Major Gifts

On Tuesday the Juilliard School announced a $20 million gift to endow its graduate-level program in historical performance. The sheer size of the gift is enough to make heads snap in the early-music world, whose practitioners typically struggle to stay a step ahead of poverty.

The donor is Bruce Kovner, the chairman of the school’s board, who recently retired as chairman of the $10 billion hedge fund Caxton Associates.

Laurie Johnston took a gift of $200 more than a half-century ago and turned it into $1 million. The retired pharmacist donated $500,000 on Friday to both the Misericordia Health Centre Foundation and the Riverview Health Centre Foundation.

The impetus for his philanthropy dates back to 1949 when Johnston was a cash-strapped student in his fourth year of pharmacy school. He was considering taking a year off to work when a friend of the family called him over one day and handed him an envelope containing $200.

On Wednesday, hedge fund billionaire and philanthropist James H. Simons and his wife, Marilyn, announced the biggest gift by far in State University of New York’s history, $150 million to Stony Brook University. It is the sixth largest donation ever made to an American public university, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, and is twice as large as the previous record for a gift to a public university in New York — the $60 million that the Simonses’ foundation gave to Stony Brook in 2008.

American casino and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson has been dishing out generous donations to Jewish causes over the past week.

On Tuesday, he doubled his overall contribution to Yad Vashem in the past decade by announcing a $25 million gift to the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.

A week earlier, Adelson increased his annual contribution to Birthright-Taglit — the program that brings Jews aged 18 to 26 from the Diaspora on a free trip to Israel — twofold, to $10 million

Joining the ranks of major givers in Miami, developer Jorge Pérez has pledged to donate $35 million in cash and art from his personal collection to the new Miami Art Museum, which will bear his name when it opens in two years.

The donation includes $5 million that Pérez has already pledged and partially paid; an additional $15 million for the capital campaign and $15 million worth of Latin American art to be chosen by the museum.

The USC School of Public Policy is getting a $50-million donation from the charity established by the founder of the Price Club warehouse-style shopping chain, university officials announced Tuesday.

The school will be renamed for the late Sol Price, who earned an undergraduate and law degree from USC and went on to success in discount membership retailing and in real estate investments.

Washington University in St. Louis announced on Friday two gifts totaling $25 million to support the construction of a pair of new business buildings.

The school received $15 million from Charles F. Knight and Joanne Knight and $10 million from George Bauer and Carol Bauer through the Bauer Foundation.

The school hopes to start work on the $90 million project next summer if enough additional funding is in place. The two buildings will give the Olin Business School another 166,000 square feet of space when completed in late 2013.

Last October, an emotional Andre Agassi publicly thanked gaming pioneer Kirk Kerkorian for putting food on his family's table decades ago.

Saturday night, the tennis superstar again paid tribute to Kerkorian at the Grand Slam for Children benefit, this time for contributing to Agassi's second family of sorts.

Kerkorian gave $18 million to support the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy for at-risk students, a record donation Agassi said will "outlive all of us" as the funds guarantee the Las Vegas charter school's future in perpetuity.

A top Atlantic Canada business leader, warning his region must be internationally competitive, has donated $15-million to Dalhousie University’s school of business.

The gift, the largest donation by a Nova Scotian to the university, comes from Ken Rowe, executive chairman of IMP International Group Inc.

Some of the funds, to be dispersed over the next 10 years, will pay for new entrance scholarships to attract top students and to provide students with financial support to compete in national and international case competitions.

Former steel industry executive, the late William S. Dietrich II, has made plans to award gifts valued at more than $18 million to The Pittsburgh Foundation from his estate. The major share – over $10 million – will be used for grantmaking that addresses critical community needs in the Pittsburgh region.

Dietrich, who passed away earlier this month, has established three funds at the Foundation to support charitable initiatives in the communities of Conneaut Lake, Pa., and Greenville, Pa., as well as the Pittsburgh area.