A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Northwestern University
George R.R. Martin pledged $5 million to establish a professorship and a writing workshop. Of the total, he is directing $3 million to create the George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop, which will provide instruction for journalists seeking to launch careers in creative writing. Starting in 2024, the workshop will enroll six to eight writers each summer and provide aspiring fiction writers, screenwriters, and playwrights the time, space, and guidance to develop their projects.
The remaining $2 million will be used to create and endow the George R.R. Martin Chair in Storytelling. The professor who is named to the post will lead the George R.R. Martin Summer Intensive Writing Workshop and teach courses across a number of genres including narrative nonfiction and creative writing to undergraduate and graduate students.
Martin is a writer who specializes in fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, a popular series of fantasy novels that HBO later adapted into the dramatic television series Game of Thrones. He serves as co-executive producer of the series. He earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in journalism from the university’s Medill School of Journalism in 1970 and 1971, respectively. He taught journalism at Clarke College in Dubuque, Iowa, early in his career and later served as a story editor for The Twilight Zone, a network television series, and executive story consultant and a producer for Beauty and the Beast, another television series.
Jefferson Health
Harold and Lynne Honickman and their family gave $50 million through their Honickman Foundation to support the construction of a new medical building, which will be named for the family. The Honickman Center is scheduled to open in 2024.
Harold Honickman founded Honickman Companies, a beverage bottling and distribution business in Pennsauken, N.J. He began his career in 1957 with the purchase of a Pepsi bottling plant and expanded the company’s operations after acquiring the Canada Dry Bottling Company of Philadelphia in 1969 and similar businesses in Baltimore, New York, and Washington.
Xavier University
Harry and Linda Fath gave $50 million for endowment and financial aid. Harry Fath owns Fath Properties, a Cincinnati company that manages apartment buildings throughout Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, and Texas. He is also a minority owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.
The Faths have given extensively to nonprofits in recent years and have appeared on the Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle’s annual ranking of top donors, three times since 2017.
Salvation Army San Diego Regional Office
Ernest and Evelyn Rady pledged $35 million to endow programs for people experiencing homelessness at the existing Rady Residence and the planned Rady Center. Construction of the new Rady Center is scheduled to begin in 2024. Its opening in 2026 will enable the charity to expand a number of programs including food assistance, meals for seniors, interim and long-term transitional housing, special housing for men and women exiting rehabilitation programs, and permanent affordable rental apartments.
The Radys will give the money when the charity has raised $30 million for the project from other donors. In 2018, they gave the organization $50 million to build and endow the Rady Residence, an apartment complex for families struggling with homelessness.
Ernest Rady founded American Assets, a real-estate development company in San Diego. The couple have given large sums to a range of San Diego-area nonprofits and have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors six time since their first appearance on the 2004 list.
University of Missouri
Richard and Nancy Kinder gave $25 million through their Kinder Foundation to increase programs and faculty hires at the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy. The donation will allow the institute to double the number of students it can support during its summer internship program in Washington and will expand a program for undergraduates studying at the University of Oxford. The donation will also support a program in constitutional democracy and the hiring of six new research faculty.
Richard Kinder co-founded Kinder Morgan, an energy company in Houston. The couple endowed the institute with a $25 million donation in 2015; and then in 2019, a $10 million gift from the Kinders allowed the institute to offer two new degrees: a bachelor of arts in constitutional democracy and a master of arts in Atlantic history and politics.
The couple are longtime philanthropists and have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors five times in the last nine years. They primarily support programs and nonprofits focused on urban green space, education, and improving people’s quality of life.
Smithsonian Institution
Adrienne Arsht gave $10 million to launch the Adrienne Arsht Community-Based Resilience Solutions Initiative, which will support research and education on climate resilience, the ability to prepare for and respond to global changes. The donation will also establish a center for resilience and sustainability within the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama, where researchers will study complex tropical systems, such as rainforests, and the people who depend on these systems.
The money will also be used to develop a collection of bilingual education programs and socioecological teaching case studies that can be used to develop courses for policy makers and field practitioners. Other new programs backed by this donation include a virtual “resilience tour,” which will join the Smithsonian’s science units with its arts and culture museums and programs to explore different interpretations of resilience, and the Smithsonian Resilience Fund, a competitive grant program aimed at fostering resilience work across Smithsonian museums and centers.
Arsht is a lawyer and businesswoman who served as chair of TotalBank, a Miami bank she sold to Banco Popular, with headquarters in Madrid, in 2007. She has given large sums to arts and culture groups, education institutions, and public affairs organizations and appeared on the 2008 Philanthropy 50.
National Constitution Center and Khan Academy
Jeffrey and Janine Yass gave $9 million through their Yass Foundation for Education to establish a partnership between the two education nonprofits to shore up civics education by offering a free, semester-long online Constitution 101 course. The course aims to teach high-school students about the core principles of the U.S. Constitution.
Jeffrey Yass co-founded Susquehanna International Group, one of the world’s largest stock-trading firms, in Philadelphia in 1987. Before he started the firm, Yass worked as a stockbroker and was a successful gambler who made large sums by playing poker and betting on horse races.
Janine Yass co-founded Boys’ Latin Charter School, in West Philadelphia, and is founding board member of the Philadelphia School Partnership, an education nonprofit that primarily awards grants to public and charter schools in the Philadelphia area. It was recently renamed Elevate215.org.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
