Rodger McFarlane has never been the shy retiring type. At six feet six inches tall, sporting a shaved head and jug-ears, he'd stick out in any crowd. Then there is his speech; the manic pacing, aggressive "candor" of a New Yorker, overlaying the honeyed drawl and metaphors of his native Alabama. And the company he has kept – buddies with Larry Kramer, a founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis and ACT UP, and executive director of Broadway Cares – he's held his own among some colossal egos.

So it was a bit of a surprise two years ago when he decamped for what any dedicated Manhattanite would consider the sticks, in this case Denver, to become executive director of the Gill Foundation, the largest single funder of gay and lesbian activities in the country.

The foundation is the creation of Tim Gill, a Colorado native who made a fortune in computer software – he founded Quark Inc. in 1981. The battle over Colorado's 1992 antigay Amendment Two, ultimately struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark gay rights case Romer v. Evans, was the catalyst that turned Gill into a social activist. Since then he has written an estimated $100 million in checks supporting LGBT causes through the foundation and direct political contributions.

According to the foundation's IRS Form 990 for 2004, the latest filing available, it had assets of more than $170 million, which accounts for about half of its endowment. According to its Web site (www.gillfoundation.org), the foundation has made 3,065 grants since 1994, with the average amount being $16,000. Grants range from $2,500 to over $100,000.

"What drew me here was Tim Gill's bankroll. Simple, simple, simple," McFarlane said in a February interview in his spartan office at the foundation. "I had always known, from day one, that you make very different decisions when you are talking about what can I afford to do as opposed to what needs to be done and how much does that cost. I was going to come out here and show them what to do with that money."

He says the foundation always has been supporting worthy activities, but it often was reactive and spread so thin that it had little lasting impact. "Tim was not entirely satisfied with the return on investment."

McFarlane spent a lot of time that first year leading the foundation, friends, and allies through a process to identify the problems and define what success would look like.

"Our snapshot of the movement was this: We don't have a common vision and coherent plan between organizations and funders, they're all over the place. Grassroots participation, the ability to swing an election, or campaign contributions, until recently, was not there. We don't have the capacity to do legislative work in the states, those organizations are fragile as shit and convulsive, they run from cycle to cycle. We expect too much from one national organization. And we don't know how to talk to the swing vote."

He said the Gill Foundation "defined what equality looked like epidemiologically, what it looked like economically, those sorts of things. Endpoints. And then we backed in, like a classic business plan and what do you need to achieve each of those things."

McFarlane took a lesson from the far right and the sea tide of change it has wrought in the country over the last several decades, which has come about in large measure because of the organizations that it has funded. He says the right gives general operating grants, on a large scale, and over a sustained period of time. The organizations that it supports are not bogged down with detailed program guidelines for relatively small sums of money.

The result has been a significant reorganization of the foundation's priorities, as well as the creation last August of the companion 501 (c)4 entity, the Gill Action Fund [see the second of this two-part series of articles]. The focus is on gaining recognition and protection for LGBT relationships and ultimately marriage, first at the state level and then the national level; along with employment protection.

"The foundation simply does not have enough money to do all," declared McFarlane, "so a big piece of our work is influencing other donors, philanthropically and lately politically, on getting together and getting on the same page, and then putting the real bucks on the table."

"Let's get a strategy, let's have an ongoing evaluation – quantifiably, what have we achieved, what are the goals, where are the gaps – and then, stick to that over time. And also, quit telling them what to do."

"You cannot ask people to give you a blank check and not come home with anything. Or you win the court case and got killed three months later [at the polls] and it all unravels. That's not good enough, not for people who made money like my boss, and legitimately want to see a return on their investment. They're not children, they're entrepreneurs, they know you have to fail repeatedly to find success," but you have to show progress.

"I don't mean you just hand somebody a check and they are magically good," but, McFarlane said, the foundation is very hands off with those who have a track record of accomplishment, established goals, a solid plan on how to achieve them, and benchmarks by which to evaluate progress along the way.

"You don't tell Matt Coles [director of the ACLU Lesbian and Gay Rights Project] what we are funding this quarter, you give some money and say, go be Matt. Look what Evan [Wolfson at Freedom to Marry] has done since he didn't have to worry about raising money day to day, he's created a revolution."

"It really is the matter of being able to write a check for $2 million instead of saying, I've got $150,000, what can we do? It's totally different."

Saying no

Another key for McFarlane is "saying no decisively. Because I'm not raising money I really can look at a state organization and say, you're not in shape to take on this fight. We will help you build, but I'm not supporting you politically in this cycle. You've got to lower your profile and get your shit together and build an organization. You can't say that at HRC [Human Rights Campaign] or NGLTF [National Gay and Lesbian Task Force] where you are raising money from literally thousands and thousands of people in 50 different states."

About a quarter of the foundation's money is spent through the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, which supports mainstream civic, cultural, and social services organizations. Recipients must have an employment nondiscrimination policy in place and "give us equal billing with Wells Fargo; you've got to put gay and lesbian in front of everybody. Tim's purpose is to demonstrate the contribution of lesbians and gay men to the state of Colorado," said McFarlane.

The impact of being one of the larger philanthropies in the state has been huge, both in terms of expanding employment protection and gaining social and political visibility.

Protection in the private sector workplace has been growing nationally thanks to the foundation's support of program activities at HRC. "Very quietly, over the last two years we have knocked off all but one of the Fortune 100 companies, for employment nondiscrimination and domestic partner benefits. Then we cycled this year into the 100 largest employers and we're batting them out of the park," McFarlane said.

"It doesn't work if you are public about it; you can't put them on the defensive, you have to work through their workers and their human resources and senior people and get them to buy into it, because it is good business, and they know that."

McFarlane said the relocation to Denver has helped him to realize just how isolated he was in Manhattan. "I was incapable of persuading anybody outside of New York or LA of anything. Then I began to realize that the real power is here, it is state by state; that's who gets to Congress."

Next week's article looks at the politics of achieving that goal, with McFarlane and Ted Trimpa of the Gill Action Fund.