$42-Million Committed for Arts Center; Other Gifts

Three nonprofit organizations recently received large donations:

• William Winspear, a Dallas manufacturer, and his wife, Margot, have pledged $42-million to help build the proposed Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. Construction on the center, which will be located in the city’s downtown arts district, is scheduled to begin in 2004. Mr. Winspear recently sold Associated Materials, his residential building-materials manufacturing company, to Harvest Products, in New York. The center’s 2,400-seat opera house will be named for the Winspears.
• Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio, has received $25-million from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. The donor earmarked the funds for athletics, fitness, and recreation programs. The gift is the largest donation ever received by the college.
• Jeff Skoll, a former president of the Internet auction site eBay, in San Jose, Calif., has contributed $20-million to the Skoll Community Fund, the supporting foundation he created at the Community Foundation Silicon Valley. This gift brings the fund’s endowment to $125-million.

The fund makes grants in four areas: education, microenterprise and economic development, philanthropy and the nonprofit world, and technology.

Other nonprofit groups that received large gifts:

Brookings Institution (Washington): $3.3-million pledge from Haim Saban, of Los Angeles, who heads the Saban Capital Group, to establish the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Grinnell College (Iowa): $1.5-million from Henry Cornell, an alumnus and a managing partner at Goldman Sachs, in New York, to help build a new dormitory, to endow a program to recruit foreign students, and to augment the annual fund.

National Constitution Center (Philadelphia): $10-million from Richard DeVos, a co-founder of Amway Corporation, in Ada, Mich., and his wife, Helen, to help build and endow the center, which is scheduled to open next summer.

North Carolina State U. (Raleigh): $5-million pledge from Wayne T. Day, president and chief executive officer of John J. Kirlin Inc., a contractor in Rockville, Md., his wife, Mary Grace, and their family, for the university’s athletics program.

Oregon Health & Science University Foundation (Portland): $4-million bequest from Margaret Thiele Petti, who owned a restaurant in Portland, to endow chairs in ophthalmology and corneal service at the Casey Eye Institute, and to support corneal research at the university.

U. of Arkansas (Fayetteville): $1-million pledge from Jim Faulkner, of Little Rock, Ark., who founded an advertising agency in Arkansas, and his wife, Joyce, to endow six scholarships; and $1-million from Charles E. Scharlau, of Fayetteville, a university trustee and the retired chairman of Southwestern Energy Company, in Houston, and his wife, Clydene, to endow a professorship in chemistry and to support the School of Law and the university’s libraries.

U. of Miami (Coral Gables, Fla.): $5.9-million from Phillip Frost, chairman of the IVAX Corporation, a pharmaceutical company in Miami, and chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees, and his wife, Patricia, to help construct a building for the School of Music.