Baylor U. to Receive $200-Million Bequest for the Study of Aging

A graduate of Baylor University has pledged to leave a bequest with an estimated value of $200-million to the university for the study of aging, Baylor announced on Thursday. When received, it would be the university's largest donation. The gift will finance research in the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Social Work, and other university programs. The university, in Waco, Tex., said the interdisciplinary nature of the gift would contribute to a holistic study of aging, including the physical, psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual needs of the aging population.

Full text article by Kathryn Masterson is available via The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/4/10.

Alumnus gives University of Nebraska-Lincoln $20 million

A Texas cattle baron and University of Nebraska alumnus has pledged $20-million to support the institution's agribusiness curriculum. The gift from the Paul F. and Virginia J. Engler Foundation, in Amarlllo, Tex., is the largest ever for the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the university's flagship Lincoln campus. Mr. Engler, a Nebraska native and 1951 graduate of the school, runs Cactus Feeders, the country's second-largest cattle-feeding operation.

Full text article by Art Hovey is available via Lincoln Journal Star, 3/1/10.

Report names top drivers of healthcare fundraising

Escalating globalization, the growing economic importance of small businesses, and the need to develop innovative sources of funding will be the top drivers for supporting the future of healthcare fundraising, says a new study. The emerging trends study was released Monday by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP), a not-for-profit organization whose more than 4,700 members direct philanthropic programs in 2,000 of North America's not-for-profit health care providers.
Full text article by Molly Merrill is available via Healthcare Finance News, 3/2/10.

Bethesda's WealthEngine digs deep into data to find potential donors

A Bethesda company called WealthEngine scours public records in search of rich people who might give money to WealthEngine's extensive client list of nonprofit organizations. Everybody knows the big names. Think Lerner, Leonsis. Rales and Rubenstein. Kimsey, Bradley, Snyder and Smith. WealthEngine digs deeper.

Full text article by Thomas Heath is available via The Washington Post, 3/1/10.

Oil Tycoon Pledges $100-Million to Oklahoma State U.

T. Boone Pickens, the founder of the investment firm BP Capital Management, has pledged $100-million to Oklahoma State University to establish a scholarship endowment. With this pledge, Mr. Pickens has committed nearly a half-billion dollars to the university.

Full text article by Maria Di Mento is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2/26/10.

Big gift for local climate efforts

The Barr Foundation, created by the former cable-TV mogul Amos Hostetter Jr., will make grants of $100,000 to $1-million to efforts in the Boston metropolitan area to promote public transportation and reduce greenhouse gases. The philanthropy will phase out grants it now makes to environmental groups whose missions do not fit its new emphasis on climate.

Full text article by Erin Ailworth is available via The Boston Globe, 2/14/10.

The Philanthropy 50: A Slow Year for Big Gifts Spurs Creativity by Wealthy Donors

In purely financial terms, last year was a dismal one for megagifts. The donors on the Philanthropy 50, The Chronicle’s annual list of the most-generous people in America, gave a total of $4.1-billion to charity in 2009, less than in all but one year since the newspaper began tracking the biggest philanthropists in 2000. The median gift was $41.4-million, meaning that half of those on the list gave more and half gave less. That figure compared with $69.3-million in 2008 and $74.7-million in 2007.

Full text article by Maria Di Mento and Caroline Preston is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 2/7/10.

Donations to Haiti Relief Top $380-Million

Contributions to charities providing aid to the victims of the Haiti earthquake now top $220-million. The pace of giving for Haiti is running ahead of the amount donated in the same period after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and the Asian tsunamis in 2004, but slower than the outpouring of gifts after the flooding caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Full text article by Caroline Preston and Nicole Wallace is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 1/22/10.

Powerball winner gives $10M to Morris College

A South Carolina pastor who won a $260-million lottery jackpot last summer has donated $10-million to Morris College, a historically black Baptist institution. The Rev. Solomon Jackson Jr. announced the gift January 7 at the Sumter, S.C., campus. Morris officials said the gift, the largest in the 102-year-old college’s history, would be used to endow scholarships and build and repair dormitories, among other things.

Full text article by Wayne Washington is available via The State, 1/8/10.

