Internet's Rich Are Giving It Away, Their Way
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"There's sort of a cultural anthropology to all this that's fascinating," said Catherine Muther, who worked from 1989 to 1994 as the senior marketing officer at Cisco Systems Inc., then started her own nonprofit foundation, the Three Guineas Fund, which helps women get started in high-tech industries and encourages them in philanthropic pursuits.

"At the turn of the century, the average life span was much shorter to begin with," Ms. Muther said. "But now you have people who have made a lot, very young, and they say: 'Hey, I've got another 50 years to go. I could do one or two or three more careers here.' "

One other distinguishing characteristic of today's younger philanthropists is this: many say they do not like the word "philanthropy."

"The word 'philanthropy' can be very off-putting in a way to people," said Paul Shoemaker, 39, a former marketing executive at Microsoft who left the company two years ago and is now director of Social Venture Partners, a Seattle network of 236 members, most of them drawn from the high-tech field, who pool their resources to help nonprofit organizations with both money and business expertise. "It has sort of this blue-blooded connotation to it."

(Among the terms that appear more in vogue are "social investment," "venture philanthropy" and "giving back to the community.")

Social Venture Partners, which was founded in 1997 by Paul Brainerd, a desktop publishing pioneer who sold his Aldus Corporation for $450 million in 1994, has largely concentrated on children's and educational programs. Donors typically spend 5 to 10 hours a week working directly with the groups that Social Venture Partners is supporting.

Certainly, many Seattle and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs admit to having very little time, amid the cutthroat atmosphere of the Internet industry, to even think about philanthropy.

And many argue, as Mr. Gates himself did for years, that the most important thing they can do right now is to make sure their companies succeed, thus increasing the wealth they might be in a position to give away later.

Mr. Bezos, the Amazon.com founder who sought out Mr. Lovejoy as one of his first employees, has often said he hopes one day to work as hard at giving away his wealth as he does now at amassing it.

And for at least some donors, their motives may not even be chiefly altruistic: by giving away stock in their companies, especially at a time when the stock is sky-high, they reap significant tax benefits.

Still, for many who have succeeded in high-tech ventures -- some of whom have expressed befuddlement or guilt at how quickly they made so much -- the time to act is now.

"It doesn't seem fair that anybody could get that lucky," said Mr. Lovejoy, who takes no salary from the work for his own foundation. "It's like winning the lottery in a lot of ways. I mean, nobody really deserves to earn that kind of money. So I feel like now I'm responsible for handling it well and putting it to good use."

There is no precise figure for how many entrepreneurs have turned to philanthropy in a major way, but the number of family and community foundations in the United States has more than doubled in the last 15 years, and experts say there has been particular growth in Northern California and the Seattle area, where many high-tech industries are concentrated.

The nonprofit Community Foundation Silicon Valley has seen its assets grow 25 percent to 40 percent in each of the last three years, and expects contributions to double this year, said Peter Hero, president of the organization. It is now administering about 675 different philanthropic funds that have been established by "living, breathing donors" in the area, Mr. Hero said, adding that most of them are tied to the high-tech industry in some way.

"The word they use is 'invest,' " he said. " 'How do I invest in the community, how do I invest in education, and how do I measure a societal return on that investment?' A lot of these people are engineers. They're used to measuring things."

Here in Seattle, Mr. Lovejoy and Ms. Gordon are members of Social Venture Partners, which Mr. Brainerd describes in part as "a safe environment for people to learn where their passions lie." Many, he said, come in feeling that they have been extraordinarily lucky and want to give back something to the community, but are not sure of how to go about it.

The breakneck pace of the Internet industry seems to cut both ways when it comes to philanthropy.

"For many people, hands-on in Internet times means, I've got 10 minutes to give you here, 15 minutes there,' " said Denis Hayes, director of the Bullitt Foundation, a nonprofit fund that supports environmental organizations in the Pacific Northwest.

"On the other hand, that is not unrelated to the phenomenon that was involved in saving the Loomis," he added, referring to a campaign last summer in which several high-tech entrepreneurs quickly raised $13.1 million to preserve a magnificent swath of forest in the North Cascade Mountains in Washington state. "It was like a super-fast United Way campaign or something. Suddenly everyone piles on, and they want to get up to the red line on that thermometer right away."

So far, the Gordon-Lovejoy Foundation has disbursed about $120,000 in grants, most to environmental organizations and projects that reflect the couple's interest in promoting a sustainable use of the earth's resources. The couple expects that to grow as they add more to the fund and become more confident in their choices.

In a conversation over a cup of tea the other day, Mr. Lovejoy spoke at length about the ambivalence he felt during the "all-consuming" three years he put in with Amazon.com. He was the manager for financial systems in the information-technology group when he left.

"I'm not a person who necessarily tends to balance to begin with, and I was just giving up on everything else," he said. "I mean, all the other things in my life -- keeping track of family, keeping in shape.

"Even playing ultimate Frisbee, which is a big love of ours and how we met," he said, looking at Ms. Gordon and breaking into a laugh. "I mean, all those things just didn't matter."

And so he left, but he quickly added that he learned a lot at the company that he hopes to apply to his philanthropy.

"I'm absolutely convinced I can do anything that other people think is impossible, because we did it regularly at Amazon," he said. "We did the impossible on a regular basis, and that's a great experience to live through. And that's simply the attitude I want to apply to what we're trying to do now."

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