For nearly 50 years, brothers Jeffrey H. Coors and Peter H. Coors have quietly shaped the landscape of American philanthropy. Their story is one of dedication, integrity and a relentless pursuit of the American dream—an inspiring testament to how faith and business can intersect to uplift communities and create lasting change. And now, to recognize their decades of service and impact, Philanthropy Roundtable is proud to announce the Coors brothers are the recipients of the 2024 Simon-DeVos Prize for Philanthropic Leadership.
Since its inception, Jeff and Pete have been at the helm of the Adolph Coors Foundation, an organization that has three major funding priorities. The first is national nonprofit organizations that advance limited government. The second is Colorado-based nonprofits that help youth prosper and encourage economic opportunities for adults. The final is integrative medicine, which combines best practices of eastern and western medicine to reduce health care costs.
“Jeff and Pete Coors have demonstrated a long-standing commitment to the values of free enterprise, personal responsibility, integrity and fostering entrepreneurship,” says Dick DeVos, president of the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation. “Their philanthropic work displays compassion for others and a strong dedication to helping people achieve the American dream. They have built a legacy of generosity, where faith and business intersect to create opportunities and uplift communities.”
Jeff Coors began his extensive career with 25 years at the Adolph Coors Company. There, he held multiple management roles, including board member and president. In 1992, he became co-president of ACX Technologies, a publicly traded NYSE company spun from the Adolph Coors Company and renamed Graphic Packaging Incorporated in 2020. Jeff is actively involved in business, educational and civic organizations, and serves on the boards of the Adolph Coors Foundation, Colorado Christian University, Hillsdale College and Intercessors for America.
Pete Coors is currently a director of Molson Coors Brewing Company. He joined the company in 1971, holding a number of executive and management positions, including chairman and CEO. Pete serves as president and chairman of Adolph Coors Foundation, and as a board member of American Enterprise Institute and Denver Art Museum Foundation. In addition, he’s a member of the Western Stock Show Association Board and chairman of its Honoring the Legacy Capital Campaign.
Pete and Jeff were selected for their generous contributions to education, public policy and faith nonprofit organizations through platforms such as the Adolph Coors Foundation, the PEMA Foundation and donor-advised funds. This Prize honors living philanthropists who have set an example of leadership excellence through charitable giving, and by conveying the values of individual freedom, resourcefulness, faith in God, personal responsibility, scholarship, volunteerism and helping others help themselves.
Growing Up in the Family Business
Pete and Jeff began their professional careers in the brewing business following the Coors family tradition, which spans more than a century and a half and five generations. They are two of Joe and Holly Coors’s five sons, and the great-grandsons of Adolph Coors, who founded the Golden brewery in 1873.
The brothers, who are 18 months apart (Jeff is the oldest), say the value of hard work was an instrumental part of their upbringing.
“We grew up with a small brewery as our playground,” recounts Pete Coors. “We watched father get up every day and go to work. It was a great model.”
Pete and Jeff emulated their father’s work ethic. They both worked summers as pipefitters, electricians and mechanics in the family business.
“We did just about every manual labor job there was in that facility during our college years,” says Jeff, who eventually transitioned to working in research and development for Coors.
Pete worked his way through multiple company departments while Jeff focused on R&D. The company’s CFO approached Jeff to organize financial planning for the company, and he spent a significant amount of time in that role.
While Jeff remained focused on the supply chain, Pete moved into marketing and sales and eventually became the CEO. Pete was heavily involved in the initial public offering for Coors in 1975 and the launch of Coors Light in 1978.
Value-Driven Civics Work
The Coors brothers’ involvement in public affairs and the world of civics began early on. Their father became a regent at the University of Colorado and was quite often in the public arena involved in defending the free enterprise system.
“I think we inherited some of those genes,” says Jeff. “We pretty much fall in the footsteps of our mother and father. They were the example, both in terms of values and what was important to them—preserving the basic fundamental rights of the Constitution. It’s not more complicated than that.”
While Pete was at Cornell, he attended a seminar with prominent economic journalist and author Henry Hazlitt through the Foundation for Economic Education, a defining experience in his education.
“I was in a seminar with Henry Hazlitt,” Pete says. “I think those kinds of things in those years were informative and influential.”
Their father, Joe, helped to found The Heritage Foundation, a flagship organization of the conservative movement. He provided early funding to the organization alongside philanthropists such as Richard Mellon Scaife and the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation. Both brothers worked with their father supporting the foundation’s founding.
“I spent a week in the basement of the Senate office building,” says Jeff. “In those days, it was mimeograph machines and typewriters with multiple carbon copies, trying to produce position papers to take around the Senate offices. That was the beginning of what became The Heritage Foundation.”
Origins of the Coors Foundation
The Adolph Coors Foundation was founded in 1976. It supports organizations that promote the Western values of self-reliance, personal responsibility and integrity. Pete and Jeff believe these values foster an environment where entrepreneurial spirits flourish, helping Coloradans and all Americans reach their full potential.
“My parents could have taken the money and cashed out themselves, paid the taxes and become really, really wealthy—wealthier than they already were. But they chose to put it in the Foundation,” says Jeff.
While their father and uncle, Bill Coors, worked to build the Foundation, the brothers would visit the family residence. This was a formative time for Pete and Jeff. They absorbed Joe and Bill’s knowledge, work ethic and business acumen around the family table, where they often met for lunch.
