Most philanthropists pick a cause to give money to. In the case of Gordon Gund, he built one. The venture capitalist last month awarded $50-million to Foundation Fighting Blindness, the nonprofit he founded in 1971.
The gift is part of a $150-million campaign to raise money for research on conditions that cause people to experience severe vision loss or go blind. Mr. Gund’s pledge will match all donations made to the organization over the next two years.
The drive has raised $40-million since it began last year, and Mr. Gund’s pledge has attracted another $5-million in just over a week. Even before last month’s $50-million pledge, Mr. Gund and his wife had provided $86-million and the George Gund Foundation, the philanthropy created by his father, gave $43-million. Altogether, the group has raised $550-million.
More than 10 million Americans suffer from retinitis pigmentosa, macular degeneration, and other eye diseases. The foundation focuses mainly on “orphan diseases,” conditions that affect fewer than 200,000 people and usually receive little financial support for research.
Up From ‘Rock Bottom’
Mr. Gund, 74, hopes the work that the campaign supports will help many people save their eyesight. Soon after he turned 31, he lost his own eyesight to a genetic eye disease that causes serious vision loss and can lead to blindness. Back then, Mr. Gund says, no organization supported research on eye diseases.
“We had to start from scratch because there really wasn’t anything,” he says. “There was nobody to give money to.”
Beginning in his mid-20s, Mr. Gund realized his eyesight was steadily deteriorating. During a stint of flying planes in the Navy, he noticed his peripheral vision deteriorating and waged a desperate search for a cure for his condition, retinitis pigmentosa. He traveled to Odessa, Ukraine, for an experimental treatment. After enduring three weeks of injections of animal biostimulants, Mr. Gund lost what remained of his sight.
He was despondent, he says, and hit “rock bottom.” His wife had just given birth to their second son, and he knew he would never see the child’s face.
Mr. Gund eventually decided to focus on what he could still do. He became a successful financier and bought several professional sports franchises, including the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Mr. Gund is also an avid skier and sculptor. But his proudest accomplishment, he says, has been creating Foundation Fighting Blindness.
“There was very little known about these diseases and almost no research going on,” he says. “That was the time we landed a man on the moon and we had all kinds of breakthroughs in other ways.”
Broad Expansion
In 1974, Mr. Gund, along with people from other families affected by retinal diseases, raised money to create the Berman-Gund Laboratory for the Study of Retinal Degenerations. It was the first facility in the United States to conduct multidisciplinary research into such eye conditions.
Foundation Fighting Blindness has created 15 similar laboratories around the world, one by one. Operating on annual revenue of $30-million to $40-million, the organization has awarded 129 grants to 190 researchers at 71 institutions.
The group has 50 chapters and more than 130,000 active donors. One of the group’s most popular fundraising events is Dining in the Dark, at which donors eat while wearing blindfolds and are waited on by blind or visually impaired people.
Until the mid-1980s the organization was run by volunteers, and some of the group’s leaders wanted the organization to focus on providing social services to the blind. But those advocates never persuaded others to abandon research.
“There were times when it was pretty difficult to keep going,” Mr. Gund says. “We weren’t generating results fast enough for everybody.”
Today, results are starting to happen. The Johns Hopkins University used foundation money to develop an artificial retina that has been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration. The technology can help blind people see areas of light and dark.
And a clinical trial the organization supported at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has restored partial sight to people with Leber congenital amaurosis, a form of retinitis pigmentosa that can cause blindness or severe vision loss at birth. A 9-year-old boy who was almost completely blind started riding a bike and reading large print 13 months after he got gene-therapy treatment
Katherine High, director of the hospital’s Center for Cellular and Molecular Therapeutics, says the support of Mr. Gund and his organization was critical. “Without his funding at that crucial time, we would not have been able to move toward a new treatment for this serious blinding disease.”
Mr. Gund says his organization will not stop until cures are discovered. “We’re in business to go out of business.”
Other Nonprofit Causes That Attract Gordon Gund’s Support
Where he has given at least $1-million: Autism Speaks, Barnes Foundation, Cleveland Clinic, Earthjustice, Groton School, Harvard University, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Mayo Clinic, Studio in a School, University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro, University of Vermont, and Yale School of Public Health
Nonprofit boards he serves on: Athletes for Hope, Grounds for Sculpture
