A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Barnard College
Roy and Diana Vagelos gave $55 million to renovate and expand Altschul Hall, which will be renamed the Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Center, and to support programs that aim to prepare women for careers in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Roy Vagelos is a renowned physician-scientist. He worked for the National Institutes of Health for a decade before joining the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and becoming head of the Department of Biological Chemistry in 1966. He left the university in 1975 to join the pharmaceutical giant Merck, where he directed the discovery of the statin drugs Mevacor and Zocor. He later became CEO and chairman of Merck.
Diana Vagelos graduated from Barnard in 1955 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and serves as a vice chair of the college’s Board of Trustees. The couple have given Barnard at least $35 million since 2008 and also give extensively to other institutions. They have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors three times since 2010.
Frederick Gunn School
Jonathan and Lizzie Tisch gave $25 million to build the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Center for Innovation and Active Citizenship, which will house the private school’s STEM (science, math, engineering, technology), entrepreneurship, and citizenship curriculum. Their gift will also support the school’s interdisciplinary coursework aimed at promoting reasoned dialogue, rational debate, and active citizenship. The building is scheduled to open next year.
Jonathan Tisch is chairman and chief executive of Loews Hotels, in New York. He graduated from the Washington, Conn., school in 1972. This isn’t his first foray into supporting programs that promote an engaged citizenry. In 2006 he gave his alma mater, Tufts University, $40 million to endow what became the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life.
Lizzie Tisch is a former banker who co-founded Suite 1521, a membership-based personal-shopping business that hosted private trunk shows where high-fashion designers could meet with clients and show their collections. The business closed in 2017. The couple were on the 2019 Philanthropy 50.
University of Maryland Baltimore County
Betsy Sherman gave $21 million through her Sherman Family Foundation to create the Betsy & George Sherman Center and broaden the university’s elementary-school and early-childhood-education programs in Baltimore’s schools.
The center’s efforts will focus on integrating the university’s work in teacher preparation, school partnerships, and applied research to improve academic success in the Baltimore school system.
Betsy Sherman had a career in early-childhood education. Her late husband, George, was an executive at Black & Decker, in Baltimore, and the Danaher Corp. in Washington. He died last year at 80.
Cornell University
David Meehl gave $10 million to support quantum-science programs in the College of Arts and Sciences, home of the Cornell Quantum Initiative. The money will pay for a professorship, two graduate-level fellowships, and new equipment in the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering.
Meehl is retired. He spent his career at several accounting firms, food companies, and a nonprofit organization in western Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from Cornell in 1972 and 1974, respectively.
Fugees Family
MacKenzie Scott gave $10 million to this nonprofit that partners with school districts around the country to ensure that children who are refugees from war-torn countries can continue their education.
The money will enable the charity to expand its work to 50 U.S. school districts over the next five years, as it aims to help children from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and other countries experiencing dangerous conflicts.
“As thousands of new refugees seek safety among us, we must do more than parcel out sympathy and charity,” said Luma Mufleh, the charity’s founder and CEO. “To the children among them, especially, we owe safe spaces to heal, to learn, and to grow.”
Scott is a novelist who helped create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos. She has given more than $8 billion in unrestricted gifts to nonprofits since 2020 and appeared on the 2020 Philanthropy 50 for the many gifts she gave that year to overlooked and undersupported charities.
Flexport.org Fund and Airbnb.org
The actor Mila Kunis and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher, pledged to match up to $3 million in contributions from other donors to these two nonprofits that are providing aid to Ukrainians who have fled the Russian invasion.
Flexport is organizing shipments of relief supplies to refugee sites in Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia, while Airbnb’s nonprofit arm is providing free short-term housing to Ukrainian refugees.
Kunis and Kutcher are well-known television and film actors. Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, in 1983. She moved with her family to the United States in 1991 and later became a U.S. citizen.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
