A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Harvard Medical School and University of Global Health Equity
William and Joyce Cummings pledged $50 million through their Cummings Foundation to establish the Paul Farmer Collaborative of Harvard Medical School and the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda. The donation will be divided equally between the two institutions and will be paid over 10 years.
The program will back research, teaching, education, and student-exchange programs and provide support to postdoctoral trainees and faculty members at both institutions. The money will also go toward an annual global conference and workshop on health equity, global health delivery, research, education, and social medicine; an endowed professorship in global health equity at Harvard Medical School; clinical training focused on building surgical efforts in low-resource settings; and other programs.
The program is named for the globally respected physician and medical anthropologist who co-founded the international health and human-rights charity Partners in Health. Farmer was a professor at Harvard who served as chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School and chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity. He died in February at 62. William Cummings founded Cummings Properties in 1970, serving first as president and later as chairman of the commercial real-estate company.
Friends of the Children
Gary and Christine Rood pledged property valued at $33 million to expand the charity’s youth mentoring and other programs. Of the total, $23 million will support expanding the organization’s child and family well-being services to thousands more children and families throughout the country; $5 million will go directly to the charity’s South West Washington chapter; and the remaining $5 million will establish the Friends of the Children National Center of Excellence, in Portland, Ore.
The couple founded Rood Investments, a real-estate investment firm in Vancouver, Wash., that invests in senior housing and nursing homes, as well as commercial and residential properties. Their gift is in the form of five debt-free commercial properties, which they will donate over the next three years. The first two properties will be donated to the charity’s national office later this year and then sold immediately by the organization.
The couple cited the Seattle philanthropist MacKenzie Scott’s $44 million gift to the charity in August and another multimillion-dollar gift from the basketball legend Michael Jordan as the inspirations for their gift.
Minerva University
Reed Hastings gave $20 million to expand the 10-year-old private university’s programs and enrollment capabilities and to support scholarships. The university is headquartered in San Francisco, but its classes are conducted online and usually consist of fewer than 20 students. Minerva also offers immersive living and education programs in seven countries. Hastings is the co-founder and CEO of Netflix.
Children’s Minnesota
Richard Schulze gave $4 million though his Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation to support the health system’s new pediatric hybrid intraoperative magnetic-resonance-imaging neurosurgery suite, which is housed at the health system’s Minneapolis hospital.
He also pledged $1.5 million through the foundation to match gifts from other donors in an effort to further support the new suite and the neurosciences program at the hospital. Schulze founded Best Buy, a large consumer-electronics retailer.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
