A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
University of Hawaii at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pledged $50 million to support a variety of research groups within the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. The money will back efforts to document changing ocean conditions, explore solutions to support healthier ocean ecosystems, enhance coastal resilience from storms and sea-level rise, and tackle challenges to marine organisms including everything from the tiniest corals to large marine mammals.
Chan is a pediatrician and Zuckerberg co-founded the social-media giant Facebook. The couple give extensively through the nonprofit arms of their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and have appeared together on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors six times since 2012.
Zuckerberg said in a news release that he and Chan, who own a large estate on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, were inspired to pledge the money because they were impressed with the university’s “trailblazing research on coral reef restoration, the impact of climate change on coastal waters, and other areas related to the health of our oceans.”
Texas Tech University
Gordon and Joyce Davis pledged $44 million to back a variety of efforts in the College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, which will be renamed for Gordon Davis. Of the total, $25 million will endow the college, $15 million will support educational efforts within the college, and $4 million will establish the Gordon and Joyce Davis Endowment for Excellence in Meat and Food Science.
Gordon Davis is a Texas businessman who spent 10 years as an associate professor at the college. He began his career as a high-school teacher in the late 1960s and later was an instructor at Texas A&M University while finishing a master’s and doctorate in meat science there. In 1984, he founded CEV Multimedia, a company that develops online curricula, instructional materials, and certification testing for the agricultural sciences, architecture, construction, transportation, manufacturing, information technology, health science, law, public safety, and many other fields.
In 2020, the couple created the Gordon and Joyce Davis Foundation, through which they award scholarships to students planning to attend community colleges, universities, or trade schools.
Arizona State University Thunderbird School of Global Management
Francis and Dionne Najafi gave $25 million to establish the Francis and Dionne Najafi 100 Million Learners Global Initiative, an accredited online certificate program in global management and entrepreneurship. The program will be covered by full scholarships and will offer five different courses in 40 languages to students worldwide.
The program will launch in phases, beginning in April. In the first year, the program will be available to students in Iran, Kenya, Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, India, Senegal, Brazil, and Vietnam in their native languages. It will expand in the second year to students across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. Later phases will reach students worldwide.
Francis Najafi came to the United States from Iran to get an education and earned four degrees from three universities. In 1982, he founded the Pivotal Group, an investment firm in Phoenix that focuses on private equity and real estate. He became a U.S. citizen in the 1980s and in 2011 was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for outstanding citizenship, individual achievement, and encouragement of cultural unity.
He said in a university news release that he and his wife were inspired to give this gift because they believe education is a basic human right but so few people around the world have access to it.
“As an immigrant some five decades ago, I learned the value of education,” he said. “I learned my basic management skills and leadership here at Thunderbird, where I also learned that you can work through your cultural and social differences.”
Dartmouth College
Dorothy Byrne gave $25 million to the university and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health to establish the Byrne Family Cancer Research Institute at Norris Cotton Cancer Center and to help raise an additional $25 million for the institute from other donors. Work at the interdisciplinary research institute aims to speed up the process by which scientific breakthroughs are developed into treatments and services for cancer patients.
Dorothy Byrne is a New Hampshire philanthropist. Her late husband, John (Jack) Byrne, served as CEO of Geico in the 1970 and ‘80s and was famous in business circles for turning the one-time struggling auto insurer into a successful insurance behemoth that was eventually acquired by Berkshire Hathaway. He later did the same in the early 1990s for the Fireman’s Fund’s insurance company, which he sold to Allianz AG for $3 billion. He died in 2013.
Dorothy Byrne leads the Jack and Dorothy Byrne Foundation, which supports a wide range of charitable organizations in New Hampshire and Vermont, but her gift to Dartmouth is a personal donation rather than a grant through the foundation, Dartmouth officials confirmed. She and her late husband have given extensively to Dartmouth over the years. They have three children and two grandchildren who attended the college.
Carroll Center for the Blind
Gordon Gund and his family gave $1.5 million to support rehabilitation programs for people who are blind or struggle with low vision. The center’s rehabilitation building will be renamed the Lulie Gund Center for Vision Rehabilitation. Llura (Lulie) Gund is the donor’s late wife. She died in 2020.
Gordon Gund founded Gund Investment Corporation, a venture-capital firm in Princeton, N.J., and is a former U.S. Navy pilot. He began to lose his eyesight in college but didn’t realize it. He was completely blind by the time he was 31, the result of the genetic disease retinitis pigmentosa. Gund co-founded the Foundation Fighting Blindness in 1971 and since then has poured well over $100 million into the nonprofit, which supports research to find cures for retinal degenerative diseases. He and his late wife appeared on the 2014 Philanthropy 50.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
