response’s work and asked staff members to forward the e-mail to their contacts at national and local environmental organizations.
While the Conservation International grant provides some insights for other charity leaders into the Moore Foundation’s approach, the environmental group has an advantage few other organizations can claim. Mr. Moore has been an active member of its board for more than a decade, and has a track record of giving to the group: $35-million in 1998 to establish Conservation International’s Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, a research center in Washington. In fact, several high-level foundation employees and consultants either worked for or are on the board of Conservation International.
Board Connections
The close connection between the charity and the foundation makes sense, says Conservation International’s Mr. Seligmann, because Mr. Moore and Lewis W. Coleman, the fund’s president, first met as board members of the group. Kenneth F. Siebel, who recently joined the board of the Moore Foundation, also serves on the board of Conservation International.
But the foundation has also taken steps to reach out to many other environmental groups, mostly in the form of smaller grants, which might pave the way for more significant future support. Already several groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, in Washington, and the Wildlife Conservation Society, in Bronx, N.Y., are talking with foundation officials about potential big grants.
“I’m sure, over time, as they [Moore Foundation officials] get to meet other people and begin to learn about other opportunities there will be a broader network of people involved from many, many institutions,” says Mr. Seligmann.
