Thirty-five years ago Gordon Moore made an observation about computer microchips. Each new chip seemed to double the capacity of its predecessor, and a new generation of chips was rolling out every 18 months. He reasoned that computing power would continue to rise exponentially, at a fairly predictable rate. His observation proved so uncannily accurate that it has been canonized as "Moore's Law."

Now Gordon Moore, who went on to co-found Intel Corp., is thinking philanthropy.

He and his wife are putting together a multibillion dollar gift to launch the Gordon E. and Betty I. Moore Foundation, to be announced in early November. Lewis W. Coleman, chairman of Bank of America Corp.'s investment banking arm, Banc of America Securities, and a board member of Conservation International along with Gordon Moore, agreed to take the job of foundation president at year's end. The foundation opens for business in the beginning of January 2001.

While the Moore foundation won't be the largest in the nation on that day, it may be among the top ten. If it ramps up into the $10-12 billion range as expected within a few years, it will move very close to the top of that list.

The grantmaking focus will be on improving higher education, enhancing scientific research and preserving biodiversity. "The Moores want to fund at a level that will make a big impact. They want to take a wholesale approach to these issues," says Nancy Cole, a consultant who is helping launch the foundation. Right now she's looking for office space--the foundation will be headquartered in San Francisco--and hiring key staff. One of the first hires will be a Web site designer, so the foundation can get its information out on-line.

While they are clearly thinking big about how philanthropy can address some global issues, at the same time, says Cole, the Moores are wary of setting up a big bureaucracy. They plan to give away about $50 million the first year and grow after that.

Speaking of growing, I'm wondering if there might be some sort of Moore's Law that explains the exponential growth in philanthropy, too.

It took 17 years for the number of grantmaking foundations to just about double--from 22,088 in 1980 to 44,146 in 1997. Can you imagine 88,000 foundations in another 17 years? Indeed, the pace is quickening. A Foundation Center report out this year says "the current annual growth rate of foundations is roughly double the growth rate of the early 1990s." Also notable: during the same time it took to double the number of foundations, both the assets held by those foundations and the dollar amount of the grants they gave away multiplied not by two but by ten, and then some.

Along with more and more foundations, I'm also seeing more and more ways to give. Surely someone has already phrased a law about the siren call of the newest new thing. For example, if I had a Jody's Law of Editing, it would be: Readers Want Something New. With that in mind, FN&C is happy to bring you something new, too.

In a regular feature called Way to Give we'll be looking at the large and small ways that philanthropy is being reinvented. It wasn't so long ago--1992--that Fidelity Investments' Charitable Gift Fund started offering a new kind of donor-advised option. It attracted so many donors, so quickly, that for the last three years it has been among the top five on the Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of the nation's largest public charities. In this FN&C we look at how the Giving Back Fund adds its own twists to the community foundation model, such as making deals with dot-coms that could channel bundles of money to charitable causes.

Meanwhile, foundations are being used in legal settlements to right past wrongs. A high-tech company now offers its employees the services of an in-house philanthropy counselor. And Newsweek notes that family foundations are the new "must-have."

I look forward to looking at all of these new developments in philanthropy in future issues--and more.