Larry Page and Lucinda Southworth
/SOURCE OF WEALTH: Google
FUNDING AREAS: Technological Advancement, Clean Energy, Health, Education
OVERVIEW: Larry Page sits on the boards of several nonprofits. Larry Page and his wife Lucinda Southworth conduct grantmaking through the Carl Victor Page Memorial Fund, but most of its grantmaking goes through donor-advised funds such as the Vanguard Charitable Endowment, making it virtually impossible to see where Page's money is actually going. One recent exception to this opaqueness is Southworth’s Oceankind, an LLC which works to preserve and restore ocean ecosystems worldwide.
BACKGROUND: Originally from Michigan, Larry Page did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan before attending Stanford for his graduate degrees. After Stanford, Page co-founded Google with Sergey Brin.
Lucinda Southworth is a research geneticist who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Oxford, before earning her PhD in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford University. The couple married in 2007.
ISSUES:
TECHNOLOGY: Through Google.org, his company's philanthropic arm, Page attempts to discover ways to use science and modern technology to solve the most persistent societal problems, focusing particularly on the development of environmentally sustainable energy. He has demonstrated a commitment to this concept through his investment in companies such as Tesla Motors, which is developing long-range battery-powered vehicles, and through investments made as part of his stewardship of Google.org. These investments include $130 million to a company that makes solar panels and $10 million to a company developing a kite system that will tap into jet streams for power, as well as a demonstration project attempting to generate electrical power using geothermal energy.
Outside of his Google.org endeavors, Page is a board member of the XPrize Foundation, which organizes large-scale competitions in five major categories: education, global development, energy and environment, life sciences, and exploration. The purpose of the competitions is to stimulate investment in research and development designed to bring about change that hopefully will benefit humanity.
OCEANS: Southworth founded and continues to direct Oceankind, an LLC focused on improving the health of the marine environment. Established in 2018, its grantmaking supports ocean health broadly and has dispersed over $121 million to diverse protection and restoration projects across the globe. Oceankind has given $4 million to Blue Ventures, almost $6 million to Natural Resources Defense Council, and at least $6.4 million to Ocean Conservancy. It has also given over $7 million to Global Fishing Watch and $8.6 million to The Nature Conservancy for conservation of habitat and fisheries, and for pollution mitigation and cleanup. ClimateWorks has also received over $18 million in program support for decarbonizing shipping and the marine economy, and advancing responsible offshore wind.
HEALTH: Page and Southworth joined the growing number of funders donating to combat Ebola, pledging $15 million from his Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation, and another $10 million from Google. Other grantees have included the American Cancer Society and Shoo the Flu.
EDUCATION: The couple have supported places like Oakland Unified School District and University of California, where a grant funded a study to evaluate school-based vaccine delivery.
LOOKING FORWARD: Perhaps the Page and Southworth family's giving through their Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation will be less opaque in the coming years, and, indeed, Oceankind’s increased transparency may signal a move toward a more visible and robust presence throughout all their funding vehicles. However, for now, nearly every penny from the foundation goes to a donor-advised fund at the National Philanthropic Trust, a philanthropic banking account that has no transparency or annual payout requirements.
CONTACT:
Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation
2200 Geng Rd., Ste. 100
Palo Alto, CA 94303
(650) 210-5000
