November 9, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Mary Joan Palevsky, a Los Angeles philanthropist and former wife of a computer-technology tycoon, left $200-million from her estate to the California Community Foundation, a Los Angeles fund that supports the arts and human development, community revitalization, education, and health care. Her gift, which she said could be used any way the organization wanted, came as a surprise, since her only other donation to the foundation amounted to $2,200 and was made in 1997.
“It was a shock,” Antonia Hernandez, president of the community foundation, says as she recalls hearing the news of the bequest from Ms. Palevsky, who died in March at the age of 80. “I couldn’t believe it. It was just a blessing from heaven.”
Ms. Hernandez says that the foundation will be able to use the money to support many of Ms. Palevsky’s favorite causes. Many of the charities that Ms. Palevsky supported in her lifetime and in her will “matched perfectly with our strategic 10-year plan,” which went into effect this year. In 1952 Ms. Palevsky married Max Palevsky, who founded Scientific Data Systems — sold to Xerox in 1969 for close to $1-billion — and who later helped found Intel. The couple divorced in 1968.
Supported Many Causes
Over the years, Ms. Palevsky became popular in Los Angeles as a quiet, modest, politically progressive philanthropist, and gave to numerous causes. She provided a total of $9-million to the University of California at Los Angeles over the past four decades, and gave a collection of about 650 Islamic art objects to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1973.
In her will, she left $1.1-million to the museum, and $1-million each to Mount St. Mary’s College, the National Parkinson’s Foundation, and the United Negro College Fund, among 40 smaller bequests to other organizations.
Ms. Palevsky became a donor to the community foundation when she read a newspaper article about its efforts to ease the shortage of textbooks in Los Angeles public schools. Impressed by the foundation’s work, she sent in a check for $2,200. But what the California Community Foundation did not know was that, at the same time, she earmarked the lion’s share of her fortune for the foundation to receive after she died.
The California Community Foundation has created the Joan Palevsky Endowment for the Future of Los Angeles, which will focus on issues that Ms. Palevsky supported throughout her life: helping disadvantaged people and supporting the arts, civic participation, civil liberties, education, and housing. Her gift will allow the foundation to double its discretionary grant making — which last year totalled about $10-million in competitive grants to nonprofit groups — and brings the foundation’s total assets to $1-billion.
