N.Y. Real Estate Mogul Gives $25 Million to Henry Ford Health System (Gifts Roundup)

Chris Jeffries co-founded Millennium Partners, a national real-estate development company with headquarters in New York. The Jeffries have both lost a family member to brain cancer; Chris Jeffries’s father died from the disease as did Lisa Jeffries’s stepfather.

Smithsonian Institution

Jere and Bonnie Broh-Kahn pledged $12 million to support education programs across the Institution.

Of the total, $10 million will create and endow two positions: the Broh-Kahn Weil Director of Education at the National Museum of Natural History and the Broh-Kahn Weil Director of Education at the National Air and Space Museum.

The couple are also directing $2 million to establish endowments to support education programs at the National Museum of the American Indian and at the National Museum of American History.

Jere Broh-Kahn was a diplomat with the U.S. State Department, serving as the chief of the State Department Indochinese refugee program. Bonnie Broh-Kahn spent her career working as a Foreign Service officer. The couple met in the 1950s in Bangkok, where they were both then posted. The Broh-Kahns have been donors to the Smithsonian since 1992.

Temple University

Dr. S. Jay Hirsh gave $1 million to back the Schneck Gross Anatomy Lab at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine. The money will create the S. Jay Hirsh, MD, Endowed Anatomy Lab Fund.

Hirsh earned a medical degree from the university in 1970 and says he gave the donation because he gained so much through working in the anatomy lab as a student.

"It taught me that I was now part of a group of very special men and women who were on a long journey to becoming a doctor," said Hirsh in a news release. "It taught me companionship. It taught me family values and to respect the body that we were working on."

National Theater Institute

Lin-Manuel Miranda and his family have pledged $1 million through their Miranda Family Fund to back scholarships for students of color and further the inclusion of artists of color across all disciplines of theater.

Student actors, singers, directors, dancers, designers, playwrights, and composers enrolled in the institute take courses at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and are taught by theater-industry professionals and master teachers.

Miranda is a composer, lyricist, singer, actor, producer, and playwright who is most widely known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton. His family has been donating to the scholarship fund since 2017.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.