A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Yale University
The financier Len Blavatnik gave $40 million through his Blavatnik Family Foundation to expand the Blavatnik Fund for Innovation, a life-sciences center that focuses on early-stage research and the development of new biomedical products and health technologies through the support of start-up businesses and industry partnerships. The fund launched in 2016 with a $10 million donation from Blavatnik.
This latest gift will be used to increase the number of research awards available to Yale scientists, increase the number of and diversity of applicants, back a wider range of biomedical programs, and support new research efforts across the university. The broad range of focus areas include oncology, infectious disease, neurology, immunology, digital health, ophthalmology, biological tools, and others.
Blavatnik founded Access Industries, an investment company with holdings in media and telecommunications, natural resources, chemicals, and real estate. He gives extensively to higher education, scientific research, and arts and culture groups and appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors for giving the University of Oxford a nine-figure gift in 2010, one of his first big public donations.
Henry Ford Health
The Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert and his wife, Jennifer, pledged $375 million through their Gilbert Family Foundation to establish a new rehabilitation center at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, which will serve patients recovering from strokes, traumatic brain injuries, spinal-cord injuries, and other conditions; and to create the Nick Gilbert Neurofibromatosis Research Institute, named for the donors’ oldest son, who died this year at 26.
The Gilberts are directing $10 million of the total pledged toward establishing a fund that will pay for rehabilitation care for low-income Detroit residents who have little or no health-insurance coverage.
Dan Gilbert founded Quicken Loans and the Rock Family of Companies, a holding company. He is chairman of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team. Jennifer Gilbert founded Pophouse, a commercial design firm in Detroit that specializes in using data and industry research in its design practices, and Amber Engine, a home-furnishings services and technology company.
Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University
Patrick and Shirley Ryan and their family gave $25 million through their Ryan Family Foundation to establish the Ryan Institute on Complexity, a research lab led by economics, physics, and sociology faculty who will bring together leaders from academe and industry, Ph.D. students, and postdoctoral fellows to study the future of quantitative sciences, complex systems, and the many issues affecting businesses and society.
Patrick Ryan founded Pat Ryan and Associates, an insurance company in the Chicago area. He built the business up over time to form the Aon Corporation and retired in 2008. He later founded Ryan Specialty Group to provide products and services for insurance brokers, agents, and carriers. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Northwestern in 1959 and served as chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees for 14 years. Shirley Ryan earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the university in 1961. She co-founded Pathways Pediatric Clinic and the Pathways.org Medical Round Table.
The couple made a splash in 2021 when they gave the university $480 million to support education and research programs in applied microeconomics, business, digital medicine, neuroscience, and global health, plus translational research efforts at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. They landed the No. 11 spot on that year’s Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors.
San Francisco Community Land Trust
MacKenzie Scott gave $20 million through her Yield Giving fund to back this group’s mission to build permanently affordable housing for those who are Black, Indigenous, or people of color with low to moderate incomes in San Francisco, which has one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.
The nonprofit’s leaders said in a news release that to make the most of the gift, they plan to launch a $60 million fundraising effort to attract additional donations as part of an effort to expand affordable housing in the Bay Area.
Scott is a novelist who has given more than $14 billion to more than 1,600 nonprofits over the last three years. Her estimated $37 billion fortune comes from stock she holds in the online retailing giant Amazon, which she helped to found with her first husband, Jeff Bezos, nearly 30 years ago.
DePauw University
Albert Crandall and Louise Woods Crandall left more than $5 million to endow two professorships, support a need-based scholarship fund, and support the university’s School of Business and Leadership. The couple also bequeathed paintings and sculptures from their art collection and Civil War memorabilia.
The couple were DePauw alumni. Albert Crandall earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1956, and Louise Woods Crandall earned a degree in chemistry in 1950. She worked for Eli Lilly and Company and was instrumental in developing antibiotics in the 1970s. She was one of the pharmaceuticals giant’s first women scientists.
Albert Crandall’s studies were interrupted for about a year when he served in the U.S. Army in the Korean War from 1953 to 1954. After graduation, he went on to work as a fire-casualty underwriter in the insurance industry for many years.
The couple were longtime donors to the university, and Albert Crandall’s ties to the institution ran deep. His father, A.W. Crandall, was a noted DePauw history professor and civil-war expert. His mother, Marion Bradford Crandall, worked in the DePauw president’s office, the registrar’s office and later as an instructor at the university. Louise Woods Crandall died in 2018, and Albert Crandall died in 2021.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
