Force for Nature

Intel co-founder devotes billions to environment and other causes

About 30 years ago, Gordon and Betty Moore started taking their two sons on

annual trips to some far-flung locales — including the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, and Zimbabwe — to hike and fish in relative isolation from the commercial world. To their chagrin, over the years some of those pristine places changed as developers built roads, hotels, and docks to lure more people and businesses, often to the detriment of local plants and wildlife.

But over the years, Gordon Moore, 73, has changed too, from entrepreneur to billion-dollar businessman. Now the chairman emeritus of the Intel Corporation, a computer-chip manufacturing company that he co-founded, he is in a position to significantly help conserve some of Earth’s threatened spaces and species for future generations.

In late 2000, Mr. Moore and his wife earmarked half their wealth for a new foundation. And by next February, when the assets from a trust holding 170 million shares of Intel stock — worth about $5-billion today — are transferred to the fund, the Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation will become one of the 10 largest grant makers in the United States.

“We both see the wild places of only decades ago being changed to golf courses and resort hotels and do not think that the whole world should go that way,” said Mr. Moore in a recent e-mail message he sent to The Chronicle the day before leaving on a fishing trip to several uninhabited South Pacific islands. “I hope we will really make a difference long term (i.e., 10,000 years).”

While the Moores haven’t talked publicly about how much more they might give, their younger son, Steven, who, with his brother, Kenneth, is active in his family’s grant making, says he suspects his parents will eventually give most of their money to their foundation. Forbes magazine estimates that the couple is worth $5.3-billion.

Science and Technology

Although the environment commands the most attention from the Moores and their foundation, their philanthropic interests stretch into other areas as well. The foundation will make grants for scientific research, especially projects not traditionally supported by the federal government and to finance science and technology programs at colleges and universities, particularly those that will increase the participation of women and minorities. In addition, the foundation will make grants to environmental education projects in the San Francisco Bay area, and potentially to other local causes.

The foundation expects to make mainly multimillion-dollar grants, such as the $300-million it recently pledged to the California Institute of Technology, to organizations working on long-term projects, and it favors organizations that deliver specific, scientific results and that work closely with other nonprofit, business, and government groups to pool their money and share information.

“Our longer view on education, science, and the environment is different than you’d see for most founders of foundations,” says Lewis W. Coleman, the fund’s president. “It’s pretty courageous of Gordon and Betty because some of the things we are going to do they may well not be around for, I may well not be around for.”

The Moore Foundation’s interest in doing things differently from some other grant makers can be seen in such details as the layout of its offices and the way it deals with grant recipients.

Located in the Presidio, a national park here, the foundation’s offices lack the marble, rosewood, and other symbols of grandeur that mark some foundation headquarters. Employees, including Mr. Coleman, work together in rows of desks in an airy space. Each workstation has the same desk, flat-screen computer, chair, and telephone, and seating assignments are completely random, in part so that employees with different job duties will have opportunities to work together.

The open design reflects the foundation’s values, says Mr. Coleman. The message is, “everybody’s equal, everybody’s humble.”

The offices are reminiscent of Intel’s, where Mr. Moore worked in a cubicle like everyone else — although his was big enough to hold a table — and never had his own parking place, says Steven E. Moore.

“He’s a no-frills kind of guy,” he says of his father. My parents “don’t have homes all over the world, or private jets and mega-yachts. It’s not what they do.” However, his parents own a home in Hawaii, where his mother spends most of the winter. His father flies in and out for meetings and fishing trips, usually traveling economy class.

Everyone Gets a Say

At the foundation, all 57 staff members are encouraged not only to get to know one another, but also to get to know potential grant recipients. For 10 days after a program officer identifies a potential grant, project details are posted on the foundation’s internal Web site, where anyone — from the receptionist to Mr. Moore — can raise questions or praise its merits.

In addition to commenting on specific grants, staff members are expected to spend time beyond their job-specific work to assist on projects that interest them or ones in which their expertise is useful. For example, Sherry Bartolucci, chief administrative officer, is helping to set up part of the foundation’s environmental-education program where she will use her skills in strategic planning and organizational design. Ms. Bartolucci has also chosen to work on a grant project focusing on Amazon wilderness areas in part because she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru and feels an attachment to the region.

Being involved with grant making keeps employees “passionate” about what the foundation is doing, says Nancy C. Cole, chief program officer for Bay Area grants, who adds that part of an employee’s job performance is tied to participation in those types of activities.

Delegating Duties

Unlike some donors who set up their own foundations and then play a very hands-on role in running them, Mr. Moore delegates much of the day-to-day decision-making to Mr. Coleman, the former chairman of Banc of America Securities. Mr. Moore has known Mr. Coleman for years through shared fishing trips and board work at Conservation International, an environmental group in Washington that last year received $261-million for work over the next decade from the foundation.

“Doing anything well takes a lot of thought and digging,” says Mr. Moore. “Finding the few places that can make a long-term difference and being sure that the desired results are accomplished is tough.” He adds, “I do not have the time or the energy to do it myself.”

Mr. Coleman reviews comments from the foundation’s employees and makes the final decision on most grants. If a grant is above a certain monetary threshold — he declined to say how much — he forwards it for approval to the board, which consists of himself, the Moores and their two sons, and Kenneth F. Siebel, a businessman and Conservation International board member. Both sons plan to stay on the board in future years, says Steven Moore, to see that the foundation’s direction continues to hold true to what their parents originally intended.

Gordon Moore does stay involved in select projects on a personal level. For example, last year he attended a conference in Cambridge, Mass., paid for by his foundation and organized by the All Species Foundation, a San Francisco group, to examine how best to catalog the world’s living species. And he and his wife participated in a staff retreat where Mr. Moore explained to the group why they started the foundation and what he hoped would happen as a result of its creation, says Ms. Cole. “It’s clear they want to see this be successful,” she adds.

