How we are different from most foundations

• We have a staff: 3 full-time employees involved in both grants and activities

• We have ambitious goals: curing major diseases, saving the world, reforming politics, ...

• We give out a larger % of our endowment every year: 10% per year

• 90% of the endowment is aggressively invested

• One person pretty much drives the policy decisions

• We get personally involved in politics in order to achieve a goal, e.g., AB71 was hundreds of hours, special plane trips, meeting with governor, etc.

• On occassion, we invest in “for profit” companies doing charitable things, e.g., Targesome

• We invest in unfashionable, yet incredibly logical, impactful causes, e.g., Ploughshares, asteroid research, knee surgery patient education/information website

• We take calculated risks in betting on people and being the sole sponsor, e.g., Solarmotions/Martin Koebler

• We invest in people as well as projects, e.g., Buzz Aldrin, Ben Barres, Mars Society

• We make a long term commitment with large $, e.g., 3 year, $540K medical fellows program

• We invest in things that seem to be "broken", e.g., AB71, ending the ban on federal funds for human embryonic stem cell research

• We invest in on controversial things, e.g., we are currently exploring whether selling body parts would be a good cause to champion. This is critically important for us to take a stand on controversial issues like this. Everyone else will ignore this because it is so controversial. So nothing will get done. The whole reason for starting our foundation is to make a difference, not maintain the status quo.

• We invest in helping out govt agencies, e.g., Smog Check II measurements

• We invest in helping other people become philanthropists, e.g., talks, SV2, All Charties (100% goes to charity, all IRS charities, registered as a fundraiser in all 50 states)

• We try to enlist others in our causes or causes we hear about that may apply to them, e.g., Gates and TB

• Our focus is quite broad and sometimes loosely defined: medical, high impact causes, environment, education, local community, technology, arts; a very ecletic set of causes.

• We're not afraid to break the rules and fund things that aren't in our mission, e.g., $1M donation to United Way even though we don’t invest in social services or support the United Way.

• We are proactive (we create proposals) as well as reactive (funding proposals coming in)

• We aren't afraid of getting involved politically,

• We like fund gaps, i.e., high impact areas where traditional funding has fallen short for some reason (eg., human embryonic stem cell research, senior scientists going into a new field, asteroids, California air quality measurements)