Wireless Entrepreneur Reaches Out to Symphony With $120-Million Gift

After the San Diego Symphony got out of bankruptcy in 1998, Irwin and Joan Jacobs began donating about $1-million

annually to the organization.

But after a few years, Joan Jacobs says she told her husband, who made a fortune as a founder of Qualcomm, a wireless-communications company in San Diego: “We should either stop giving them $1-million, or give them $100-million.” She says she realized that “we were pouring in money each year that was balancing the budget, but not building an organization.”

The couple ended up deciding last year to donate $120-million, the biggest single donation any U.S. orchestra has received.

The Jacobses, who both turn 70 this year, will contribute $7-million a year over the next 10 years, and pass another $50-million to the symphony after their deaths. The bulk of the gift, $100-million, is for the symphony’s endowment; the rest is for its operating expenses.

The donation has put the Jacobses, whose charity has been focused nearly exclusively on institutions in and around San Diego, on the national philanthropic map — an odd feat for two people who considered making the symphony donation anonymously.

The couple, who are known for their modesty, decided to announce their gift to the public, Mrs. Jacobs says, mostly because she and her husband knew everyone would figure the money had come from them.

The Jacobses are worth about $725-million, according to the most recent estimates by Forbes magazine, though during the high-tech boom, their stock in Qualcomm soared so much in value that their assets were valued at $1.6-billion. Not only are they among San Diego’s wealthiest couples, but they also are well known around the city for their love of the arts, especially orchestral music. Besides supporting the symphony, they regularly contribute to the city’s opera company, chamber music society, theaters, and museums. They have given millions of dollars each to such institutions as the La Jolla Playhouse, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

$15-Million Donation

Most of the couple’s donations are made through a charitable fund they created at the Jewish Community Foundation, in San Diego, a nonprofit group that solicits gifts from donors, manages the gifts’ assets, and then helps distribute money to charities. Since 1997, when the foundation started keeping records of the couple’s donations, the Jacobses have cumulatively made more than $30-million in grants through the foundation.

The couple declined to disclose how much money they have contributed on their own. Their largest single donation before last year was $15-million to the engineering school at the University of California at San Diego, where, more than 30 years ago, Mr. Jacobs taught computer science and engineering.

Like the engineering-school gift, much of the couple’s philanthropy reflects the ties they have made in San Diego, where they have lived since 1966. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs have given millions of dollars, for example, both to the university’s Shiley Eye Center, where Mrs. Jacobs has been treated for a retina condition, and to the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, in La Jolla, where the couple’s grandchildren have attended preschool. Most of their money goes to Jewish organizations, higher-education institutions, and arts groups. While other worthy organizations and causes abound, Mrs. Jacobs says, donors must decide where they want to focus their resources.

“We choose to give to organizations we feel an attachment to,” Mrs. Jacobs says. “When you combine attachment with our good fortune, there is a desire and a responsibility to give back.”

Stock-Market Turbulence

Much of the Jacobses’ wealth was generated just four years ago when the value of Qualcomm’s stock, one of the hottest in the red-hot equities market of the 1990’s, ballooned by more than 2,000 percent. Qualcomm share prices have deflated significantly in the last three years, and the Jacobses have sold some stock, in part to make good on their charitable pledges. The couple still has vast holdings in Qualcomm, however, and the company continues to perform strongly even as the technology industry has struggled. Mrs. Jacobs says that she and her husband plan to leave one-quarter of their estate to charity, and the rest to family.

Qualcomm’s relative good fortune over the years has enhanced Mr. Jacobs’s reputation about town. The company has consistently been cited by Fortune magazine as one of the nation’s 100 best places to work. And Qualcomm annually donates 1 to 2 percent of its previous year’s profits to charitable programs in and around San Diego. In recent years, the company has annually contributed about $10-million, mostly to programs aimed at improving math and science education. Qualcomm also runs its own program to encourage employees to volunteer and to give to charities.

And that’s where fund raisers at local nonprofit groups are most likely to offer praise to Mr. Jacobs. They say he serves as a role model to so many potential donors, particularly the hundreds of so-called Quilminaires — Qualcomm’s employees and former employees who have profited from the company’s stock.

Mr. Jacobs and his wife are also recognized for inspiring a family of philanthropists. The couple’s four sons, each married with children, are well-known donors in the San Diego area, too. Their eldest son, Gary, for example, runs a real-estate-investment company, but he devotes countless hours to charity work, including serving as chairman of the board of the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High. The San Diego charter school, to which Gary and his wife have given about $5-million over the last three years, attracts needy students interested in math, science, and engineering. (Charter schools receive government funds, but also raise money from private sources.)

Family gatherings, Gary Jacobs says, nearly always include discussions about charity and, he adds, solicitations.

