A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Detroit Tax Relief Fund and other Detroit Nonprofits
Detroit businessman Dan Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer Gilbert, pledged $350 million through their Gilbert Family Foundation to support economic development among Detroit’s low-income neighborhoods and build up financial stability for struggling Detroiters.
They plan to give out the money over the next 10 years. One of the first grants toward the effort — $15 million — has gone to create the Detroit Tax Relief Fund, administered by the nonprofit Wayne Metro Community Action Agency, which will eliminate the property-tax debt owed by about 20,000 low-income homeowners in Detroit.
Dan Gilbert founded Quicken Loans, Rocket Companies, and other businesses, and he is majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers professional basketball team. He is a multibillionaire whose current net worth Forbes estimates at $46 billion. Rocket Community Fund, the nonprofit arm of his Rocket Mortgage Company, is donating an additional $150 million to the Gilberts’ efforts to help build economic opportunities for Detroit residents.
Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy
Frank McCourt Jr. committed $100 million, half of which he has directed to support financial aid and scholarships to expand opportunities for students from diverse backgrounds who want to earn a degree in public policy. The money is also aimed at eliminating tuition barriers for the incoming class of National Urban Fellows, a 50-year-old organization dedicated to developing midcareer professionals, particularly people of color, to be leaders in the public and nonprofit sectors. The other half will back faculty needs and research.
“Society is facing bigger challenges than ever, making it essential that the people tasked with solving these challenges are not only well trained, but also represent the backgrounds and experiences of our full society,” said McCourt in a news release. “Too often, the people most impacted by problems like economic inequality or extractive technology aren’t at the policy-making table. With this funding, the School can open its doors more widely and build a pipeline of future public policy leaders that reflects the true diversity of our communities.”
McCourt founded McCourt Global, a real-estate development and private-equity firm, in New York and Los Angeles. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Georgetown in 1975, and his family has a long association with the university. His father, both brothers, and one of his four sons are Georgetown alumni. A prolific donor to the university, McCourt donated an initial $100 million to establish the public-policy school.
University of Texas at San Antonio College of Business
Carlos and Malú Alvarez pledged $20 million to endow professorships, graduate research fellowships, and undergraduate research programs. The business school will be named for Carlos Alvarez.
Carlos Alvarez is CEO of the Gambrinus Company, a craft-beer brewery that he founded in San Antonio in 1986 after moving his family to Texas from Mexico where he worked for Grupo Modelo, the brewers of Corona beer. He was responsible for bringing the company’s Corona Extra brand of beer to the United States in 1981.
Panthera
Jonathan Ayers pledged $20 million through his Ayers Wild Cat Conservation Trust to support a number of wild-cat conservation programs over the next 10 years with a focus on the preservation of small wild cats, including the clouded leopard, ocelot, and black-footed cat.
Ayers is a senior adviser to IDEXX Laboratories, a company in Westbrook, Me., that develops veterinary diagnostics, software, and water microbiology testing. He served as IDEXX’s chairman, president, and CEO from 2002 to 2019, stepping down from his leadership posts late that year after sustaining a serious injury in a cycling accident.
University of Michigan Health System
Kenneth and Frances Eisenberg donated $19.25 million to back research and other programs at the newly renamed Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg and Family Depression Center.
Kenneth Eisenberg is the retired head of Kenwal Steel Corporation, a family business he ran for five decades. He and his wife earned bachelor’s degrees from Michigan in 1964, his from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, hers from the School of Education.
The couple gave the depression center more than $10.7 million in 2016 for to expand its research into the causes of depression and potential new treatments and to endow a professorship, and other programs.
One City Schools
Pleasant Rowland gave $14 million to help pay for a new building to house the Madison, Wis., nonprofit’s K-12 charter schools. This is Rowland’s second large gift to One City Schools. In 2019, she gave $5 million to help stabilize One City’s operating budget.
Rowland founded the Pleasant Company and the American Girl doll brand in 1986. She sold the company to Mattel in 1998 for $700 million. She later bought and restructured a home-decor company, MacKenzie-Childs, and sold it in 2008 to Twin Lakes Capital, a private-equity firm.
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Billionaire David Rubenstein donated $5 million to back a newly designed exhibition about the Wright Brothers, American aviation pioneers credited with creating and flying the world’s first successful motor-operated airplane, the 1903 Wright Flyer, which is the centerpiece of the exhibit. Along with newly designed exhibit, the money will help pay for the safe preservation and display of the historic plane.
Rubenstein is a billionaire who co-founded the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm in Washington. He has been a generous donor to nonprofits for many years, appearing on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors six times since 2010.
A history buff, he frequently encourages what he calls “patriotic philanthropy,” charitable giving to support the restoration and exhibition of historic U.S. documents, artifacts, spaces, and structures in an effort to make history tangible and illustrate how it affects people’s lives over time.
University of Arizona
Humberto and Czarina Lopez gave $3.5 million to establish two endowed professorships. Of the total, $2 million will be used to create the Czarina M. and Humberto S. Lopez Endowed Chair for Excellence in Cardiovascular Research at Sarver Heart Center, and $1.5 million will go toward establishing the Dhaliwal-HSLopez Chair in Accounting at the university’s Eller College of Management in honor of Dan Dhaliwal, a 1977 alumnus, who was head of the accounting department from 1996 until he died in 2016.
Humberto Lopez co-founded and is chairman of HSL Properties, a property management company in Tucson, Ariz. He earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the university in 1969. His life prior to that was one of struggle and striving to make a better life.
His father, a rancher in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, died when Lopez was 12, plunging the family of six children into financial peril. The family moved to Nogales, Ariz., to live with their grandmother. Lopez started working to help his family, and over time his grades fell. When a high-school counselor told Lopez he wasn’t college material because he was a C student, he became determined to pursue higher education. He enrolled at a local community college and then transferred to the university after earning an associate degree.
Dell Medical School at University of Texas at Austin
John Paul and Eloise DeJoria donated $2 million through their family foundation to create an endowment that will provide ongoing support for Dell Medical’s faculty leader and programs aimed at improving health care for people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity.
Among the programs the money will support is the medical school’s street-medicine program, which brings health care to people living outdoors and suffering from chronic physical and mental-health issues.
DeJoria co-founded John Paul Mitchell Systems, a hair-care products company, and Patrón Spirits International, which manufactures high-end tequilas and other distilled spirits.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
