Gap Founder, Altruist Championed Charter Schools

Donald G. Fisher, 81, a founder of the Gap clothing store chain and a power behind the growth of U.S. public charter schools, died of cancer Sept. 27 at his home in San Francisco.

Restless and full of ideas after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1951, Mr. Fisher spent the 1950s and 1960s looking for a business to match his ambitions. He worked for his family's mill and cabinetmaking firm, then converted old hotels into residences for seniors and space for businesses.

His wife, Doris, a Stanford graduate from a prominent San Francisco family whom he married in 1953, became an active partner is his thinking about new enterprises.

Mr. Fisher bought the Capitol Park Hotel in Sacramento in the late 1960s and purchased some Levi's jeans and slacks from a salesman who had rented space in the building. In an interview with The Washington Post in 2007, he recalled that none of the pants fit and that the salesman told him to find a department store that would exchange them. He asked Doris to see what she could find at Macy's in San Francisco. The Levis were on a messy display table, and many sizes were missing.

That inspired the Gap, a company that has grown to more than 3,100 stores with 134,000 employees and nearly $15 billion in global sales.

Mr. Fisher liked the pants. Levi's had no franchises. "So I basically appointed myself as a franchisee and opened a store selling nothing but Levis," Mr. Fisher said. In 1969, he invested $21,000, his wife invested $21,000 and they took $7,000 out of each of their three children's bank accounts.

Both Fishers worked at the store on Ocean Avenue near the San Francisco State campus. They targeted teens and young adults, the 12- to 25-year-old crowd, by selling records and tapes as well as clothes. They were going to call it "Pants and Discs" until Doris came up with the Gap, short for "The Generation Gap."

The Fishers had four requirements for success: a location that would draw young people, enough parking, stock for all sizes and energetic, motivated employees. But they had much to learn. After buying his first big shipment from Levi's, Mr. Fisher found some didn't sell, and Levi's wouldn't take them back. If it's not selling, a Levi's salesman told him, just mark it down. "What's a markdown?" Mr. Fisher said.

His formula, he said in the interview, was "a lot of hard work and mistakes and more mistakes. I always knew I didn't want to open just one store, but I didn't think I would have 3,000."

He prided himself on finding talent. In 1983, he hired merchandizing expert Mickey Drexler, who helped him make the moves that made Gap into a major label. They acquired a small, two-store, mail-order catalogue business called Banana Republic and then created the Old Navy chain, which reached $1 billion in sales in less than four years.

Mr. Fisher stepped down as chief executive in 1995, remaining chairman until 2004. He and his wife had been contemporary art collectors since 1973 and philanthropists since they founded the Gap Foundation in 1977, but they became nationally prominent in both areas in the 1990s and 2000s.

Never using an art dealer, they amassed one of the world's largest collections: 1,100 pieces, including works by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and Chuck Close. In 2007, they offered to build a museum in the historic Presidio to house their collection and give it the city. The arts community applauded, but neighbors and environmentalists protested, and they withdrew the offer this past July.

In 1999, the Fishers hired Scott Hamilton, Massachusetts chief charter school official, to find an educational project they could support. Hamilton introduced them to two young teachers, Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, who had shown achievement gains for impoverished children in Houston and New York City.

With an initial $15 million from the Fishers, they promised to expand their Knowledge Is Power Program throughout the country. When they hesitated to start opening schools right away, Mr. Fisher told them to go ahead and learn from their mistakes.

"Even if it is imperfect, I promise you it will be better this way," he said. The KIPP network now has 82 schools in 19 states and the District. The Fisher contributions to KIPP and the Teach for America teacher recruitment organization total more than $100 million.

Donald George Fisher was born in San Francisco on Sept. 3, 1928. He married the former Doris Feigenbaum in 1953. Besides his wife and three sons, Mr. Fisher is survived by two brothers and 10 grandchildren.