Philanthropy Is in the Family Genes

Funds run by heirs to Levi Strauss benefit many San Francisco charities

On Sunday afternoons in the summertime, thousands of music lovers can be found enjoying free concerts at the Sigmund Stern Grove, a public park donated to this city in 1931 by Sigmund Stern’s widow, Rosalie.

Downtown at the new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the signature work in the collection — “Femme au Chapeau,” by Henri Matisse — was bequeathed to the museum in 1990, along with many other prized canvasses, by the late Elise S. Haas.

And across the bay at the University of California at Berkeley, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Graduate School of Public Policy stands as a monument to the couple’s long-time support of education and of programs designed to encourage good government.

The names of all those philanthropists are familiar to people living in the Bay Area. What is less well known is the common thread that links them: They are all descendants of Levi Strauss, the founder of the multibillion-dollar clothing empire that began with a pair of denim pants.

Together, the private foundations set up by Levi Strauss’s heirs have more than $1-billion in assets, and many of his descendants have also established funds worth tens of millions of dollars at community foundations in the Bay Area. The Haas family of San Francisco, which inherited and still runs the blue-jeans company, ranks No. 12 on Forbes magazine’s most-recent list of the world’s wealthiest families, with an estimated worth of $12.3-billion. Although few of the family members have said what they hope their children will do with the money, the sizable fortune they will inherit makes it likely that many more millions will be channeled to charity in the next century.

Other foundations in the Bay Area — like the $8.9-billion David and Lucile Packard Foundation — now have more to spend than do the Levi Strauss philanthropies, but none has made as great a difference to the region as has the combined giving of the Haas clan and other families that inherited the Levi Strauss fortune, non-profit leaders say.

“I don’t see another family in the Bay Area — or the Western United States, for that matter — that has made contributions of the magnitude, variety, and impact they have,” says Stephen M. Dobbs, former president of the Marin Community Foundation, in nearby Larkspur.

Family members say that while they have given to a wide range of programs, they have intentionally focused their efforts on a fairly narrow geographic area.

“We would rather be doing good right here in our own hometown, and not spread too thin by putting a lot of money into national organizations, where it would be a drop in the bucket,” says Peter E. Haas, who serves both as president of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and vice-president of the Miriam and Peter Haas Fund, two of the largest philanthropies established by Mr. Strauss’s descendants.

Those two funds are among the five biggest set up by the heirs to the jeans empire. Each of the large funds, designed to reflect the particular interests of its founders, stands out for having significantly influenced the leading educational, cultural, and social institutions in the region:

*The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, with just over $400-million, is the largest of the five foundations. Until now, the fund has supported programs for children and families, hunger and homelessness, and the arts, among other causes. It is in the midst of a broad review of its grant-making strategy, which should be complete by the end of the year, but it is not expected to make sweeping changes in its approach.

The Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, worth $330-million, places a heavy emphasis on the environment, with 35 per cent of its expenditures made in that category. The best-known program of the foundation has been the Goldman Environmental Prizes, $100, 000 awards that are presented annually to six grassroots activists.

* For the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, worth about $204-million at the end of last year, the emphasis is on the arts. A key beneficiary has been the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which received $10-million toward the construction of its new home, which opened in 1994. The fund also supports many Jewish causes in Israel and the United States, such as the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties.

* At the Miriam and Peter Haas Fund, with assets of more than $200-million, the central grant-making priority is to aid poor children by helping to improve access to quality child care. Last year, the fund spent about half of its $8.3-million in grants on early-childhood programs. In its most prominent program, the foundation has given $3.6-million in the past three years to create the Model Centers Initiative. Through it, the fund is hoping to demonstrate that day-care centers can offer greatly improved services if they are housed in properly designed facilities and are operated by well-compensated, professionally trained staff members.

* The Columbia Foundation, worth about $70-million, was started in 1940 by Madeleine Haas Russell and has a long history of independent grant making. During World War II, for example, the foundation provided assistance to Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps. Today the fund continues to support unpopular causes, including groups opposed to the death penalty and human-rights groups defending the rights of homosexuals.

Money from those funds has gone to so many San Francisco non-profit groups that it is almost impossible to talk to a charity official here who does not have some connection to the Strauss heirs’ largesse. But the pervasive influence of the family’s philanthropy can stifle potential criticism of the funds. “Nobody is going to be caught dead criticizing the Haas family, because we all get funds from them — or hope to,” says one charity official, who asked not to be named.

The largest infusion of money into the family funds came with the death in 1990 of Elise Haas, the widow of Walter Haas, Sr., who had built Levi Strauss into one of the leading apparel companies in the United States. Mrs. Haas left the bulk of her fortune, most of it in company stock, not to her children but to their foundations.

