Major Gifts

A seven-figure gift to the Detroit Institute of Arts from former General Motors group vice president Roy Roberts and his wife, Maureen, has put a spotlight on the relative dearth of high-profile African-American philanthropists, Crain's Detroit Business and the Detroit Free Press report.

In recognition of the first seven-figure contribution to DIA by an African American, the museum will rename one of its galleries after the couple.

A number of wealthy philanthropists are making bold demands on schools as a condition of giving.

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp., admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her principles on U.S. campuses. Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

Faculty at several schools that have accepted Allison’s terms are protesting, saying donors shouldn’t have the power to set curriculum to pursue their political agendas.

Dr. Amar Bose, Bose Corp.'s founder, has given to MIT the majority of the stock of Bose Corp. in the form of non-voting shares.  

MIT will receive annual cash dividends on those shares when dividends are paid by Bose Corp.; those cash dividends will be used by MIT to sustain and advance MIT’s education and research mission.

Under the terms of the gift, MIT cannot sell its Bose shares and will not participate in the management or governance of the company.

Ohio University will use a $105 million donation, the largest private gift in the school's history, to build a medical college in Columbus to help fill a growing shortage of family physicians.

The donation from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundations, which is also the largest gift ever given to an Ohio university, will pay about a third of the projected $300 million cost to transform OU's medical school over the next 15 years.

Virginia Tech has received three donations totaling $45 million, including the largest gift in the university's history and a $17 million bequest from a Richmond alumnus. The gifts, announced Thursday by Tech President Charles W. Steger, all will benefit the College of Engineering. The largest gift is a $25 million commitment from an anonymous donor to be used for the Signature Engineering Building project.

The Leon Levy Foundation has pledged its support of Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Campaign for the Next Century with a gift of $7.5 million, the largest contribution by a living donor in the institution’s 100-year history.

The gift will help support a suite of projects and initiatives that affects virtually every part of the Garden and will extend well beyond its borders, collectively comprising the most ambitious set of enhancements since the Garden’s founding.

High Point University is getting $10 million each from four local families, doubling the number of families who have made gifts at that level since Nido R. Qubein became the school's president in 2005. Most of the gifts from the families of Cobein and Earl E. Congdon, Fred E. Wilson Jr. and Mark A. Norcross are dedicated to the university's School of Health Sciences and proposed school of pharmacy.

Cable magnate John Malone has donated $50 million to the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, the largest gift in the school's history. The donation, announced on Wednesday, will endow 10 new professorships in fields such as biomedical and chemical engineering. Two of them will be joint appointments with the Yale School of Management.

San Diego philanthropist Conrad Prebys is giving the San Diego Zoo $15 million to launch a major redesign of its big cat and koala areas. This gift, announced Sunday afternoon, follows Prebys’ 2007 donation of $10.1 million to revamp the polar bear plunge and elephant care center.

Not only is this new pledge the largest single gift in the history of the Zoo, but CEO Doug Myers said Prebys is also the largest single donor to the Zoo at over $25 million. (In 2004 Joan Kroc bequeathed $10 million to the Zoo.)

The $80 million gift Duke University received from The Duke Endowment is the largest ever for the school and the largest ever awarded by the Charlotte-based funder. The funds, which will be paid out over multiple years, will be used to renovate three historic buildings that were part of the university's original construction.