A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Irwin and Joan Jacobs pledged $100 million to kick off Salk’s $500 million capital campaign. The donation is a challenge pledge, with which the Jacobses will match donations from other donors by June 2022. Money raised will be used to build the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Science and Technology Center on Salk’s campus in La Jolla, Calif., support scientific programs, and increase Salk’s endowment.
Irwin Jacobs is an engineer who co-founded the wireless technology giant Qualcomm in 1985. He was a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California at San Diego from 1966 to 1972, and during that time he co-founded the Linkabit Corporation, which developed a satellite-encryption device.
The Jacobs have a long history of involvement in and support for the Salk Institute. In the early 2000s, Irwin Jacobs began participating in the Salk International Council, a group of professionals dedicated to advocating for Salk science. In 2004, the Jacobses helped establish the Crick-Jacobs Center for Computational and Theoretical Biology, where Salk scientists use computer modeling to study how the brain processes information. The new building will be home to an expanded Crick-Jacobs Center.
The Jacobses are billionaires and longtime donors to many San Diego-area nonprofits. They have appeared on the Chronicle‘s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 15 times since 2002 and have given more than $1.3 billion to charity during that time period.
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Mike and Maria Repole gave $50 million through their Nonna’s Garden Foundation to establish Nonna’s Garden Foundation Initiative for Cancer Care and Research. The program will back research and patient care in the areas of lymphoma and melanoma therapies, early drug development, and immuno-oncology. It will also provide financial assistance for pediatric patients and support patient-care programs at the cancer center’s Commack, N.Y., location, which provides outpatient services for Long Island residents.
Mike Repole co-founded the beverage company Glaceau, which was sold to Coca-Cola in 2007 for $4.2 billion, and BodyArmor SuperDrink, a sports-drink manufacturer, which was sold to Coca-Cola for $5.6 billion earlier this month.
Santa Fe Institute
William (Bill) Miller pledged $50 million to advance the institute’s work in complex systems science and expand its research programs and facilities. Miller is chairman emeritus of the institute’s Board of Trustees.
Miller founded the investment bank Miller Value Partners and is a former portfolio manager at Legg Mason Capital Management Value Trust, an investment and assets-management firm in Baltimore that was acquired by Franklin Templeton Investments in 2020. Prior to his finance career, he served in Vietnam as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army and then pursued graduate studies in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.
University of Maryland at Baltimore
Lawrence Hayman pledged an estimated $18 million to establish two endowments. One will provide scholarships and other aid to students from local high schools who have been admitted into the university’s health professions program, and it will also be used to recruit health care providers to practice in Maryland’s Caroline, Talbot, Dorchester, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties.
The second endowment will allow the university’s president to allocate money to support university research programs focused on finding cures and advanced treatments of cancers of all types.
Hayman is chairman of H&M Bay, Inc., a logistics and storage company in Federalsburg, Md. He is a life-long friend of the university’s new president, Bruce Jarrell. Hayman’s gift, which he gave to celebrate Jarrell’s inauguration, will come to the university as a bequest after he dies.
Middlebury College
Ted Truscott, and his wife, Kathy O’Connor Truscott, gave $10 million to create an endowed professorship in Black Studies, expand financial aid for undergraduate and graduate students, and provide unrestricted support for a variety of other programs.
Ted Truscott is CEO of Columbia Threadneedle Investments, an asset-management firm in Boston. Kathy O’Connor Truscott co-owns Abbot Cards Company, a greeting card company in Marblehead, Mass., that was founded by her father. Before she retired, she served as vice president of the company. The couple both graduated from Middlebury in 1983.
Otis College of Art and Design
Mei-Lee Ney gave $10 million to create the Charles White Art and Design Scholarship, a full, four-year scholarship program named for the influential American artist and educator Charles White. The scholarship will be awarded to an incoming first-year art and design student from an underrepresented group in Los Angeles County in spring 2022, and beginning in 2023, the scholarship will expand to include one student from Los Angeles County and one from anywhere in the United States.
Ney is president of Richard Ney & Associates Asset Management, an investment advisory firm she helped run with her business partner and late husband, Richard, since 1973. She has worked in the investment industry since 1967 and was one of two women stockbrokers in the early 1970s at Neuberger Loeb and Company, a New York investment firm. She is also chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees. She gave the college $1 million in 2020.
White was renowned for his figurative style as well as his representations of Black life and his commentary on social-justice issues as seen through his paintings, drawings, lithographs, and murals. He served as an Otis faculty member from 1965 until his death in 1979.
Pittsburgh Opera
Francois Bitz gave $5 million to support the opera company’s $50 million capital campaign. Opera officials plan to name the company’s headquarters the Bitz Opera Factory.
Bitz is a Pittsburgh real-estate developer who co-founded FORE Systems, a technology company in Warrendale, Pa. The company was acquired by Britain’s General Electric Company in 1999 for $4.5 billion. He currently serves on the opera’s Board of Directors.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.