A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute
Richard and Melanie Lundquist gave an unrestricted $70 million to the institute, which will be named for them. Officials at the institute said in a news release that some of the money will go toward hiring more researchers and shore up the organization’s infrastructure.
As part of their gift, the Lundquists asked that the institute’s president and chief executive, David Meyer, remain in those posts for five years to help utilize the gift.
The Lundquists are California real estate investors and longtime donors to Southern California medical centers and education efforts. They helped start the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools with a $50 million gift in 2007, and in 2017 they gave the program an additional $35 million.
BBYO
Ted and Harriette Perlman pledged $25 million to endow and expand the Jewish youth organization’s programs for young Jewish women and teens.
The gift will also be used to create the Anita M. Perlman Women’s Leadership Initiative, named for Ted Perlman’s late mother, who in 1944 founded B’nai B’rith Girls, now a division of BBYO, and B’nai B’rith Women. Ted Perlman founded the HAVI Group, a supply-chain management and logistics company.
University of California at Los Angeles
Morris (Mo) Ostin pledged $15 million for UCLA Athletics’ new student-athlete academic facility, which will be named Mo Ostin Academic Center for Student-Athletes.
The center will include individual and group study spaces, tutorial areas, technology labs, and offices for UCLA Athletics’ Academic and Student Services staff.
Ostin is a music and entertainment executive who has worked for Verve, Reprise Records, DreamWorks SKG, and Warner Bros. Records, where he served as chairman and chief executive for 25 years. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from UCLA in 1951.
Dartmouth College
George Battle committed $10 million to the First Year Student Enrichment Program, which helps support incoming students of limited financial means who are the first in their families to attend college. The university started the program in 2009.
Battle, who was the first member of his family to attend a four-year college, graduated from Dartmouth in 1966. He held a variety of positions at Arthur Andersen LLP and then Andersen Consulting LLP over 27 years. He is now a senior fellow and senior moderator at the Aspen Institute, an educational and policy studies think tank.
Loras College
William Miller gave $5 million to improve buildings, including Keane Hall, the Rock Bowl, and Loras’s multimedia program space; upgrade campus infrastructure; and expand its entrepreneurial offerings and its work with small towns to assist in growth.
Miller founded Interconnect Systems, which specialized in miniaturized electronic packaging and accelerated computing, and in 2016 he sold the company to Molex, the electronic division of Koch Industries. He currently serves as chief executive of LEDing EDGE Lighting. He graduated in 1952 from what was then Loras Academy, an all-boys high school.
Baltimore Museum of Art
Eddie and Sylvia Brown gave $3.5 million to endow the position of chief curator at the museum.
Eddie Brown founded and leads Brown Capital Management, a Baltimore-based investment-management firm.
The couple have been actively involved with the museum since 1997, and each served for many years on the Board of Trustees. The Browns founded the museum’s Collectors Circle Fund for Art by African-Americans.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