Starting Slowly

The Moores intentionally started their foundation small, with a gift of five million Intel shares, so that Mr. Coleman would have time to start hiring employees and develop a system for awarding large sums later.

Over the past year, the foundation distributed nearly 30 grants totaling $42.9-million. Foundation officials refer to those grants as “exploratory” and not necessarily representative of future giving. Many, for example, are small compared with the ones the foundation hopes to award in future years, says Mr. Coleman, but they have helped foundation officials learn about areas in which the foundation might have a long-term interest.

The Moores — who have already given several multimillion-dollar gifts over the years, including $12.5-million to the University of Cambridge, in England — had been thinking about establishing a large foundation for years, says Steven Moore, who runs a separate family foundation in Los Altos, Calif., with $50-million in assets.

Family Tradition

Philanthropy has long been a part of the Moores’ family life. Since 1986, when the family foundation was formed, the Moores have gotten together several times a year to select grant recipients, says Steven Moore. Environmental groups, including Ecotrust and the Wild Salmon Center, which the Moores’ new foundation has also supported, have received grants from the family fund, as well as some local groups, including the San Mateo County Health Center Foundation and Saint Francis High School, in Mountain View, Calif.

The Moores will keep the two foundations separate, with the Moore Family Foundation continuing to concentrate mainly on small grants that reflect the family’s personal interests and the Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation giving to more ambitious projects aimed at achieving large-scale, measurable results, says Steven.

In addition to the board involvement on the bigger foundation, some members of the Moore family also serve as employees. Steven’s wife, Kathleen Justice-Moore, now works there part-time as research director and associate counsel, and his brother, Kenneth, who used to work as a manager for Philips Semiconductors, an electronics company, just started a job in the research department.

No Unsolicited Requests

Next year, when the foundation receives its major infusion of money from the Moores, Mr. Coleman says he expects to start annually awarding about 150 grants totaling at least $250-million, or roughly 5 percent of the foundation’s assets, as required by federal law. How those grants will be divided among different program areas is undecided. The foundation does not designate separate budgets for each area because officials want to base grants on need or results.

For now, the foundation has no plans to accept unsolicited grant proposals. Rather, foundation staff members will continue to find projects by working with contacts at nonprofit organizations and foundations, and by relying on the in-house research team. For groups identified as potential grant recipients, the Moore Foundation is encouraging charity officials to think big and to be honest about how long projects might take, says Ms. Cole.

Some observers are upset that such a big new foundation has decided not to accept grant proposals. “The tendency of foundations to substitute their judgment about who is good and who is fundable means that foundations don’t necessarily hear all the creative ideas that are out there,” says Rick Cohen, president of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, an advocacy group in Washington. Many nonprofits find themselves increasingly shut out of foundations that might be willing to support their work, he adds, “but they can’t get through the door because the foundation won’t hear their proposals.”

Though the foundation is not inviting all in the nonprofit world to submit grant applications, it wants to share its ideas with others. It plans to post what it learns from its grants and in-house research on its Web site.

It also hopes to work collaboratively with other foundations, especially by making more joint grants with other foundations. Last year the foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation each gave $50-million to the Peninsula Open Space Trust, in Menlo Park, Calif., to preserve land on California’s San Mateo coast. And recently John M. Seidl, the Moore Foundation’s chief program officer for environmental grants, talked with an official at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in Menlo Park, about working together on a project concerning a “next-generation automobile that is very different than anything produced by Detroit,” he says.

Stock-Market Losses

While the foundation will have a good chunk of money to give away in coming years, the endowment could have been even larger had Intel stock fared better in recent years.

“I hoped it would be bigger, but Intel stock got hit pretty hard in the collapse of technology stocks,” says Mr. Moore. In mid-November 2000, when Mr. Moore put 170 million shares of Intel stock into a charitable remainder trust, with the Moore Foundation as its sole beneficiary, Intel shares were valued at $41.50. As of April 10, shares were selling at $28.39 apiece.

Half the shares in the trust have already been sold and reinvested in other securities to help diversify the foundation’s future endowment, and the rest might be sold before February, when all the trust’s assets roll over to the foundation. The foundation, which now has assets of about $160-million, has no Intel stock in its portfolio, says Alice A. Ruth, chief financial officer, but as its endowment grows it will probably buy some.

Even as the foundation claims a spot among the country’s top grant makers next year, a huge endowment will be needed to achieve the Moores’ mandate to spend big and take big risks.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained, in Gordon’s mind,” says Mr. Coleman. “We can take all our money and give it to the top 10 university endowments in the country every year and run the place with 1.5 people and it might have great effect. That’s just not what he chose to do.”

GORDON E. AND BETTY I. MOORE FOUNDATION

Purpose and areas of support: To conserve Earth for future generations by supporting mostly long-term, large-scale programs that produce measurable results in the areas of the environment, education, and science.

Assets: At the end of 2001, assets were $160-million. The Moores have earmarked an additional 170 million shares of Intel stock for the foundation’s endowment. The shares are in a charitable remainder trust currently worth about $5-billion. About half of the shares have been sold, and the other half might be sold by February 2003, when all assets in the trust will be transferred to the foundation for its endowment.

Grants: In 2001, 27 grants totaling $42.9-million were distributed. One additional grant for $300-million over a 10-year period has been approved but payment has not yet begun.

Application procedures: The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals.

Key official: Lewis W. Coleman, president.

Address: 386 Arguello Avenue, P.O. Box 29910, San Francisco, Calif. 94129. The foundation prefers that all inquiries be sent by e-mail to info@moore.org.

World Wide Web site: http://www.moore.org