“A lot rubbed off in just those lunch meetings,” says Jeff.
Pete adds, “They were never our direct bosses during those days, but they were just interested in watching us develop, and that had a big impact on me.”
Over its 48-year history, the Foundation has given both nationally and locally to advance the values of self-reliance, personal responsibility and integrity. Coors has awarded over $100 million in grants to national and state public policy organizations with a focus on limiting government power and promoting free enterprise. Additionally, $208 million has been given to nonprofits in Colorado whose values align with the Coors family.
Pete, Jeff and the Foundation have played central roles in funding Hillsdale College’s Center for Constructive Alternatives. Alongside Tom Roe, Jeff and the Foundation also played an important role growing and nurturing the state policy movement, which would become State Policy Network, and includes Colorado’s Independence Institute.
In 2012, at Jeff’s urging, the Foundation purchased and donated the “Freedom Embassy” to the Institute that serves as a gathering space for freedom-minded groups to use for fundraisers, trainings, strategy sessions, board meetings and much more. As a result, policy coordination among Colorado’s freedom-friendly policy advocates has dramatically increased.
Pete and Jeff are original Adolph Coors Foundation trustees and lifelong stewards of the organization. Forty-eight years later, they’re still serving in that capacity. They have diligently worked to keep the foundation on its intended path, propagating and protecting their father’s values—so like the values the DeVos and Simon families hold so dear.
Individual Philanthropic Efforts
Aside from the family business and the Adolph Coors Foundation, Pete and Jeff have pursued philanthropic endeavors of their own.
Since 2003, the Denver-based PEMA Foundation, created by Pete and Marilyn Coors, has awarded millions to:
- Help families of disadvantaged children obtain a Catholic education (ACE Scholarships, Arrupe Jesuit High School)
- Build character among young men and women (Boy and Girl Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs)
- Help first responders and wounded veterans (Denver Police Foundation, Semper Fi Fund)
- Advance public policies, in Colorado and nationally, which protect and nurture civil society (the American Enterprise Institute, Steamboat Institute)
In addition to PEMA’s giving, Pete gives his time and talent as a trustee to the following nonprofit organizations in Colorado and Washington, D.C.: Denver Art Museum Foundation, National Western Stock Show Association and the American Enterprise Institute.
As for Jeff, he believes so strongly in the concept of donor privacy that he and his wife, Lis, do not have a family foundation and do not share the details of their charitable contributions. As such, neither the public, nor even his family, fully know the breadth of his substantial giving. Jeff has said he gives two ways: through a private donor-advised fund and individually.
Over recent decades, Jeff’s charitable focus has been conservative education, his church, international Christian missions, helping the poor and needy and public policy organizations. In addition to his private giving, Jeff gives his time and talent as a trustee to Colorado Christian University, Hillsdale College and Intercessors for America.
According to Pete, “Our philosophy really became: If you help people learn how to fish, that’s probably a better service than giving them fish every day. So that’s kind of been our early philosophy.”
Passing the Torch to the Next Generation
To Jeff, one of the exciting new advancements at the Coors Foundation has been seeing how entrepreneurial the next generation is with their giving. This includes the work of Carrie Coors Tynan, who is the current chief executive officer at the Coors Foundation.
“We like to create new ways to do things and start up things that maybe are a bit risk-taking,” Jeff says. “And I love to see that. We’re also doing more of what we call venture entrepreneurs.”
“We’re seeing our next generation begin to serve on the board of the Coors Foundation,” Pete adds. “We are getting to the point of starting to step away. I’ve been impressed with the intensity of their interest in preserving donor intent.”
“As we approach our 50th anniversary, we are taking donor intent very seriously,” says Tynan. “We are working to capture and record donor intent for future generations, while ensuring we leave the foundation in the hands of the right people who will honor the intent of the founders. I am intently focused on how we preserve the Coors’ legacy for the next 50 years, even as we celebrate the last 50 years.”
Looking Ahead
As recipients of the 2024 Simon-DeVos Prize, the Coors brothers will receive an award of $200,000, which may be paid toward one or more selected charities of their choice.
Jeff and Pete have elected to give half the prize to the Western Stock Show Association and the other half to Intercessors for America.
“Thoughtful philanthropy has been a way of life for the Coors family for many decades,” says William E. Simon, Jr., co-chair of the William E. Simon Foundation. “Pete and Jeff have carried on the tradition of Coors family philanthropy not only through the Foundation their father and uncle established, of which they were both founding trustees, but also in their personal grantmaking. In both spheres, they have sought to open doors of opportunity by giving individuals the resources they need to succeed, whether through education, job training, medical treatment or responsible public policy that respects America’s founding principles.”
“Our father shared similar philanthropic goals, and greatly admired Pete and Jeff’s father, his friend Joe Coors,” Simon added. “Were Dad alive today, he’d be applauding these two brothers whose unique skills, visions and experiences have combined to achieve so much in their home state of Colorado and well beyond.
“Dad would be very happy—indeed, honored—to know this award will now link the Coors, DeVos and Simon family names in perpetuity.”
The Prize was presented to the Coors brothers on October 1, 2024, at Philanthropy Roundtable’s Annual Meeting in Amelia Island, Florida.
