Linda Moore, left, was recognized by Foundation President Maria E. Henderson for her seven and a half years of service to the Foundation at the Foundation’s board meeting in December.

Linda Moore, program associate in the grants department of The Florida Bar Foundation, retired in December after more than seven years of service.

One of Moore’s major contributions to the Foundation and to the legal aid delivery system in Florida was her work on the Foundation’s Staff Attorney Salary Supplementation Grant Program, which has helped legal aid programs throughout Florida retain staff attorneys. The program was established after a 2007 study commissioned by the Foundation found that “financial pressure due to low salary” was the number one reason legal aid attorneys left their jobs. At that time, the median starting salary for a licensed attorney in a Florida legal aid program was $38,500.

In 2012, the Foundation awarded salary supplementation grants totaling $4,219,710 to 30 legal aid programs to help them meet minimum salary criteria set under the grant program.

“Linda played a singular role in developing the Staff Attorney Salary Supplementation Grant Program, and in the operation of that important program,” said Paul Doyle, director of the Foundation’s Legal Assistance for the Poor/Law Student Assistance Grant Program. “She also played a significant role in our peer evaluations of grantees, and a strong supportive role in all of our grant programs.”

Moore came to the Foundation from the Polk County Legal Aid Society in Lakeland, which is now Heart of Florida Legal Aid.

“Linda brought in a great background from her experience as a staff attorney and executive director in legal services in Florida,” Doyle said. “She was driven by a desire to help poor people in any way she could, and also by a keen sense of what was right and wrong, and an expertise she had developed based on insight and hard work.”