January 22, 2004 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a $5-billion philanthropy in San Francisco, has frustrated environmental groups with its smattering of grants and its leaders from the corporate world, says San Francisco magazine (January).
Started in November 2000 by the founder of Intel, a company that manufactures computer chips, and his wife, the foundation has given millions to protect the Amazon rain forest and preserve salmon in the Northern Pacific Rim, the area surrounding Alaska, British Columbia, and Russia.
Yet many other environmental groups have sought the foundation’s support and have been spurned, sometimes without explanation. “Few environmental groups, in the Bay Area and beyond, have struck gold at the Moore Foundation,” writes San Francisco. “Today, countless environmentalists are not only green with envy but pale with exasperation at trying to figure out what it takes to crack the Moore safe.”
While protecting the environment is one of its grant-making priorities, the foundation’s leaders come from the business world. The foundation’s president, Lewis Coleman, held high-ranking jobs at Bank of America and Montgomery Securities, an investment bank, before joining the foundation. John Seidl, the chief program officer for the environment, is a former president of both Enron and Maxxam, two Houston companies that worked in energy and logging.
“Ardent enviros, meanwhile, doubt whether the business titans at the helm of the foundation are willing to back nonprofit groups determined to force American corporations to clean up their act,” San Francisco says.
The foundation is also criticized for making “inoffensive” grants to established organizations, including $261-million to Conservation International and $300-million to the California Institute of Technology, leaving grass-roots organizations feeling snubbed. In addition, the foundation leaders often have personal ties to groups that receive grants; for example, Mr. Moore and Mr. Coleman serve on Conservation International’s board.
Mr. Coleman counters these criticisms by noting that Mr. Seidl’s background is a boon in helping the foundation convince companies to either conserve land or allow the foundation to buy property to preserve. As for the frustrated nonprofit suitors, Mr. Coleman says the foundation is following Mr. Moore’s wishes: to “make a major impact in a few areas, rather than have a negligible effect on a lot of them.”
