A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Covid-19 Therapeutics Accelerator
Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell have pledged $100 million for coronavirus efforts.
They pledged $20 million through their foundation to the effort created in recent weeks by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others to speed up the development of treatments for Covid-19 patients and make it easier for those with the disease to access treatment.
The Dells also pledged a total of $80 million in coronavirus pandemic aid to help health-care workers, support the work of nonprofits and schools, and help small businesses and others.
Michael Dell founded and leads the technology company Dell, in Austin, Tex. He and his wife have given significant sums through their foundation in Texas and elsewhere over the years.
Feeding America
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gave $100 million to the charity’s Covid-19 Response Fund, enabling it to help many people who now need food assistance after losing their jobs as the spread of the disease has caused so many businesses to close in recent weeks.
Bezos founded the online retail behemoth in 1994 and since then has become the richest person in the world with a net worth currently pegged at $120 billion, according to Forbes.
He made a splash in February when he pledged to give $10 billion to fight climate change, and he appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the most generous donors for the $2 billion donation he and his former wife, MacKenzie Bezos, gave to launch Day One Fund, an umbrella organization that houses a grant-making foundation and an operating foundation.
Wharton School
Bruce Jacobs gave $8 million to establish a quantitative finance major within the Finance Department, create a professorship in quantitative finance, and set up a scholarship fund.
Jacobs co-founded the investment firm Jacobs Levy Equity Management in 1986. He serves there as co-chief investment officer, portfolio manager, and co-director of research.
He earned a master’s degree in applied economics and a Ph.D. in finance from Wharton in 1979 and 1986, respectively. He serves as chairman of Wharton’s advisory board of the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research and previously taught finance at the Wharton School.
Boca Raton Regional Hospital
Barbara Gutin donated $3 million to launch a pre- and postpartum program at the Christine E. Lynn Women’s Health & Wellness Institute.
The program is aimed at providing support to pregnant women and new mothers as they navigate some of the complicated physical and mental-health issues that can arise during and after a woman’s pregnancy. The program will also help new mothers learn how to care for their newborns.
Gutin and her late husband, Irving Gutin, are longtime donors to the hospital. Irving Gutin led the mergers-and-acquisitions division at Tyco International, a security-systems corporation. He died in 2016.
Legacy Health and Oregon Health & Science University
Ryan and Mary Finley gave a total of $3 million ($1.5 million apiece) through their RMF Foundation to the two organizations to help frontline clinicians and health care workers caring for Covid-19 patients.
Ryan Finley founded SurveyMonkey, an online-survey software company, in 1999. He owned the company until 2009 when Spectrum Equity and Bain Capital acquired a majority interest. It went public in 2018. He now serves on the company’s Board of Directors.
America’s Food Fund
Oprah Winfrey pledged $1 million to the new national program, which will help feed people in need. The organization was created by celebrity chef José Andrés, who founded the nonprofit World Central Kitchen; Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot; the actor Leonardo DiCaprio; Laurene Powell Jobs; and Apple.
Winfrey, a billionaire media mogul, pledged to give an additional $9 million to help other pandemic relief efforts but did not name the organizations to which she plans to give. A longtime donor to a variety of causes, Winfrey has appeared six times on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the people who give the most to charity.
No Kid Hungry
Angelina Jolie donated $1 million to provide meals for children from low-income families who rely on school meals and are now struggling to eat as schools across the country have closed in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
Jolie is a well-known Hollywood actor and has worked with the United Nations Human Rights Council for nearly two decades. In 2012, she was appointed a UNHRC Special Envoy. In that role she conducts advocacy work for displaced people and represents the organization’s High Commissioner in diplomatic settings.
Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital
Dan and Kathelen Amos gave $1 million to renovate the fifth floor of an off-campus medical facility so the hospital can treat more patients as the coronavirus pandemic spreads.
The donation, which will match gifts from other donors, will enable the hospital to create a special unit of 29 beds and seven ICU beds for patient care.
Dan Amos is chairman and CEO of Aflac and Aflac Incorporated, an insurance company with headquarters in Columbus, Geo.
Kathelen Amos, who retired from Aflac in 2005, served as the company’s deputy counsel and later created and led the company’s corporate communications department. She was the corporations first woman executive vice president.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Country music singer Dolly Parton pledged $1 million to back the medical center’s research into Covid-19. She said in a social-media post that she is impressed by the medical center’s Covid-19 research and also wants to honor Vanderbilt surgeon Naji Abumrad, who became a friend in 2014 after she was treated at the hospital following an automobile accident. (His son, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad, interviewed Parton for “Dolly Parton’s America,” a 2019 podcast series.
In addition to her donation, Parton recently launched a weekly children’s video series in which she reads children’s books in an effort to entertain kids who are now homebound because of the pandemic. Through her Dollywood Foundation, Parton has supported children’s literacy efforts for many years.
