John Gallagher

Detroit Free Press

Former Buffalo Bills owner establish a trust to help Western New York and Southeast Michigan.

Charitable foundation is now accepting applications, including those from the Rochester area.

Imagine you have $1 billion to give away to worthy causes in a limited amount of time. What do you do? That's the dilemma facing the region’s newest charitable foundation.

As of Monday, the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation will begin taking applications to hand out the $1.2 billion left by the late Ralph Wilson, a lifelong metro Detroit resident who, for decades, owned the Buffalo Bills professional football team.

And in a wrinkle unusual for foundations, the mandate Wilson left for his foundation before he died in 2014 was for his friends to give away every penny in 20 years or less.

Wilson directed his money go to the two regions where he devoted his energies — Southeast Michigan and Western New York — and in four areas of his particular interest: children and youth; young adults and working-class families; caregivers who help others in need, and what he called "healthy communities," as defined by economic development and nonprofit productivity and innovation.

Applications will be accepted from Monroe, Genesee, Orleans and Wyoming counties as well as those in the Buffalo area.

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The idea to spend down all the money within 20 years, and put the foundation out of business, came from Wilson's desire to see his close friends make the key decisions based on what they knew of his wishes, rather than let the foundation continue indefinitely.

During a very long career — he died in 2014 at age 95 — Wilson made his fortune in many different fields: insurance, oil and gas, manufacturing, race horses, and as owner of the Buffalo Bills for 54 years.

Wilson selected four of his longtime friends before he died and associates to serve as life trustees of his foundation. Those trustees spent part of 2015 getting organized — hiring as president and CEO David Egner, who long served as the head of the local Hudson Webber Foundation and as director of the New Economy Initiative, a more-than-$100-million effort to spread philanthropic dollars in reinventing southeast Michigan's ailing economy.

"With the last several months focused on planning, hiring, and developing our operating policies and grant guidelines, we're excited to be open for business and accepting applications," Egner said last week.

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Egner said the 10-person foundation staff is looking for ways to have an impact. The trustees already have made about $60 million in grants while still getting organized because, as Egner said, "They kept hearing Ralph in their heads saying, 'Throw the ball. Don’t wait. Do something!' "

“We’re building strategy as we go," Egner said. "Early on, we’ll be doing a lot of pilots and experiments and trying to find things to educate ourselves as well as things that make a difference in the community.”

Football metaphors abound among the foundation staff, so Egner defines their future direction in those terms: "We want to be the linebacker of philanthropy — we want to see the play develop, find the hole, and fill it," he said.

The Wilson Foundation joins the Kresge Foundation, Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Hudson-Webber, Skillman, and many other philanthropic entities that in recent years have poured money into Detroit's revitalization.

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Those foundations dramatically stepped up their game in recent years, evolving from laid-back groups that wrote checks to worthy causes to active participants in seeking solutions to real-life problems.

For now, Egner said, the Wilson Foundation will be partnering with many of these other foundations on projects of mutual interest.

"Those foundations have not only found their mark and what they want to do but they’re acting collaboratively," Egner said. "It leads to greater knowledge but it also leads to a lot of activity that wouldn’t be in place if we were just writing checks.”

As part of its launch, the foundation's website rcwjrf.org is now open for applicants to apply for grants.

“We feel like we’ve been under a rock for nine months" getting organized, Egner said, "and part of this coming-out party is to say, 'We’re here.'"

Gallagher99@Gannett.com