Gifts Roundup: U. of Chicago Lands $100 Million Pledge From Duchossois Family

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by The Chronicle:

University of Chicago Medicine

Craig and Janet Duchossois and their family pledged $100 million to create the Duchossois Family Institute, a center for research and other efforts focused on how the immune system, genetics, and microbiomes such as bacteria interact to maintain human health and prevent disease.

Mr. and Ms. Duchossois will give $50 million directly; the remaining money will come from the Duchossois Family Foundation, in which three generations of the clan are involved. The family has previously given the university gifts totaling $37 million.

Mr. Duchossois leads the Duchossois Group, a management and investment firm founded by his father, Richard Duchossois. The two men also own a large stake in Churchill Downs Incorporated, the holding company that owns the racetrack that is home to the Kentucky Derby.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Shuford family committed $18 million to the College of Arts & Sciences for its entrepreneurship program. The money will pay for new faculty, student internships, and a lecture series and endow the program’s executive directorship.

The donors are siblings Jim Shuford, chief executive of STM Industries, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the university in 1988 and 1992, respectively; Stephen Shuford, chief executive of Shurtape Technologies, who earned an MBA there in 1997; and fashion designer Dorothy Shuford Lanier, who graduated from the university in 1993.

The family businesses, which have roots in the textile industry, now focus on manufacturing tape products.

University of Southern California

Ofer and Shelly Nemirovsky gave $15 million to endow a residential college set to open in August. One of eight such buildings planned as part of the campus’s USC Village development, on the campus, it will be named the Shelly and Ofer Nemirovsky Residential College.

Ms. Nemirovsky earned a bachelor’s in English at the university in 1985 and serves on its Board of Trustees. Mr. Nemirovsky is a senior adviser to the private-equity firm HarbourVest.

Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

Financier Ronald Perelman and his wife, the psychiatrist Anna Chapman, pledged $4 million through the Perelman Family Foundation to support a research program dedicated to the early detection and prevention of multiple myeloma.

Mr. Perelman’s holding company, MacAndrews & Forbes, invests in consumer goods, banking, and comic-book publishing, among other industries. He has been giving large sums to nonprofits for decades and has appeared on The Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of top U.S. donors six times over the last decade, most recently ranking No. 19 for the nearly $90 million he gave to charity in 2016.

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Tech and media magnate Jeff Bezos gave $1 million to back the nonprofit’s legal and educational support to news organizations and to expand its services for independent journalists, nonprofit newsrooms, and documentary filmmakers.

Mr. Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon and owns The Washington Post.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.