Public Colleges, Private Gifts
Even state-operated colleges now depend on private gifts. Indeed, public institutions like the University of Virginia and University of California, Berkeley now receive more money in a given year from Read more…
Refine Search Results
Search Results for:
Doing Good As a Path to Belonging (Elkhart)
David Gundlach founded a company that provided insurance directly to consumers, by phone and online, way back in 1997 when that was rare. The company thrived, and he sold it Read more…
Grassroots Giving By a Former Slave
Biddy Mason was a slave brought into California by her owner in 1851. California had just become a state, and a free one. That meant anyone in its territory held Read more…
An Honors College to Honor the Home State (Kentucky)
Tom Lewis got his graduate degree at UNC Chapel Hill. He lived nearly all his adult life—and made his fortune as a homebuilder—in Arizona. But in 2015 he donated $23 Read more…
Hunters Preserving Wildlife
Throughout U.S. history, many of our most important wildlife-restoration and conservation actions have been led by Americans who love to hunt animals. The Boone & Crockett Club is the oldest Read more…
Reproducibility Project
By 2017, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation had already donated more than $80 million to fix a problem the rest of the world was just becoming aware of: a Read more…
Celebrating Black Achievement
Starting with $1,000, William Harmon built an immense real-estate development business active in dozens of cities across the U.S. After he died in 1928, journalists discovered that he was “Jedediah Read more…
Linda Hall Library
Herbert Hall grew up in Maine, went into business, and eventually built in Kansas City, Missouri, the largest grain-exporting company in the U.S. He and his wife Linda Hall had Read more…
Schultz Family Foundation
In 2011, Howard Schultz (who turned a little Seattle coffee house called Starbucks into a business behemoth) visited West Point to talk to cadets. He came away struck by the Read more…
Donors Bring Fighters to Top Colleges
Bill Ahmanson has a long history of supporting high-quality colleges, particularly in his home region of southern California. But he noticed that young men and women with military experience were Read more…
Funding Resettlement of the Religiously Persecuted
The original impetus for creating the colony of Georgia was philanthropic. Founder James Oglethorpe was horrified by suffering of men thrown into prisons in England for debts, and proposed to Read more…
Jack Kent Cooke Foundation
Jack Kent Cooke dropped out of high school during the Depression to help support his family, and went on to great success as an entrepreneur and sports-team owner. His will Read more…
Bringing Literacy to Former Slaves
Until the end of the Civil War it was against the law in Southern states to teach even the alphabet to any African American. Thus only about 5 percent of Read more…
Polin Museum
There are facilities across the U.S. and the globe that remember the World War II genocide against Jews. But great museums celebrating the rich history and contemporary vigor of Jewish Read more…
Chapman University
Dale Fowler graduated from Chapman University, located in Orange County, in 1958 with a degree in economics, then became a successful real-estate developer in southern California. In 2017 he and Read more…
O’Neill Hall
Joseph O’Neill is a Notre Dame graduate who went on to serve his alma mater on many boards. His sister Helen and brother-in-law Charles Schwab honored that service in 2017 Read more…
Boston Museum of Science
“People often remember the first teacher to have a profound impact on their lives. For me, that teacher was the Boston Museum of Science,” states philanthropist Michael Bloomberg. “I went Read more…
Breakthrough Schools
In 2016 there were 233 public schools in Washington, D.C. Late that year, a local foundation announced that it wanted to fund the creation of 25 “new or radically designed” Read more…
Robert Frederick Smith School
In one of the largest education gifts ever from an African-American philanthropist, tech investor Robert F. Smith offered Cornell University $50 million in 2016. That sum will support the university’s Read more…
Scalia School of Law
Two major donations—a $20 million anonymous gift, and a $10 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation—raised ambitions at a Washington, D.C.-area law school that has a tradition of cross-training Read more…