The Gorilla Foundation is a non-profit organization founded in 1976 by Francine Patterson and Ronald Cohn[1][2] with Barbara F. Hiller.[3]
It was created in order to purchase a female western lowland gorilla named Koko from the San Francisco Zoo. Patterson had been attempting to teach Koko American Sign Language since 1972, under custody of the zoo. In 1974, Patterson moved the project from a trailer at the zoo to a new compound at Stanford University, yet there was a possibility that Koko would need to be returned to the zoo, so Patterson raised money to buy and keep her. After the purchase, the foundation continued to support Patterson's research as she worked with Koko, in order to research language acquisition by non-human animals.
Besides Koko, the foundation also kept two male gorillas: Michael from 1976 until his death in 2000, and Ndume from 1991 until his return to the Cincinnati Zoo in 2019. Koko died in 2018, and after her death followed by the transfer of Ndume, the foundation no longer had any gorillas on which to conduct research.