Kenneth and Anne Griffin give $16 million to Children's Memorial Hospital

The billionaire hedge-fund managers Kenneth and Anne Griffin will give $16-million to establish an emergency-care center at Chicago’s Children’s Memorial Hospital. Mr. Griffin, founder of Citadel Investment Group, and his wife, who heads Aragon Global Management and serves on the hospital’s investment committee, started a charitable foundation last year. The gift is part of a capital campaign toward the 50-year-old hospital’s plan to move to an expanded facility in 2012.

Full text article by Melissa Harris and Bruce Japsen is available via the Chicago Tribune, 1/7/10.

Biggest Gifts and Pledges Announced by Individuals in 2009

As the crucial year-end giving season wraps up, charities have little to cheer about from the tally of giving by the nation’s wealthiest Americans. The 10 biggest gifts donated by Americans in 2009 totaled just $2.7-billion, according to a new Chronicle analysis, compared with $8-billion in 2008 and more than $4-billion in 2007.

Full text article is available via The Chronicle of Philanthropy, 12/31/09.

Eclectic bunch of donors -- near, far, left, even right -- gave to Clinton group

Several Middle Eastern states that previously made multimillion-dollar donations to the William J. Clinton Foundation were not among the organization’s more than 19,000 donors last year, according to a roster issued last week by the organization. The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia sent no funds to the Clinton Foundation in 2009, Hillary Clinton’s first year as U.S. secretary of state. Bill Clinton agreed to the annual donor report in late 2008, when his wife was in talks with the Obama transition team about joining the Cabinet. Other past foreign donors, including the government of Norway, continued to support the foundation last year, as did numerous business magnates, Democratic Party fund raisers, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Full text article by Philip Rucker is available via The Washington Post, 1/2/10.

Nippert gives $85M to Cincinnati's arts

The Ohio arts patron Louise Nippert has donated $75-million to support the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and another $10-million to the city’s opera and ballet companies and other classical-music entities, provided they continue to use the orchestra’s musicians. The gift, one of the largest by an individual to a U.S. orchestra, was announced at a symphony rehearsal attended by Ms. Nippert, 98, the widow of the Procter & Gamble heir Louis Nippert.

Full text article by Janelle Gelfand is available via The Cincinnati Enquirer, 12/10/09.

The 25 Best Givers

The eBay billionaires Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll ranked first and second, respectively, among the world’s 25 “best givers,” according to ratings issued this week by Barron’s magazine in consultation with the Global Philanthropy Group. The Omidyar Network — established by the online auction site’s founder, Pierre Omidyar, and his wife, Pam — and the foundation created by the former eBay president Jeff Skoll were cited for practicing high-impact “venture philanthropy.”

Full text article by Suzanne McGee is available via The Wall Street Journal, 11/30/09.

Hospital honors Knight for lifetime of philanthropy

Norman Knight, a noted Boston philanthropist, is the founder of The Hundred Club of Massachusetts, which provides money and aid to the families of fallen firefighters. After a deadly 1994 fire, he donated the funds for the state’s first hyperbaric chamber to be installed at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. The hospital now has three chambers, which have been improved and upgraded over the years. Knight’s donations for this project top $1 million, hospital officials said.

Full text article by John M. Guilfoil is available via The Boston Globe, 11/15/09.

New Fame for the Everyday Donor

Although the multimillion-dollar gifts from the likes of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett get the most attention, charities are increasingly focused on, and even formed around, reaching out to modest givers, The New York Times reports as part of its annual giving special section. New endeavors such as One Day’s Wages and One Can a Week are joining longstanding operations like the March of Dimes in building a foundation on modest but ongoing donations.

Full text article by Stephanie Strom is available via The New York Times, 11/11/09.

Carnegie Medals Recognize Catalysts for Giving

This week, the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy was awarded to outstanding individual philanthropists and family foundations who have embodied Andrew Carnegie's ideals. Drawing parallels to the Nobel Prize in honoring individual contributions to society, the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy recognizes individuals who live in the same spirit as Andrew Carnegie: “private wealth for the public good.”

Full-text post by Susan Carey Dempsey is available via onPhilanthropy, 10/23/09.

