A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Communities in Schools
MacKenzie Scott gave $133.5 million to expand the nonprofit’s work in elementary, middle, and high schools across the country. The group coordinates with schools, local nonprofits, and agencies to provide a range of services including the basics such as food, housing, and health care. It also helps students access counseling, remote technology, and other aid that makes it easier for them to achieve academic success.
Scott is a novelist who helped create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos, and became one of the richest women in the world after her divorce several years ago. She has since given a total of roughly $8 billion in unrestricted gifts to charities that primarily help underserved and low-income people and appeared in the 2020 edition of the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis gave $100 million through their Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation. The gift will establish the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Cancer Ecosystems Project, which will bring together teams of researchers from across the cancer center to study the elements that contribute to the relapse of cancer.
Henry Kravis co-founded Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, a New York private-equity firm. Marie-Josée Kravis, an economist, serves as a vice chairman of the cancer center’s Board of Trustees.
This is not the couple’s first nine-figure donation to the institution. In 2014, they gave $100 million to launch the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology, an advanced genome-sequencing program. The couple appeared in the 2008 edition of the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest givers.
PeaceHealth
Peter and Diana Paulsen gave $50 million to expand PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center, a hospital in Bellingham, Wash. A section of the hospital that will house a new emergency department and specialized care center for women, children, and newborns will be named for Peter Paulsen.
Paulsen is a commercial real-estate developer and investor in Phoenix with deep roots in Bellingham. He designed and built the Hotel Bellwether, on Bellingham Bay, and sold it to a group of local investors in 2010. Peter Paulsen’s prior gifts to PeaceHealth include support for hospice programs.
University of Denver
Andy and Barbara Taylor gave $20 million to support programs and operations at the James C. Kennedy Mountain Campus, a 724-acre site outside of Denver that provides students and faculty with outdoor spaces for academic courses, field study, recreation, and well-being programs. A center for student living and dining on the campus will be named the Andy and Barbara Taylor Upper Camp.
Andy Taylor is executive chairman of Enterprise Holdings, parent company of the Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental, and Alamo Rent A Car brands. His father, Jack, founded Enterprise in 1957. Andy Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration at the university in 1970, and Barbara Taylor attended the university from 1969 to 1970.
Yeshiva University
Jack Belz and his family pledged $20 million to help pay for renovations to First Hall, the main academic building on the university’s Wilf Campus. It will be renamed the Belz Building.
Jack Belz is a Memphis real-estate developer and executive at Belz Enterprises, a real-estate company his father, Philip, founded in 1940. The Belz family has a long history of giving to the university, going back decades. Jack Belz’s parents established and endowed the Belz School of Jewish Music, and Philip Belz joined the university’s Board of Trustees in the 1960s.
Palm Beach Day School
Scott and Elena Shleifer gave $18 million to kick off the school’s capital campaign, an effort to grow the private school’s endowment, pay for building projects, and provide more support to faculty and staff. The gift is unrestricted.
Scott Shleifer co-founded Tiger Global Management’s private-equity investing arm in 2003. He previously worked as an analyst for Blackstone, another New York investment firm.
Cornell University
Joanne Knight gave $15 million to create the Charles Field Knight Deanship of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. Charles (Chuck) Field Knight is the donor’s late husband.
Chuck Knight was appointed CEO of Emerson Electric, a manufacturer of motorized electrical products, in 1973 at the age of 37 and served in that post for 27 years. He earned two bachelor’s degrees at Cornell in 1957 and 1958,
respectively, and an MBA from the university in 1959. He died in 2017.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
