Maddie's Fund, the nation's largest foundation devoted to animal welfare, has received a $93 million gift from PeopleSoft founder Dave Duffield and his wife, Cheryl.

The gift, which builds on an earlier $200 million gift from the Duffields that established the Alameda, California-based foundation in 1999, will be used to support its current funding priorities, as well as new grant opportunities. Among other things, the foundation expects to award more than $9 million to a coalition of eighty animal welfare organizations working to provide an adoption guarantee for New York's healthy shelter dogs and cats within five years and a guarantee for treatable animals within ten years. The foundation also supports spay/neuter programs that augment the efforts of community-wide adoption coalitions.

Maddie's Fund is named after the couple's miniature Schnauzer. When Duffield started PeopleSoft, an enterprise-software company that recently merged with Oracle, the database giant headquartered in Redwood, California, he promised Maddie that "if we ever make some money, we will give it back to you and your kind so you all can be as happy as we are today."