Heiress to Go On With Plan to Give Millions

Multimillionaire Joan Irvine Smith said Tuesday that now that she and her mother, Athalie R. Clarke, have received $255.8 million for their stock in the Irvine Co., one of her first priorities will be to start contacting organizations to which she has publicly promised to makee gifts.

“I’ve got an opportunity to go ahead and do what I said I would do. It is one of the first orders of business,” said the 58-year-old heiress who in recent weeks has said she would hand out millions of dollars from the stock sale to a variety of causes, most of them linked to UC Irvine or agencies dedicated to improving the environment.

Smith said she is consulting closely with her tax attorneys to determine the size of the gifts and how they will be structured. She said most of the funds designated for charity will be placed in a foundation on whose board she will serve as president and her mother as vice president. She said the foundation will determine exactly how much money to dole out to particular organizations.

In most instances, she said, only a portion of the committed money will be given up front to an agency, with further installments depending on performance.

“It is like giving a piece of a carrot now and a piece next year and more pieces other years down the line,” she said.

Smith said she especially wants to have “a hands-on relationship” with respect to major donations that she intends to give to UC Irvine and to a nonprofit organization now being formed that will be called the National Water Research Institute.

“We are working very actively with her (Smith) in the formation of the National Water Research Institute,” said Jim Van Haun, executive assistant to the general manager of the Orange County Water District. At Smith’s encouragement, the institute is being created as a cooperative effort between the Orange County Water District, the Irvine Ranch Water District, the Municipal Water District of Orange County, the County Sanitation Districts of Orange County and the San Juan Basin Authority.

These agencies, at Smith’s behest, have compiled a wish list of projects that they would like her to fund, all of which relate to cleaning up or expanding the county’s water supplies. Smith said she now has 149 projects to choose among.

“I am hopeful this will encourage other individuals or foundations to make similar gifts in order to bring about water research and projects,” she said.

Smith has discussed making a number of gifts to the UCI campus, including $1-million chairs to help establish a law school and a water research department in the School of Engineering. She proposes giving yet another $1 million to promote the university’s ongoing study of the earth’s ozone layer.

In addition, Smith said she wants to help fund a health science research facility on campus, starting with the purchase of a building for its headquarters. And she said she wants to help place a research arm of the House Ear Institute at UCI.

Other organizations Smith has targeted for $100,000 gifts include Mission San Juan Capistrano, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, Save the Rain Forests, the Dolphin Research Center, the Cousteau Society, the Nature Conservancy and Bowers Museum.