Primary Funding Region

Jack Murdock’s goal in making provision for his legacy was to elevate and celebrate the people, labors, learning, energy, creativity, and beauty of the five-state region he so loved.

Washington was Jack’s home, where he lived and established a Piper aircraft distributorship--the scope of which helped define our five-state region. In Oregon, Jack began his creative work at Tektronix, a primary source of the personal fortune which seeded his endowment. Alaska took delivery of a large fraction of his Piper aircraft sales, as did people in the vast wide open spaces of Montana and Idaho.

By the close of 1975, the three Trustees appointed in his will to establish Trust policies drew a line around this primary geographic region and made the initial 14 grants, for a little over $4 million, to educational and non-profit organizations of the Pacific Northwest. That geographic focus continues to the present.