Twenty years ago, Gordon and Betty Moore affirmed that they “want the foundation to tackle large, important issues at a scale where it can achieve significant and measurable impacts.” The foundation’s distinctive, long-term involvement in a number of projects, initiatives and programs has allowed us to see substantial progress in the fields where we work. 

From the creation of our first initiative, to recent program milestones, the foundation’s success stems from our vital partnerships. Our long-standing commitments teach us how to improve our progress along the way and how to best support partners in their achievement of program goals well into the future.  

Leaving a lasting legacy

No project better exemplifies the legacy of our founder, Betty Irene Moore, than the Betty Irene Moore Nursing Initiative and the creation of the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis. The initiative was born out of Betty’s vision, stemming from her experience with preventable harm during a hospital stay. Betty saw an opportunity to make improvements in the quality and safety of patient care, focusing on the critical role of nurses, who deliver 95 percent of hospital care.  

Betty saw a need and opportunity to support nurses both now and in the future – in education, research, and leadership training. In 2007, the foundation announced a commitment of $100 million in grant funds over 11 years to launch the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis.  And in 2015, the school of nursing, along with the Moore Foundation, broke ground on Betty Irene Moore Hall, which commemorated UC Davis’ dedication to advance the standing of nursing, interprofessional education, innovation and discovery.

"Any school that aspires to be innovative today – that wants to break the mold of the past, that wants to pave the way to the future – cannot do it by simply repeating the way things have always been done,” said foundation president Harvey Fineberg, M.D.  “A school must be innovative.”  

“The approach to nursing being pursued here is one that involves a much broader education of the students,” said foundation co-founder Gordon Moore. “It’s an opportunity to get a little ahead of the curve and train the next generation of participants. We think it’s an opportunity to do something really revolutionary.”

The foundation’s continued and long-standing commitment to nurses is evident in the recent development and launch of the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship Program for Nurse Leaders and Innovators. The fellowships are meant to empower nurses to serve in leadership roles. 

Results that are built to last

From its inception, the foundation recognized the importance of conserving the Amazon biome and awarded the first grant for this purpose in October 2001. The Andes-Amazon Initiative, established in 2003, has since dedicated roughly $520 million in grants to ensure the long-term ecological integrity and climatic function of the basin.

“The Amazon is Earth’s largest remaining tropical wilderness. Scientists tell us 84 percent of the original forest cover remains – and we need at least 70 percent intact to avoid the tipping point that would turn the forest irreversibly into savannah,” said Avecita Chicchón, program director for the foundation’s Andes-Amazon Initiative. “This would mean a devastating loss of rich habitats for a myriad of living animal and plant species and the homes and communities of millions of indigenous people. And the impact of losing forest and free-flowing rivers is not just local. We’re looking at changes to climatic patterns around the globe. We need to see the Amazon as a system integral to the planet’s health, and we will need the attention of all humanity to conserve it.”

Support for the critical work of conserving nature, biodiversity, and habitat there continues today. And over the years, the initiative and its needs have evolved and expanded. We continue to support work by organizations in the region who ensure that a core set of protected areas is managed effectively and that infrastructure projects are planned with long-term sustainability in mind. Initiatives evolve over time, and we constantly seek to learn how best to support the work over a sustained period.‍

Peru’s Amazon Legacy‍

Peru ranks first among all nations for its astounding diversity of butterflies and fish, second for its birds, fourth for its amphibians and fifth for its mammals. Headwaters representing the most distant source of the mighty Amazon River originate in Peru. Amazon rainforest makes up 60 percent of the country, and 20 percent of that designated as “protected.” However, illegal resource extraction and poorly planned infrastructure projects threaten the country’s remarkable wild places. To ensure that these national natural treasures are protected far into the future, long-term funding and management are critical.

Patrimonio Natural del Perú, or “National Parks: Peru’s Natural Legacy,” succeeded in achieving that protection and established a global model for the rest of the world. The government-led initiative, launched at the 2014 World Parks Congress, created a mechanism for financial sustainability for the country’s extraordinary national parks. 

One important way Peru secured financing for national protected areas is known as “project finance for permanence.” This strategy leverages in-country funds to be matched by international funding to establish sustainable finance and management mechanisms for large-scale conservation. These arrangements bring together multiple stakeholders — private donors (of which the Moore Foundation is one), multi- and bi-laterals, NGOs and governments — around a shared objective and fundraising targets.

“With the financial resources secured for key protected areas, there is a clear path to conserve them in perpetuity,” added Chicchón. “Patrimonio Natural del Perú and other initiatives were built upon the success of the Amazon Regional Protected Areas (ARPA) project.”

Centered on Brazil, ARPA is the world’s largest conservation and sustainability initiative on tropical forests and represents the main biodiversity conservation strategy for the Amazon biome. ARPA enlisted sustainable financing to improve management of protected areas, meeting goals of conservation, ecosystem services, and income generation for the indigenous population.

Taking risks for important gains

For decades, ocean scientists had wrestled with a fundamental ecological challenge: how can they catalog the tremendous microbial diversity in the world’s oceans and begin to comprehend how these microbes affect food webs and global nutrient cycles? These questions informed the launch of the Marine Microbiology Initiative in 2004.

“When we started the foundation, we knew we wanted to support basic scientific research and select an area where we could have a significant impact,” said Ken Moore, foundation trustee. “Our path to marine microbiology was a confluence of new technology that could accelerate science and an opportunity to support a field that was not well funded, so we took a chance. We also saw the long-term potential for research in this field to benefit other areas of science, including the environment.”

Nearly 18 years and $250 million later, the initiative’s extraordinary success serves as an example of the foundation’s approach to identifying large, complex opportunities where early and sustained investment can have a major impact. The work of grantees and other partners built a flourishing field that has produced a more comprehensive understanding of marine microbial communities and is well poised to continue.

While this initiative will sunset soon, it led seamlessly to the creation of the Symbiosis in Aquatic Systems Initiative, which launched in 2019, after an exploration process that began in 2016. 

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