Laurence Spitters
/SOURCE OF WEALTH: Memorex
FUNDING AREAS: Higher education, health, arts and culture, humanitarian relief
OVERVIEW: Laurence Spitters and family do their grantmaking through the LS Foundation, which made a little under $500,000 in grants in a recent year. The family, via their foundation, supports higher education, prioritizing schools that family members have attended. Other interests include health, arts and culture and humanitarian relief. The Bay Area is an important region of grantmaking.
BACKGROUND: Laurence Spitters has a B.A. from Western Michigan University, a J.D. from University of Michigan Law School, and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Spitters began his career as an investment banker with Blyth & Co., and later joined the Ampex Corporation in Redwood City. In the early 1960s, Spitters co-founded the Memorex Corporation in Santa Clara, California. Memorex produced the first read-write floppy disk drive. Spitters established his foundation in 1968.
ISSUES:
HIGHER EDUCATION: Spitters supports his alma maters the University of Michigan Law School, Harvard University and Western Michigan University. Other recent grantees include Kalamazoo College, the University of California at Davis, the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Clara University, which awarded Spitters with an honorary degree.
INTERNATIONAL RELIEF: Humanitarian aid is a smaller area of giving, but recent grants have gone to organizations including Mercy Corps, the Seed Program International, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam America and Save the Children.
PUBLIC HEALTH: The LS Foundation does not name specific priorities for its public health giving, but recent tax filings suggest broad interest in this area. Grants have gone to the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, the UCSF Department of Ophthalmology, the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, Breast Cancer Connections and Pathways Home Health and Hospice in Sunnyvale, California.
ARTS & CULTURE: The Spitters family supports Bay Area arts and cultural institutions including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, the American Conservatory Theatre, the San Francisco Ballet, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, San Francisco Symphony, and Computer History Museum. In New York City, the foundation has given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.
OTHER: The LS Foundation’s grantmaking has supported the Sierra Club and Habitat for Humanity.
LOOKING FORWARD: Spitters keeps a rather low profile. His son, also on the books of the foundation, may be an important force in the coming years.
CONTACT:
The LS Foundation accepts applications at:
L L Spitters, President
LS Foundation
555 Byron Street
Palo Alto, CA 94301
(650) 324-1775
