When Northern State University received a $12.5 million donation from a late alumna, Millicent Atkins, it came as a big surprise, said Todd Jordre, who leads the university’s foundation.
Although officials at the South Dakota institution knew Ms. Atkins, a farmer and landowner, was wealthy, they didn’t think she would leave the university a substantial gift. Other than attending the institution, she had little involvement with Northern State, and while she made several very small gifts over the years, she at one point asked to be removed from the university’s phone and mail solicitations lists.
“A 1940 graduate that has you on the do-not-call list wouldn’t have come up on our radar,” Mr. Jordre says.
But after Ms. Atkins died in 2012, Northern State officials received a letter from her lawyer. It turned out she had been planning since at least 1959, when she first wrote her will, for the university to receive one-third of her estate. She surprised two other nonprofits in the Upper Midwest with the same amount.
Increasingly complex family structures and nontraditional households pose new challenges for nonprofit fundraising.
Such surprise gifts are more common from childless donors, The Chronicle found in reviewing a sampling of donors on its annual Philanthropy 50 ranking of the most generous Americans. So expect more surprises in coming years from baby boomers, who are more likely to be childless than any generation before or after.
Fred Fields (businessman, died 2011)
$191.5 million to 13 nonprofits, mostly in the Pacific Northwest
About $166 million went to the Oregon Community Foundation for education and arts programs in the state, and $10 million went to Lewis & Clark College in Portland for scholarships. Mr. Fields directed the rest of the bequest to arts and culture groups, universities, and other organizations. Few of the nonprofits knew they were included in his will or that they would receive such large gifts.
Agnese Nelms Haury (heiress, died 2014)
$50 million to the University of Arizona Foundation
Her bequest created the university’s Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice. She never attended the university but got involved with it through her third husband, Emil Haury, a professor of anthropology there. An avid traveler, Ms. Haury researched economic and social issues faced by people in Latin America, North Africa, and Southeast Asia and later created the Inter-American Environmental Policy Center to help Native American groups gain federal tribal recognition.
Richard Herman (heir and private investor, died 2013)
$43 million to a charity and a performing-arts center in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Herman left $28 million to Family Matters of Greater Washington, a social-service group to which he had given small amounts since the 1960s, and $15 million to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to endow the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra. He was not closely involved with Family Matters or the Kennedy Center during his lifetime.
Mary Porter (heiress, died 2009)
$43.9 million to the Community Foundation of Broward in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Half of the bequest established a fund to support 20 charities in perpetuity, 30 percent went for support of arts and education programs, and the rest was earmarked for other projects at the foundation. Ms. Porter built a longstanding relationship with the organization during her lifetime.
William Ridgway (ophthalmologist, died 2013)
$39 million to the University of Evansville
Mr. Ridgway left the bulk of his estate to endow a university that was not his alma mater. He attended the institution, located in his Indiana hometown, but ended up graduating from another university. Although he lived in San Francisco, he had been involved with the University of Evansville since the 1960s.
