A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Katz Amsterdam Charitable Fund
Robert Katz, CEO of the hotel and skiing group Vail Resorts, has given a combination of company stock and proceeds from share sales to his family foundation and donor-advised fund. He contributed 67,800 shares and sold 45,200 shares of Vail Resorts stock with a market price of $275.25 per share on the day of sale, putting the gift’s value at about $31.1 million.
Katz and his wife, Elana Amsterdam, created their donor-advised fund at Vanguard Charitable last year with a donation of $58 million, landing them for the first time on the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of America’s most generous donors. The couple said they plan to make grants to organizations that focus on mental and behavioral health and substance abuse in the mountain towns where Vail Resorts owns properties.
DePauw University
Steve and Karen Ogren Sanger have given $20 million to create the Sanger Leadership Initiative, which will create experiential programs in leadership, boost post-graduate support, and invite speakers to campus. The new program will work with existing co-curricular centers for entrepreneurship, contemporary media, ethics, student engagement, diversity, technology, civic education, and music.
Steve Sanger is a former CEO of the food conglomerate General Mills. He retired in 2007. Karen Ogren Sanger is a lawyer. The couple both graduated from DePauw in 1968.
University of Virginia
Barbara Fried has given $3 million for the university’s Center for Teaching Excellence, to enhance professional development for faculty and teaching assistants. Fried and her late husband, Mark, founded the Fried Companies, a real-estate-development firm in Crozet, Va. She has been a member of the university’s Board of Visitors since 2014.
The gift was matched by the university’s Bicentennial Professors Fund and Office of the President, bringing the full amount of support for the program to $6 million.
Oregon Health & Science University
The Wold family has given $2.5 million through its foundation to establish a new center for macular-degeneration research and treatment at the university’s Casey Eye Institute.
John Wold, a geologist and the founder of Wold Oil Properties in Casper, Wyo., died last year at the age of 100. He contracted macular degeneration, an incurable eye disease that causes significant vision loss, in his 80s and gave $5 million to the institute in 2015. His two sons, Jack and Peter, now lead the oil and gas company. His daughter, Priscilla Wold Longfield, is a member of the university foundation’s Board of Trustees.
Dumont Public Schools
Genevieve Via Cava, who spent 45 years as a special-education teacher in the Dumont, N.J., school system, left a $1 million bequest to the district. The gift will create an annual scholarship for special-needs students looking to continue their education after graduating from high school.
Via Cava died in 2011; her estate was only recently settled.
Easterseals DC MD VA
Carl McNair Jr. has given $1 million for the charity’s capital campaign to expand programs that benefit Washington-area children, adults, and veterans with disabilities or special needs.
McNair is a retired major general in the U.S. Army.
Library Foundation
Thomas Jones has given $1 million to the fundraising arm of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The gift will be used for library programs and projects that serve poor people in the Cincinnati area.
Jones worked for 25 years in the legal division of Procter & Gamble, the personal-care-products company headquartered in Cincinnati.
Virginia Commonwealth University
Iris Harrell and her wife, Ann Benson, committed $1 million to the College of Humanities and Sciences to endow the Harrell-Benson Scholarship, which will be awarded yearly to students in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, beginning this fall.
Harrell earned a master’s degree in education from the university in 1975. The couple own a home-remodeling business in Palo Alto, Calif.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
