A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford U. School of Medicine
Elizabeth and Bruce Dunlevie gave $80 million to expand access to advanced prenatal and postpartum care for more mothers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of the total, $50 million will pay for a new, larger labor and delivery unit at the children’s hospital and create a maternity antepartum unit for mothers with underlying conditions such as heart disease, cancer, epilepsy, and diabetes, or who have been hospitalized following a high-risk pregnancy or complicated birth.
The remaining $30 million will develop a maternal-fetal medicine program at Stanford’s medical school and recruit faculty and researchers to improve health outcomes for mothers across the globe.
Elizabeth Dunlevie is board chair at the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and a member of the board at Packard Children’s Hospital. Bruce Dunlevie is the founder and general partner of Benchmark Capital, a venture-capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif., that provided early seed funding to eBay, Instagram, Twitter, and Uber, among other prominent technology start-ups.
Gary Sinise Foundation
Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, the billionaires who co-founded the Home Depot, jointly donated $40 million through their foundations to this organization created by the actor Gary Sinise. The gift backs the Gary Sinise Foundation Avalon Network, which will establish 20 treatment sites nationwide to offer cognitive-health and mental-wellness programs to thousands of military veterans, first responders, their families, and other people in need. The network will pay particular attention to treating post-traumatic stress, traumatic brain injuries, and substance abuse.
The Marcus Foundation gave $20 million, and another $20 million came through the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. Marcus was the Home Depot’s first CEO and stepped down as its chairman in 2002.
Blank succeeded Marcus as CEO of the Home Depot and retired in 2001. He is the chairman, owner, and CEO of the Atlanta Falcons football team.
Marymount Manhattan College
Russell and Judith Mara Carson have given her alma mater $25 million through the Carson Family Charitable Trust to create the Judith Mara Carson Center for Visual Arts and offer scholarships. Of the gift, $15 million will redesign two floors of the college’s main building to include an art-history classroom, a seminar room, and flexible space for academics, exhibitions, and events. The remaining $10 million will endow scholarships for the college’s students, 80 percent of whom earn degrees in the creative arts.
Russell Carson is a co-founder and general partner at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a private-equity firm in New York. Judith Carson graduated from the college in 2003 with a degree in art history and has served on its Board of Trustees.
American Academy of Arts & Sciences
The financier David Rubenstein has pledged $10 million to build a new facility at its headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., that will house its archival collections of historically significant papers, audio recordings, books, artworks, and letters from academy members and make their records more accessible to the public. His gift will also create the Rubenstein Fund for American Institutions, which aims to advance nonpartisan research and advocacy efforts on democratic engagement, economic iniquity, and justice.
Rubenstein is co-founder and co-chief executive officer of the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm in Washington. He also serves as co-chair of the academy’s $100 million capital campaign.
Novant Health
The basketball legend Michael Jordan gave $10 million to open two family-health clinics on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, near his hometown of Wilmington, N.C. The new clinics will follow two medical clinics he endowed in Charlotte, N.C., that have administered comprehensive primary care, behavioral-health care, social services, and Covid-19 vaccines to thousands of people who live in the community. The two new clinics are expected to open early next year.
Before he retired in 2003, he played 15 seasons in the NBA with the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards. He now is the majority owner and chairman of the Charlotte Hornets.
Wisconsin Historical Society
W. Jerome Frautschi is donating $10 million to back a new Wisconsin history museum in Madison. He previously gave $3.5 million to its capital campaign to build a new $120 million, 100,000-square-foot facility that will double the historical society’s exhibition space and modernize its technology to share its collection digitally.
Frautschi owned and led Webcrafters, a printing company in Madison, for 42 years. He is married to Pleasant Rowland, who founded the Pleasant Company and the American Girl doll brand. She sold the company for $700 million to Mattel in 1998.
Mount Sinai Health System
The billionaire Robert Smith has donated $3.8 million to create the Robert F. Smith Mobile MRI Unit, which will enable men in predominantly Black neighborhoods in New York City to schedule prostate screening appointments close to home, as well as follow-up appointments with the hospital’s urologists. The mobile unit is expected to be ready by the end of this summer.
Smith is the founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, a private-equity firm based in Austin, Tex. He has given repeatedly to causes that support prostate research and health in Black men, including to City of Hope and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.
SAY Detroit
Kelly and Matthew Stafford have given $1 million to establish an education and literacy center for students from low-income households in Detroit. The gift will pay for a new facility that includes an auditorium, six classrooms, learning labs, and vocational training space for this nonprofit group that was founded by the journalist and author Mitch Albom.
Matthew Stafford was the quarterback for the Detroit Lions football team for the past 12 years. He was recently traded to the Los Angeles Rams.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.
