A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
New York Genome Center
Jim Simons and Russell Carson pledged a combined $125 million to the New York Genome Center, on whose board they both serve. The money will support the center’s work in genomic sequencing, computational analysis, the development of new genomic tools, and research into a variety of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases and cancers.
Simons will give $100 million through his Simons Foundation, and Carson will donate $25 million through his Carson Family Charitable Trust.
Simons is a multibillionaire who founded the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies and led the State University of New York at Stony Brook’s mathematics department from 1968 to 1976. Carson co-founded the private-equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. In 2016, the two men gave the center a joint gift of $100 million.
University of Virginia
Frank Sands Sr. gave $68 million to the Darden School of Business to endow new professorships, create a “lifelong learning” program, renovate the C. Ray Smith Alumni Hall, and help pay for the new UVA Inn at Darden and Conference Center for Lifelong Learning. The Inn will be named for Sands.
Sands is chairman of the private-equity firm Sands Capital Management, which he and his late wife, Marjorie, founded in 1992. Sands earned an MBA at Darden in 1963.
University of South Florida Foundation
University President Judy Genshaft and her husband, Steven Greenbaum, donated $20 million to help pay for a new five-story building for the USF Honors College that will include study areas, labs, classrooms, offices, and event spaces. The college, which Genshaft launched in 2002, will be named for her.
Genshaft has served as the USF’s president for the last 19 years. She announced last year that she plans to retire in July. She was a tenured professor at Ohio State University earlier in her career and later became dean of education at the State University of New York at Albany.
University of California at Irvine
Donald and Joan Beall gave $16.6 million through their Beall Family Foundation to support a campus entrepreneurship program, which will be renamed UCI Beall Applied Innovation.
The program, launched in 2014, brings together entrepreneurs and investors to connect campus-based discoveries with the nearby business community.
Donald Beall is a partner with Dartbrook Partners, the family’s investment office. He retired as chairman and CEO from Rockwell International in 1998 after a 30-year career there. Including this most recent donation, the Bealls have given the university a total of $30 million.
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Allan and Shelley Holt gave $11 million through their Hillside Foundation to create the Allan and Shelley Holt Innovations Gallery, a new space focused on showing how inventions shape aviation and space exploration.
Allan Holt is a senior partner and managing director at the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm in Washington. He serves as chairman of the museum’s board and established the endowed Holt Scholars Program in 2015.
Holt Scholars brings Washington middle-school students to the museum for specially curated field trips that align with their science curriculum and provides teachers and students with pre- and post-visit lesson plans and activities.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Carolyn Clark Powers pledged $10 million to back free general admission for the museum for the next five years.
Powers is president of the museum’s Board of Trustees and was elected to the post last year after serving as a trustee since 2009. She was previously married to William (Bill) Powers, a former managing director and portfolio manager at Pacific Investment Management Company.
Planned Parenthood
David Karp gave $1 million to the women’s health group in response to the Alabama State Senate’s approval of a law that bans abortion at every stage of pregnancy and makes no exceptions for women and girls who become pregnant through rape or incest.
Karp, who is 32, founded Tumblr, a microblogging website. He sold the company in 2013 for $1.1 billion to Yahoo.
“I urge more men to speak up and contribute. Women don’t get pregnant alone, and we owe them much more than our silent support in the political fight ahead,” said Karp in a statement announcing his gift.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.