Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the Entrepreneurs Foundation — two groups that aim to encourage philanthropy among companies and the region’s wealthy — announced Thursday they are merging.
EF was founded by venture capitalist Gib Myers in 1998 to encourage startups to commit $100,000 each in pre-IPO stock to the foundation. In 2003, as the number of initial public offerings dried up after the dot-com bubble burst, the San Jose-based organization shifted its model to be something of an outsourced HR department by providing philanthropic consulting to companies, including helping them create employee volunteer opportunities and donating products to nonprofits. In addition to San Jose, the organization has six other offices around the country and one in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has assets of $2.2 billion and is based in Mountain View, assists companies in making donations and vetting nonprofits. The foundation itself is a product of a 2006 merger between Community Foundation Silicon Valley and the Peninsula Community Foundation.
Community Foundation Silicon Valley helped give birth to EF, said Emmett Carson, president of the community foundation. The merger, which will be completed by the end of the month, will not result in layoffs, he said. After 13 years with the organization, EF Executive Director Diane Solinger is resigning to take a position at Google to manage the company’s social responsibility activities around the world.
“It seemed to be the perfect marriage,” Carson said. “We were the yang to their yin. Together, we make a soup to nuts solution for corporations large and small.”
EF was not struggling to make ends meet, he said.
“EF has been meeting its expenses,” he said. “They were not in any financial jeopardy or difficulty.”
Over the years, EF and Silicon Valley Community Foundation have worked with some of the same companies, including Adobe, Cisco Systems and eBay.
Contact John Boudreau at 408-278-3496; follow him at Twitter.com/svwriter.
