A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
SPCA Monterey County
Claire Jacobson left $22 million with the stipulation that the money must be used to support building and renovations projects, and endowment. The charity’s officials said in a news release that they plan to use the gift to renovate the group’s education center, build two facilities in Salinas, Calif., and establish an endowment.
Jacobson, who died in 2020, taught elementary school in Salinas before retiring. A longtime supporter of the animal welfare group, she rode horses and devoted much of her time to the equine sport of competitive dressage and to raising Old English Sheep Dogs and showing them in competitions.
Her late husband, Charles Jacobson, founded Mobileparks West in 1978. The company developed mobile home parks in California, Oregon, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Washington. He died in 2013.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Bill Gates gave $20 billion to his and his former wife’s foundation to increase the amount of grant money it gives to the causes it supports, including global health and development, gender equality, economic mobility, and education in the United States and abroad.
The new infusion of money, the largest Gates has ever given, will push the foundation’s endowment to $70 billion, and raise the foundation’s annual grant making up from its pre-pandemic giving of nearly $6 billion to $9 billion by 2026.
Gates co-founded the computer giant Microsoft in 1976 and became one of the richest people in the world. Today his wealth is estimated at about $122 billion. He and Melinda French Gates founded the Gates Foundation in 2000, and it has since become a grant-making powerhouse and one of the most influential philanthropies in the world.
The couple divorced last year but continue to run the foundation together. They have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 13 times over the last 22 years. In a blog post about his latest donation, Bill Gates said that he hoped the gift would encourage other wealthy and privileged people to donate more to address the world’s current crises.
St. John’s University
Peter D’Angelo and Margaret La Rosa D’Angelo pledged $20 million to support the construction of the new Health Sciences Center at the Queens, N.Y., campus. The couple directed $15 million of the gift toward the construction of the center, which is scheduled to open in 2024, and the remaining $5 million toward the university’s “critical needs.”
Peter D’Angelo is president of CAM Capital, a private investment firm in New York that was founded by the billionaire financier and philanthropist Bruce Kovner. D’Angelo began his finance career at Marine Midland Bank in 1973 in the International Banking Department. He later served as vice president of Commodities Corporation until April 1983 to help Kovner start Caxton Associates, a hedge fund.
Peter D’Angelo earned an M.B.A. from St. John’s in 1978 and served as chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees from 2011 to 2016. His wife, Margaret La Rosa D’Angelo, is an alumna of the university. She earned an education degree from the university in 1970 and currently serves on the university’s Board of Trustees.
LMH Health Foundation
Dana Anderson pledged $10 million, half of which is an outright gift to support a variety of programs at Lawrence Memorial Hospital Health system. The remaining $5 million will create an endowment and will come to the health system upon the donor’s death. Officials at the health system plan to name a building for the donor and his late wife, Sue Anderson, who died in 2021 at 79.
Anderson is a former vice chairman of the Macerich, a commercial real-estate developer headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif., where he started his career in 1966. He formerly served as the company’s chief operating officer and its executive vice president. He and his late wife gave Lawrence Memorial Hospital $1 million in 2020 to back new technologies used to benefit surgical and heart patients.
Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest
Irwin and Joan Jacobs gave $10 million to expand the women’s health care organization’s services and increase its patients’ access to reproductive- and sexual-health care.
Irwin Jacobs is the founder of Qualcomm, a wireless-communications company, in San Diego. He and his wife are longtime donors to nonprofits and mostly support organizations in the San Diego area, where Qualcomm is headquartered. The couple have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 16 times since 2002.
Summa Health
Sharon and Richard Juve gave $10 million to support a new behavioral-health facility that is being built in Akron, Ohio. It will be named the Juve Family Behavioral Health Pavilion and is scheduled to open in January.
The new health care center will offer integrated behavioral-health services, including inpatient treatment, outpatient programs for addiction and mental health, the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, and a renovated detox unit.
Rick Juve is chairman of Americhem, a polymer manufacturer in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, that was founded by his father, Dick Juve, in the 1950s.
University of California at Davis School of Medicine
Jim Anderson gave $5 million to support the medical school’s new Office of Wellness Education, which is aimed at integrating a curriculum for medical students and faculty focused on physical, emotional, societal, environmental and global concerns; and offering integrated health and wellness resources for patients.
Some of the money will also be used to establish the Jacquelyn S. Anderson Endowed Chair in Wellness, which is named for the donor’s late wife, who died last year. Jim Anderson owns and leads WHAL, GP, LLC, the general partner of WHAL Properties, LP., a real-estate company in Sacramento, Calif.
Case Western Reserve University
Rebecca Barchas pledged $3.5 million to establish the Rebecca E. Barchas, MD, Professorship of Translational Psychiatry and to support the research of the faculty member who will hold that professorship.
Barchas is a retired psychiatrist who earned a medical degree from the university in 1975. She said in a news release that her inspiration to give the gift stems from the positive experience she had when she was a student in the medical school and her deep respect for researchers whose work provides the tools and medications that clinical psychiatrists use to help patients.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
