$1 Billion in Grants Will Support 4 Research Institutions

Four research institutions — the Cleveland Clinic, Duke University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Southern California — have each been given an equal share of a distribution that tops $1 billion from a group of foundations set up by Tom Lord, a businessman who died in 1989.

The gifts follow the acquisition of Lord Corporation, a maker of adhesives and specialty materials, by Parker Hannifin Corporation in April. As part of the nearly $3.7 billion deal, Lord’s estate plan directed part of the proceeds to go to four foundations he had set up to support the institutions: the Lord Foundations of California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Each institution will receive about $261 million.

The gifts are eye-popping even for institutions like USC with active major-gift programs. The university completed a $7 billion campaign in December. In the past several months, its major gifts have included $20 million from the late Patricia Mitchell, $12 million from Patrick and Bonnie Fuscoe, $10 million from Eli and Edyth Broad, and $8 million from Edward Judd Zobelein.

“Quite simply, this is a provost’s dream,” said USC Provost Charles Zukoski in a statement. “The flexibility and scale of this gift allows us to build much more rapidly than normally possible upon cross-university strengths in areas such as artificial intelligence, big data and analytics, and to support our faculty as they leapfrog into emerging areas of research.”

The gift is the biggest contribution made to the Cleveland Clinic, said Lara Kalafatis, chair of the Cleveland Clinic’s Philanthropy Institute. Although Lord and the philanthropy he established had a relationship with the clinic for decades, “a gift of this magnitude is always a surprise,” she said.

The clinic would like to use the contribution to help researchers innovate and have as big a positive impact as possible, but there are no set plans, according to Kalafatis.

“This will take a little bit of time to process,” she said.

Alex Daniels covers foundations, donor-advised funds, fundraising research, and tax issues for the Chronicle. He recently wrote about philanthropy’s attempts to save democracy and about a $100 million effort to use data to improve health care in poor countries. Email Alex or follow him on Twitter.