$2 Billion to Be Donated to Charity by Electronics Industrialist Packard

Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Packard plans to donate about $2-billion worth of stock to the Packard Foundation, lifting the Los Altos-based philanthropic organization into the ranks of the nation’s wealthiest.

“It will happen over a number of years,” said Colburn Wilbur, executive director of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. “We hope it will have a great impact.”

Packard, 75, co-founded Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1939, starting with $538 in capital and a garage for headquarters. The electronics company now employs 82,000 people, and Forbes magazine estimates Packard’s net worth at $2.3 billion.

Long-Held Intention

Packard has intended for many years to donate the bulk of his fortune to charity, said Hewlett-Packard spokesman Gene Endicott. Packard could not be reached for comment Friday.

The Packard Foundation’s assets now stand at $145 million, and it made $10 million in grants last year. If Packard’s 42 million shares of Hewlett-Packard stock retain their value, the foundation’s assets should exceed $2 billion when the stock transfer is complete, according to Endicott.

The Ford Foundation is the nation’s wealthiest, with $4.7 billion in assets as of 1987. The planned expansion of the Packard Foundation will rank it among the top five in the country in assets.

The foundation will substantially expand its current programs in child health, family planning, conservation, education and the arts, Wilbur said. Specific allocations planned so far include $20 million for adolescent health, child care and employment development programs and $10 million for family planning in developing countries. A $10-million fellowship program to encourage research by young scientists and engineers was launched last week.

To Focus Attention

Foundation professionals said the foundation’s plans would focus attention on the areas to be financed.

“The foundations with the largest resources send out strong messages to other philanthropies,” said Loren Renz, director of research for The Foundation Center, a New York-based clearinghouse. “It will have a great effect.”

Packard and his family have long been active in charitable causes. Packard donated $40 million of his personal wealth to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is headed by his daughter, Julie Packard. The Packards also gave $40 million to Stanford University to build a children’s hospital named for Packard’s late wife, Lucile.

The four Packard children sit on the foundation’s board, and will continue to direct much of its grant-making activity as it expands.

Action Draws Praise

Associates praised Packard on Friday for his charitable activities.

“If David Packard has a selfish bone in him, I doubt that I’ve been able to detect it, and I doubt that an orthopedist could,” said Shirley Hufstedler, a former appeals court judge who serves with Packard on Hewlett-Packard’s board of directors. “He has been a builder of concepts, things, businesses, literally all his life.”