Paul Allen - Philanthropy

Philanthropy

Paul Allen has made contributions to organizations related to health and human services, and toward the advancement of science and technology. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation was established in 1986 to administer most of his contributions. Through the Foundation, Allen awards approximately $30 million in grants annually. Roughly 60% of the Foundation's money goes to non-profit organizations in Seattle and the state of Washington, and 12% to Portland, Oregon. The remaining 28% is distributed to other cities within the Pacific Northwest and internationally. Since 1990, The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation has awarded $428 million to non-profit organizations, as of 2010. That includes charitable projects known as "venture philanthropy". The most famous of these projects are the Experience Music Project, Seattle Cinerama Theatre, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, the Flying Heritage Collection (airworthy vintage military aircraft) and the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). The ATA is a partnership between the University of California, Berkeley and the SETI Institute. Allen has a flower fly named after him for his contributions to Dipterology, called Paul Allen's flower fly. Allen has also funded the purchase of many Jimi Hendrix artifacts, including the guitar Hendrix played at Woodstock, and ensured their public display in the Experience Music Project exhibits.

In December 2010, it was announced that Allen had pledged $26 million to his alma mater, Washington State University, for its School for Global Animal Health. The gift will be the largest received by the university. In the late 1980s, Allen donated US$18 million to build a new library at the University of Washington, named after his father, Kenneth S. Allen. US$5 million was donated in 2003 to establish the Faye G. Allen Center for Visual Arts, named after his mother. Allen was also the top private contributor, with US$14 million in donations, and namesake, of the "Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering", which was designed by LMN Architects of Seattle and completed in 2003. Throughout the years, Allen has contributed millions of US$ to the University of Washington Medical School. The foundation awarded US$3.2 million for prostatitis research in 1997, followed by an additional $1.0 million grant in 2002. More recently, the foundation contributed $5.0 million for an early cancer-detection project at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

Along with his sister Jo Lynn, Allen pledged $100 million in 2003 to found the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a nonprofit corporation (501(c) (3)) and medical research organization. Utilizing the mouse model system (given its great similarity to human DNA), 20,000 genes in the adult mouse brain were mapped to a cellular level for the Allen Brain Atlas. The data generated from this effort is contained in the free and publicly available Allen Brain Atlas application.

On July 16, 2008, Allen launched a $41 million online "Allen Spinal Cord Atlas" mouse gene map. Allan Jones, chief scientific officer, said: "The Allen Spinal Cord Atlas offers profound potential for researchers to unlock the mysteries of the spinal cord and how it is altered during disease or injury." The spinal cord atlas is set up like the Allen Institute's earlier atlas of the mouse brain. The Map could reveal new treatments for human neurological disorders. The map points researchers toward places where genes are active

On November 19, 2008, Allen appeared at the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Hall of Fame to present the second annual Founder's Award for musical achievement. The award was presented to Robbie Robertson, a founding member of the seminal 1960s band The Band and a noted composer of film scores. Allen founded the museum in 2000. The award was presented as part of a gala benefit for EMP. The finale was a four-song set with all the evening's musicians on stage, including Allen and Robertson on guitar.

Paul Allen is also a founding member of The International SeaKeepers Society and hosts its proprietary SeaKeeper 1000TM oceanographic and atmospheric monitoring system on all three of his megayachts.

On November 15, 2009, Jody Allen, Paul Allen's sister and the CEO of Vulcan made public that Paul had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a form of cancer in the lymph system. Since October 2010, he has been free of cancer.

On May 24, 2010, Allen launched the Allen Human Brain Atlas, a publicly available online atlas charting genes at work throughout the human brain. The data provided represent the most extensive and detailed body of information about gene activity in the human brain to date, documenting which genes are expressed, or "turned on" where.

A report in February, 2012, named Allen as the most charitable living American in 2011. Allen's donations, totaling $372.6 million, were beat out by only two others, both of them are deceased.

In March 2012 he continued the funding of the Allen Institute for Brain Science with a contribution of $300 million to look at how we see.