SiliconBeat

On Friday, ground will be broken on the Southwest Hall Lawn of the University of the Pacific’s Stockton campus to kick-off construction of the John T. Chambers Technology Center (artist rendering of the project pictured), a $12 million dollar facility that will serve as the new home to the university’s school of engineering and computer science.

The 24,000-square-foot center, which is to include Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, I wrote a column suggesting that Larry Ellison reach into his pocket and donate $600,000 to help the Portola Valley schools. After all, while he was well within his right to appeal the valuation on his mega-estate, his victory knocked $300,000 off the school’s annual budget. Certainly the highest paid CEO in the U.S. could help out for a couple of years, right?

There were several folks who commented online who seemed in agreement with me. But the outpouring of e-mails I got were running well in favor of Uncle Larry.

A sampling: Read the rest of this entry »

Jen-Hsun Huang, the founder and chief executive officer of graphics chip-maker Nvidia, will donate $30 million to help build a “modern and sustainable destination for education and research” at Stanford’s school of engineering, according to a Stanford press release.

To be called the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center, the 130,000-square-foot building is already under construction and expected to be completed Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, I interviewed Mari Kuraishi, one of the founders of the GlobalGiving Fund. She and Dennis Whittle, chairman and CEO, left their jobs at the World Bank back in 2000. The idea was to create an online marketplace to connect donors with philanthropic projects around the world. The fund continues to grow, but not necessarily in the way originally planned. Kurishi and Whittle have had to make adjustments and do some rethinking along the way. I’ve uploaded a podcast of our conversation, but I wanted to just share a few highlights:

• The pair wanted to harness the power of the Internet to draw in a wider range of donors than typically give to charitable causes. In a sense, they were trying to take advantage of the dynamic that Barack Obama has tapped into with his presidential campaign: Far more donors giving smaller amounts can still be a powerful force for raising large sums of money.
• The GlobalGiving concept originally started with a completely open platform. Anyone could post any project and ask for funding. But that turned out to be too chaotic and confusing to donors.
• So they restructured the format so that they only post projects that they have vetted or have been recommended by certain, trusted partners. The idea was to build a greater level of trust and confidence to attract donors.
• GlobalGiving has now raised more than $8 million in donations since 2001, with much of that coming in the last couple of years after the model was revamped. That money has come from 12,500 donors and has gone to 1,016 projects

Novellus Systems, the San Jose maker of semiconductor-manufacturing equipment, entered into a sponsorship agreement with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco that will put its name on the art center’s 750-seat theater, which will now be known as Novellus Theater, according to a press release put out by the company Monday. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Brooks, a Pennsylvania businessman who serves as a director on the board of Decision Education Foundation, won the 2008 World Championship of Poker’s seven-card stud, held last week in Las Vegas. “But he won’t be takinig his $415,856 purse home with him,” says the press release put out today by the Palo Alto non-profit, which says he will be donating the money to it instead. Presumably, the above photo from the DEF Web site shows examples of folks who have benefited from the foundation’s efforts. Read the rest of this entry »

Although we spend most of our efforts needling Silicon Valley companies when we uncover bits of corporate shortcomings, we also have a soft spot in our hearts when it comes to the efforts by local companies to give back to the communities in which they live. Read the rest of this entry »