At the time, San Francisco non-profit leaders hoped that Mrs. Haas would leave all the money to the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, transforming it into a philanthropic powerhouse with national influence, rather than dividing it up among her children’s funds.

“Everybody was disappointed when it didn’t happen,” says Herbert Chao Gunther, president of the Public Media Center, a non-profit advocacy organization. “But it is a reflection of how independent they are that she did it this way.” Independent Interests

Despite the five major funds’ independent interests, they still have close ties. Several family members serve on the boards of more than one of the foundations. Most of the funds are located in the same building. And on occasion, two or more funds will work together on a particular project.

When the San Francisco Public Library was raising money for its new main branch in 1992, three Haas funds and the Columbia Foundation pooled their resources to donate $2-million to match the contributions the library was able to raise from other donors. More recently, the same four funds developed a joint grant-making program — the Creative Work Fund — to help individual artists working in the San Francisco Bay area.

Several of the Haas funds are also working together to support efforts that may dramatically reshape the face of San Francisco well into the next century.

In March, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund and the Colleen and Robert Haas Fund, created by the current chairman of Levi Strauss & Company and his wife, agreed to give $10-million toward a $25-million project intended to beautify Crissy Field, a derelict stretch of shoreline located near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The project is being carried out in collaboration with the Golden Gate National Parks Association, a non-profit group that supports the National Park Service’s programs in the San Francisco Bay area.

When it is completed, the project — which includes the return of a large portion of the site to tidal marsh, its natural state — will represent the largest park improvement in San Francisco since the creation of Golden Gate Park, the cornerstone of the city’s park system, a century ago.

Participants in the Crissy Field effort hope that it provides a new model for foundations and non-profit organizations to work with government agencies to make public parks accessible to a more-diverse constituency.

“The more philanthropic support you bring in,” says Brian O’Neill, super intendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, “the more it builds the family’s contributions go far beyond the financial support they provide to local institutions.

The late Rhoda Haas Goldman was perhaps the most active volunteer in the family. During her life, she served as a member of — and, on many occasions, as head of — the governing boards of many institutions, including the San Francisco Foundation, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Jewish Community Federation.

Mrs. Goldman was the second woman to serve as president of the city’s Mount Zion Hospital — a generation after her mother was the first. Her tenure came during a critical time in the health-care institution’s history: She oversaw the merger of the hospital with the University of California at San Francisco.

Serving in top trustee roles has meant that the family members often have to make hard calls.

One such occasion arose when Peter Haas took over as president of the United Bay Area Crusade, the forerunner of the United Way, in 1972. In an oral history prepared for the Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Haas recalls that the organization’s executive director provoked a controversy when he made improper statements about ethnic matters in a private memo that was leaked to the public. Since Mr. Haas also felt that the executive was not performing his duties adequately, he pressed the official to resign.

“That was one of my finest hours,” recalls Mr. Haas, who observes that he was willing to make an unpleasant decision — and follow through with forceful action — because of his family’s deep roots and standing in San Francisco. Many business leaders who hail from outside the area, he suggests, do not take their volunteer responsibilities seriously, preferring instead to avoid tough choices, serve their terms for short periods of time, and leave problems for their successors to resolve.

In a city where the society column is one of the best-read parts of the newspaper, the family is conspicuous in its absence. That unpretentiousness has been valuable in helping to bridge opposing camps in the often-contentious political environment of San Francisco.

For instance, battles over what should be done to change Golden Gate Park have become bitter and fractious in recent years. Supporters of museums and other institutions located in the park have demanded new underground parking facilities, while environmentalists have opposed any new construction projects. Some park users have called for a crackdown on crime and vagrancy, while advocates for the homeless have decried efforts to prevent people from camping in the park.

But many observers believe that the Haas family, which provided the largest grant to create the San Francisco Partnership for the Parks, a non-profit group that is attempting to find ways to revitalize the city’s parks, has helped elevate the debate.

“They have brought people who are opposed on one issue, and they have got them to work together on other issues,” says David Snyder, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycles Coalition.

Family members also manage to work together well in carrying out their philanthropy, despite some tensions and deep rifts that were exacerbated by a stock-buyback plan executed in 1995. (The tightly controlled private company had gone public in 1971 to raise badly needed capital.)

The dissension about the buyback drove a wedge between some members of the family. But family members and foundation observers agree that the family has been able to set aside its divisions when making philanthropic decisions. At the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, for example, the families of each of the founders’ children have continued to work together peaceably and effectively, despite the turmoil.

The foundation, observes family patriarch Peter Haas, “is the one place where all elements of the family are working together.”