Couple donates $5 million to UVa Health System

A couple with a record of philanthropy has donated $5 million to fund diabetes research at the University of Virginia Health System. The gift by Paul and Diane Manning comes on top of nearly $3 million they've donated to the university in recent years. Paul Manning, whose two children have diabetes, says he thinks the health system has the best shot in the country of ultimately discovering a cure for Type I diabetes. Manning is the chief executive officer of PBM Products in Gordonsville, which markets and distributes baby formula to more than 20,000 retail locations.

Full-text post by Brandon Shulleeta is available via the Charlottesville Daily Progress, 10/25/09.

Pharmaceutical executive donates $100 million to St. John's Health Center

Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of Abraxis BioScience, and his wife, Michelle Chan, have pledged $65 million to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. The gift, which comes on top of the $35 million the couple donated to St. John's two years ago, will be used to create several research centers and help fund future projects at the hospital.

Full-text post by Molly Hennessy-Fiske is available via the Los Angeles Times, 10/1/09.

Pharmaceutical executive donates $100 million to St. John's Health Center

Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of Abraxis BioScience, and his wife, Michelle Chan, have pledged $65 million to St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica. The gift comes on top of the $35 million the couple donated to the hospital two years ago. Soon-Shiong reported that, among other things, the gift will be used to help link doctors and patients to hundreds of other hospitals as well as researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.

Full-text post by Molly Hennessy-Fiske is available via the Los Angeles Times, 10/1/09.

Cash Strapped Charities Put Donors' Names On Just About Everything

A new trend sparks charitable gifts as donors are recognized with plaques, buildings or even restrooms named after the philanthropists. Donor naming has been around for centuries; John Harvard got his name on a college in 1639 by bequeathing 400 books, and one of that school's former students, Bill Gates, has his name on a $30 billion foundation. But deals involving naming rights granted by nonprofits and governmental units have expanded dramatically in recent years in scope, creativity, number and dollar volume.

Full-text article by William P. Barrett is available via Forbes, 9/2/09.

Donor Recognition: Thinking Like a Donor

The value of recognizing your donors goes far beyond showing appreciation for a gift. Recognition can motivate donors to be strong and lasting supporters of your organization.

Janet Hedrick, CFRE, senior associate at Bentz Whaley Flessner, who is the author of a new book from the AFP Fund Development Series, Effective Donor Relations, believes an important function of recognition is that it motivates people to give in the first place, and then acts as an incentive to continue support year to year. But, she says, recognition that is not well thought out could actually act as a “ceiling” for a donor’s giving level.

Full-text article is available via the AFP eWire, 2.9.09.

Donor Recognition at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus

Abercrombie & Fitch has pledged $10 million toward the construction of the emergency department at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus.

Major financial supporters always are recognized with wall plaques or some other kind of honor, but officials haven't determined if Abercrombie's name will appear on signs in and around the emergency department to open in 2012, said Jon Fitzgerald, president of the Nationwide Children's Hospital Foundation, the hospital's fundraising arm. The hospital previously has referred to the project as the Abercrombie & Fitch Emergency Department and Trauma Center.

In a letter faxed to the hospital Tuesday and signed by about 70 pediatricians and academics from around the U.S., the group urges hospital executives to drop any plans to put Abercrombie's name on the project.

Full-text article by Matt Leingang via BusinessWeek, 3.11.08.

Universities Consider Naming Rights

Universities are taking a close look at the kind of deals that have made corporate naming rights a staple of professional sports.

Full-text article by Tim Simmons is available via The News & Observer, 1.10.08.

San Francisco State is latest school to start naming buildings for donors

San Francisco State University is ending a long tradition of naming buildings after people connected to the university and for the first time will dedicate a structure to a rich private donor.

With the minimum donation for naming a building generally at one-third to half of the cost of the building, the practice is irresistible to campuses.

It's already routine at some of San Francisco State's sister campuses within the California State University system. At nearly every one of its bimonthly meetings, the CSU Board of Trustees adds at least one donor's name to a building on one of its 23 campuses.

Full-text article by Tanya Schevitz is available via SFGate.com, 12.10.07.

The Graffiti of the Philanthropic Class

Charles Isherwood of the New York Times questions donor recognition practices and naming rights after a recent visit to the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington.

Full-text article available via The New York Times, 12.2.2007.