OVERVIEW: The Moore Foundation focuses on rigorous scientific inquiry in disciplines including plant science, marine microbiology and astronomy, to name a few. Moore is also a well-known supporter of fishery management and habitat-protection initiatives across North America and the Pacific. The foundation awards health-related grants via its Patient Care Program, which strives to make patient and family engagement a reality within the U.S. healthcare system.
IP TAKE: The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation currently ranks as one of the largest and most active grantmakers in science philanthropy, funding basic research across the life and physical sciences. Grantmaking prioritizes projects with rigorous scientific methods and the potential for impactful change in the foundation’s areas of interest. Other recent areas of interest include conservation, public health and higher education in the STEM disciplines.
Moore’s grants mainly fund top research universities and institutes, as well as well-known global environmental organizations. Health funding focuses on organization with large-scale operations and the ability to improve care for large numbers of people. This foundation works globally, but prioritizes California and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Moore’s grantmaking is highly competitive and inaccessible. However, it’s somewhat responsive, so interested grantseekers may email the foundation a brief introduction to their work in 100 words or less.
PROFILE: The Moore Foundation was launched in 2000 in San Francisco by Gordon Moore, who had co-founded Intel, and his wife, Betty. The foundation seeks to “foster path-breaking scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements, and preservation of the special character of the Bay Area.” According to the Moores, their foundation aims to “tackle large, important issues at a scale where it can achieve significant and measurable impacts,” and “durable change, not simply delaying consequences for a short time.” Grantmaking focuses on rigorous scientific research and interventions with strong potential to have lasting impact on the environment, health or STEM education. Geographic priorities include the state of California and its San Francisco Bay region, but grantmaking is global in scope.
Grants for Science Research
The Moore Foundation’s Science Program “invests in the development of new technologies, supports the world’s top research scientists and brings together new—often groundbreaking—scientific partnerships.” Moore provides significant funding to California universities, including the California Institute of Technology and campuses within the University of California system, but support has also gone to leading universities in other parts of the U.S. The foundation only awards between 30 and 50 large science grants annually, with research topics as diverse as quantum mechanics, microbiology and astronomy. Science grants from Moore often take the form of long-term collaborations; the development of each grant usually involves a number of consultations to design the project goals and establish strategies to get there over an extended period of time. When a grant is awarded, program officers meet periodically with grant recipients to monitor progress and adapt backup strategies to modify the original plans if necessary. The foundation is a major funder of the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope that is planned for construction on Hawaii’s Mount Mauna Kea.
The Moore Inventor Fellows program honors Gordon Moore’s legacy by supporting “scientist-inventors who create new tools and technologies with a high potential to accelerate progress in the foundation’s areas of interest”: scientific discovery, environmental conservation and patient care. The foundation plans to award five fellowships per year from 2016 to 2026.
The foundation also supports science research through its Environmental Conservation program, which “balances long-term conservation with sustainable use” and is especially focused on marine ecosystem management. This program is international and multidisciplinary in scope, with subprograms dedicated to the Andes, the study of economics, agriculture and wild salmon ecosystems. Funded research focuses on topics like research into the relationship between environmental risk and global “agricultural commodity chains” as well as several studies related to land use and conservation in the Brazilian Amazon.
Grants for Environmental Conservation
Moore’s environmental conservation program seeks to “create lasting change in how land, freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems are managed,” balance “long-term conservation with sustainable use,” protect critical ecosystems, and “establish models for collaboration that can be replicated and expanded around the globe.” Offering seven separate subinitiatives, the program prioritizes sustainability, the Andes-Amazon, marine conservation, forests and agriculture, animals and wildlife, and wild salmon both in the United States and abroad. Its initiatives change often and are ever expanding. As such, grantseekers are advised to check back often. Past grantees include the World Wildlife Fund, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund.
Grants for Marine and Freshwater Conservation
Moore’s Marine Conservation initiative aims to promote “healthy, sustainable marine ecosystems in North America” and focuses on the remediation of widespread overfishing and habitat degradation through strategies that focus on ocean planning and fishing management reform. The program prioritizes the U.S. western coast, New England, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Programs in Moore’s neighborhood, the San Francisco Bay area, will have a distinct advantage, as well. Recent grantees include Trout Unlimited for its nationwide fish restoration efforts; and the Coral Reef Alliance, a California organization, for research-and-development of better coral monitoring and protection methods.
Similarly, the Wild Salmon Ecosystems initiative, Moore’s other marine-specific subprogram, attends to the salmon populations of the northern Pacific. Grantees work with fisheries in Russia, Alaska and British Columbia to boost salmon numbers and set parameters for fishing while keeping the rivers where salmon spawn and feed free of pollutants and environmentally damaging industrial activity. Recent grantees include the Tides Canada Foundation, which secured $2.5 million to support the Taku Tlingit First Nation’s efforts to protect wild salmon. Moore has also supported the Environmental Defense Fund to spur improvements in fisheries in the United States.
Grants for Public Health
The Moore Foundation awards health grants via its Patient Care Program, which strives to create a “health care system that is so finely tuned it can eliminate preventable harms, cut health care costs and give patients and families the voice and care they deserve.” The foundation also promotes patient care through the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at the University of California, Davis and through its initiatives focusing on patient safety and care for serious illnesses. One area of recent grantmaking interest concerns the reduction of preventable medical errors in ICUs and the exploration of ways to improve the delivery of community-based care for elderly people with serious illnesses. These initiatives are typically undertaken in collaboration with major medical research institutions. The foundation also funds occasional special projects, usually in the form of support for individual researchers working on aspects of patient care. Past health grantees include the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, Harvard University’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Grants for STEM Education
Moore funds STEM higher education projects through its Science Program, which “invests in the development of new technologies, supports the world’s top research scientists and brings together new—often groundbreaking—scientific partnerships.” Grantmaking in this area prioritizes but is not strictly limited to California-based institutions. The Moore Foundation is a major supporter of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at the University of California at Davis, which was launched with an initial endowment of $100 million. The foundation also offers the Betty Irene Moore Fellowships for Nurse Leaders and Innovators, which “recognizes and advances early-career nursing scholars and innovators with high potential to accelerate leadership in nursing-science research, practice, education, policy and entrepreneurship.”
Important Grant Details:
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation makes around $200 million in grants a year. Grants typically range from $50,000 to $2.5 million, while a limited number of grants exceeds $2.5 million. The foundation’s average grant size is about $500,000. Among Moore’s grantees are top U.S. universities, research facilities and global conservation organizations. A more in-depth look into funded projects and more is available at the foundation’s grantmaking page. While the foundation funds both international and national organizations, it appears to prioritize British Columbia and the Bay Area.
The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, but interested grantseekers may submit an email of 100 words or less introducing their organization and work to the foundation.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
LINKS: