EDITOR'S PAGE

Chip-based philanthropy

Until the mid-1990s, the general public perceived many of the nouveaux riches populating Silicon Valley and other tech centers as narcissistic tightwads. Techno-kahuna Bill Gates and his wife Melinda helped change that perception with the establishment of their foundation, endowed with a whopping $21 billion. The recent creation of the $5 billion Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation, with its focus on "the higher end of education," adds another major player to the charitable mix. Although philanthropy, corporate or individual, is not one of MICRO's regular beats, in the spirit of the holiday season, I'd like to talk about some activities within the semiconductor manufacturing sector that not only reveal good corporate citizenship but lay the groundwork for the industry's future prosperity.

A recent breakfast meeting at SEMI's San Jose headquarters brought together one of the Semicon West Gala's beneficiaries, Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education (IISME), with member company representatives interested in participating in the nonprofit's activities. IISME received $100,000 as its part of the Gala cut, which it will use to increase the number of fellowships it offers to high school teachers for summer internships with local high-tech companies. In an industry struggling to maintain an adequate workforce, this kind of grassroots effort helps create tomorrow's cadre of techies.

"These teachers get their self-confidence raised, their knowledge of the industry and applications raised, and they increase their ability to get the young kids more interested in not just hitting the keyboards on their computers but getting them interested in what's inside," explains Stan Myers, SEMI's president. One of the keys to "filling the pipeline," according to Myers, is to "increase the interest, the desire, the drive of young students and high school teachers to move into the science, math, and technology areas." He believes IISME has had a "very successful program. We think we can only get out of it more good things for our members, so we'll do the marketing for them and tell their story." Myers says SEMI is also looking at possibly setting up a SEMI foundation and partnering with other groups working on similar projects. "We're not looking for one-time funding, but something that sustains over the years."

Charitech, a community outreach effort developed by Applied Materials, seeks to strengthen the connection between new-economy companies and nonprofits. "We're trying to help the organizations now serving society to improve the way they do things, and also help the new captains of industry find a role that they can play so they can stand up and be counted," asserts Tom Hayes, Applied's global corporate affairs director and founder of Charitech. "Clearly, there are things that industry has done that should be shared with community organizations: the radical reinventions of the business models and just the thinking through of the use of technology that we all did in the last five years, which was very painful and sometimes costly, but is starting to pay dividends. We can certainly save the cycle time and the pain for the nonprofit world so it can benefit and improve the way it delivers services or serves its constituencies."

Charitech's recent national tour focused on fostering this business-nonprofit continuum in areas such as Austin, TX; Richmond, VA; and Portland, OR, where a critical mass of tech industries exists or is emerging but where there is also a disconnect between these new "wealth creators" and their community. Hayes says Charitech plans to take its road show, with its "Apps Labs" and "Rule Breakers" interactive sessions, to other locations in 2001, with Phoenix, Massachusetts, and Minneapolis as possible sites.

Charity may still begin at home in many cases, but more and more in today's Internet-enhanced, digitalized society, much of it really emanates from the workplace, and the chip fabs, equipment houses, and materials factories of the semiconductor world are no exception.

(For more information about the organizations mentioned here, check their Web sites: www.iisme.org, www.semi.org, and www.charitech.org.)

Tom Cheyney
Editor

tom.cheyney@cancom.com

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