A Little Grouchy, But No Grinch Donating Millions Shouldn’t Be Easy, Says Moores Irwin Jacobs Fears A Slow Period Of Giving Burnham Donates More To Fewer Causes

They are San Diego’s philanthropically fabulous four: Audrey Geisel was the honorary chair, while Irwin Jacobs, Malin Burnham and John Moores served as the more active co-chairs. Launched in July 2000, “The Campaign for UCSD: Imagine What’s Next?” was the most ambitious fundraising effort in campus history. The goal was to raise $1 billion to support students and faculty, expand academic programs, fund research and strengthen innovation to meet the university’s highest priorities. The campaign started with a gift for a cancer center and ended with a $34 million bequest from physician George Ury for cancer research, the largest planned gift in the university’s history. About 100,000 people donated.

Nearly two months before the campaign’s June 30, 2007, conclusion, the goal was reached. The total raised was $1.031 billion, enough to take the wind out of mere mortal fundraising executives and to double UCSD’s endowment to $485 million.

A state institution as big as UCSD ought to have its funding covered, but it’s a never-ending process. “Currently only 12 percent of our operating budget comes from the state of California,” says UCSD’s Judy Piercey. “UCSD, as with other public universities, must increasingly rely on gifts from alumni, parents and friends.”

More? Only the most impishly mature of the fabulous four admits to being exhausted.

“I’m philanthropized out of my mind,” says Geisel, better known as Mrs. Dr. Seuss, the widow of the genius artist and author Theodor Geisel.

“Never,” says John Moores. “I never got tired. Some people do. I’ve talked with other people who get tired of the hassle. But it’s never bothered me. I have no trouble saying no.”

But it wears on Geisel. “Everybody wants more,” she says. “They come to me now, they want $500,000. Then they want $1 million. Then following that they want my pink body there too.

“I have another concern to protect and preserve Seussian literature. That’s what I’m supposed to be about. How do I pare it down? I’m very involved with UCSD. I could spend all my time with that and be involved. Moores has just pulled out and given no reason.”

Well, not exactly. Moores recently resigned as a trustee of the University of California Board of Regents, but he still ranks UCSD among his most important missions.

Says Moores: “UC is beginning a presidential search in a very difficult market and is facing increasing financial stress, daunting organizational problems and chronic over-enrollment. My term would have ended in slightly over one year, which simply will not allow enough time to solve these vexing problems.” So he abruptly quit after nine years on the board. Indeed, he does know how to say no and he’s learned his time is more valuable than his dough.

“My favorite charities are The Scripps Research Institute Inc. and The Carter Center, both of which I chair and which I enthusiastically support,” he says.

But Moores still counts UCSD among the best recipients of corporate and individual philanthropy. He’s donated “somewhere around” $25 million to UCSD “because since its founding the university has kept its focus on biotech, medicine and engineering, and been true to those founding principles, which is really astonishing because through the years those strengths actually have gotten stronger.

“UCSD is the gem in the UC system. UCSD seems to be the one that’s got the rocket strapped to it, and I think that’s because it’s so heavily loaded in life sciences and medicine. And San Diego desperately depends on the biotech sector for economic growth. It’s been a happy marriage. It’s difficult to overstate how important UCSD is to the region, and to the state. A lot of really outstanding people work at UCSD.”

Irwin Jacobs, who used to teach at UCSD and went on to found and grow Qualcomm and then fund UCSD’s engineering school, says, “A great research university raises the intellectual level of the community, with many lectures being given, adult education classes and many cultural activities, music, the La Jolla Playhouse, the arts. It enriches our lives in many different ways. In particular at UCSD, it’s also led to high technology, the computer industry and biotech all being here in San Diego. Without that, I think our economy would be much the worse.”

Malin Burnham, the semi-retired chairman of Burnham Real Estate, puts it a little stronger.

“UCSD turns out to be the single most important instigator of building the two strongest parts of our growing economy: basic medical research and high technology. (The UCSD land on Torrey Pines, formerly Camp Callen) was a gift from the city of San Diego to the University of California that materially has changed the economic landscape of the greater San Diego area...with much more distance to go in the future.”

For more information about UCSD’s needs, log on to giving.ucsd.edu, or corner Judy Piercey in the development office or any of the four campaign chairs, but don’t ask for the honorary chairwoman’s pink body. She might show up in the pink.