A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Dartmouth College
Barbara and Glenn Britt left $150 million to expand financial aid for students from middle-income families that earn from $65,000 to $125,000 annually. Three-quarters of their bequest will cover tuition costs for undergraduate students, and the remaining quarter will back scholarships for students in its Tuck School of Business. The Ivy League institution estimates the gift will benefit 350 families per year, beginning this fall.
Glenn Britt attended Dartmouth on financial aid, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1971 and an MBA from its Tuck School of Business the following year. After graduation, he began working at the media company Time Inc., and rose through the ranks to become CEO of Time Warner Cable in 2001. He died in 2014. Barbara Britt, who met her husband while working as a journalist and photographer at Time, died in August 2023.
California Institute of Technology
The university in Pasadena has received $100 million from Gary Brinson through his Brinson Foundation to establish the Brinson Exploration Hub. The new center will unite teams of engineers and scientists from Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to accelerate research on the Earth, the moon, the solar system, and the universe beyond.
The gift will also create new opportunities for Caltech’s faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars in space exploration, the development and demonstrations of aerospace technology, and the operations of small-scale space missions.
Brinson is the founder of the Chicago asset-management firm Brinson Partners, which was the predecessor of UBS and Adams Street Partners. It was acquired in 1994 for $750 million by Swiss Bank Corporation. He continued working for Swiss Bank as chief investment officer of UBS Global Asset Management until his retirement in 2000.
Baptist Health Foundation
The billionaire financier Kenneth Griffin gave $50 million to build and equip a new center for the Baptist Health Miami Neuroscience Institute, which will be renamed the Kenneth C. Griffin Center at Miami Neuroscience Institute. The gift will also back patient care and research related to neuroscience and neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Griffin is the founder and CEO of the Miami-based hedge fund Citadel and founder of Griffin Catalyst.
University of California at San Diego
Taner Halicioğlu pledged $25 million to help build the Triton Alumni and Welcome Center, which is expected to open in 2026.
Halicioğlu graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1996 and went on to work for the technology companies Loudcloud, eBay, and Blizzard Entertainment. He became Facebook’s first full-time employee in October 2004 when he was hired as a software and operations engineer. After leaving Facebook in 2009, he founded Keshif Ventures, where he serves as an angel investor and adviser to start-up companies.
Halicioğlu is also a lecturer at the university’s Jacobs School of Engineering in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. This is his third major donation to his alma mater, following a $75 million gift in 2017 to establish the Halicioğlu Institute for Data Science.
59E59 Theaters
The arts organization in New York has received an additional $10 million from Elysabeth Kleinhans through the Elysabeth Kleinhans Theatrical Foundation to expand its ability to offer nonprofit theater companies free use of its three performance spaces and equipment to stage their shows.
She established the group in 2004 through her foundation to give small performance groups rent-free space to debut Off Broadway plays and musicals.
Kleinhans was the founding artistic director of 59E59. She stepped down from that role in 2017 but remains president of its Board of Directors.
University of California at Berkeley
The billionaires Angela and David Filo have pledged $10 million toward the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism’s $54 million capital campaign. Their commitment will match gifts to enhance financial aid for journalism students and master’s fellowships.
Angela Filo earned a master’s degree in journalism from Berkeley. She went on to work as a reporter at the Oakland Tribune before becoming a high-school teacher of journalism and photography in East Palo Alto, Calif. David Filo is the co-founder of Yahoo. The couple’s Skyline Foundation was one of seed funders for Press Forward, a $500 million grant-making effort to bolster local newsrooms across the United States.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