“If you believe in a cause, you are going to solicit people who might care about it, too, and have the means to support it,” Gary Jacobs says. “Of course we’re going to solicit our siblings or our parents.”

Tradition of Giving

Philanthropy wasn’t necessarily a topic of conversation in the households where Irwin and Joan Jacobs grew up. In both cases, though, according to Mrs. Jacobs, the spirit of giving was evident.

As a child in New York, Mrs. Jacobs watched her father, who was in the wholesale wine and liquor business, make sure the local synagogue had free wine for its Friday and Saturday services. In New Bedford, Mass., Mr. Jacobs saw his mother, who worked part-time at the family’s restaurant, volunteer with Hadassah, a Jewish women’s service organization.

For many years after the Jacobses were married in 1954, their own donations and involvement in nonprofit organizations were unremarkable. The couple, who lived in Boston for 12 years while Mr. Jacobs earned his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and then taught there, was busy raising a family.

After Mr. Jacobs left academe in 1972 to devote all his time to his company, which developed satellite-communications equipment, the couple gradually acquired the means to make more regular and substantial contributions. And as their bank account grew, so did their determination to make big gifts.

But, say acquaintances of the Jacobses and other observers, even after their wealth skyrocketed with Qualcomm, the couple remained understated and approachable — qualities that are reflected in their philanthropy.

The family’s name is sprinkled around the city — the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California at San Diego, and the Jacobs Family Campus at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, for example. But the Jacobses insist — and observers concur — that putting their name on buildings is more about setting an example for other would-be donors than about stroking their own egos. The Jacobses did not ask for their names to be put on the symphony’s performance hall or for any other special acknowledgement in exchange for their $120-million gift.

Charity officials say the Jacobses stand out for another reason, too. While their multimillion-dollar gifts put the couple in the same league as other wealthy donors, some of whom have been criticized for demanding substantial control over how organizations spend their money, the Jacobses have chosen not to use their checkbook to exert undue influence, the officials say.

“They are the best kind of donors you can have,” says Hugh M. Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art. “Committed, knowledgeable, involved, but never, ever pushy.”

On the only occasion Mr. Jacobs has been known to wield his influence as a philanthropist, it was to inspire charity, not to control it. He co-wrote an opinion piece that ran in San Diego’s daily newspaper following the September 11 attacks, imploring people to support their local charities even in the face of economic and political uncertainty.

Questioning Priorities

Quietly, however, a few questions about the Jacobses’ philanthropy have been raised.

An official at a social-services organization in San Diego, who asked not to be identified, says he and his colleagues at similar groups wish the Jacobses’ generosity more regularly extended beyond the arts, higher education, and Jewish causes.

“We are hopeful that the Jacobses’ vision for a better San Diego will be expanded to be more inclusive,” the official says. “We’d like to introduce them to the issues that concern us — the homeless population, for example.”

Symphony’s History

And some sniping has followed the symphony gift.

Some observers ask why the Jacobses would give so much money to an organization with a history of mismanaging its finances, when so many other worthy groups, including local music organizations, have much sounder reputations.

The symphony has been forced to shut down twice because of financial difficulties.

Officials canceled the 1986-7 season because of debts and labor disputes. In 1996, the symphony declared bankruptcy and dissolved. It started operating again in 1998, and two years later hired a new chief executive officer, Douglas Gerhart, who was known for his ability to salvage struggling orchestras.

Impressed with Mr. Gerhart’s leadership, the beginnings of the symphony’s turnaround, and its big plans for the future — Mr. Gerhart talked about starting a campaign for a $200-million endowment — the Jacobses decided to make the giant gift.

Keenly aware of the symphony’s past troubles, the couple helped establish a separate organization to manage their gift. The San Diego Symphony Foundation was formed to accept the Jacobses’ $100-million pledge and to house the symphony’s endowment. Mrs. Jacobs sits on the foundation’s board.

“We didn’t have the credibility to ask for significant permanent funds before,” Mr. Gerhart says. “Now, the Jacobses’ gift has answered the question, Will the symphony remain in operation? And the creation of the foundation has answered the question, How can I be sure that if I give a gift, the symphony will be a good steward of my money?”

Within the year, the symphony is expected to formally start its fund-raising campaign for a $200-million endowment. In the meantime, the organization is seeking a new music director, and is gearing up to increase the number of performances.

Through it all, Mr. Gerhart says, he still finds himself overwhelmed by the generosity of the Jacobses’ gift.

“It changes forever the face of the institution,” he says, adding that despite the magnitude of the gift, the symphony learned of it in a mundane way.

Mr. Jacobs, a pioneer in the digital wireless-communications industry, sent a message via e-mail.