L.A. Couple Pledges $300-Million for Schools

Eli and Edythe Broad recently pledged $300-million to the Broad Foundation, in Los Angeles, which they founded in 1999 with a $100-million pledge. The foundation makes grants to help improve governance, labor relations, and management in large urban school districts nationwide. Mr. Broad is chairman of SunAmerica, a financial-services company in Los Angeles.

Other nonprofit groups that received large gifts:

California College of Arts and Crafts (San Francisco): $1-million from Judith P. Timken, chairman of the college’s board, and her husband, William, for the recently renamed Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and $1-million from Phyllis C. Wattis, of San Francisco, a philanthropist and arts patron, for exhibitions and public programs.

Clark U. (Worcester, Mass.): $1.2-million from the late John O’Connor, an alumnus and university trustee who was chairman of Gravestar, a real estate-development and asset-management company in Cambridge, Mass., and his wife, Carolyn Mugar O’Connor, who inherited a family fortune stemming from the Star Market chain of grocery stores, to endow a professorship at the Center for Holocaust Studies.

Indiana U.-Purdue U. at Indianapolis: $1-million pledge from Karl Zimmer, the retired chair of Zimmer Paper Products, in Indianapolis, and his wife, Barbara, a retired lecturer at the university, to endow a professorship in intercultural communication.

Kansas U. Endowment Association (Lawrence): $1-million pledge from Robert H. Malott, of Kenilworth, Ill., former chairman of the FMC Corporation, in Chicago, and his wife, Elizabeth (Ibby) Hubert Malott, for landscaping and signs at an entrance to the university’s campus.

Oklahoma City U.: Steinway pianos valued at $2.1-million from Wanda Bass, chairman of the Board of Directors of the First National Bank & Trust Company of McAlester, in Oklahoma, for the music school, from which her daughter received a degree in 1979. In addition to the 105 pianos, Mrs. Bass donated $400,000 for an endowment to maintain them.

Saint Francis U. (Loretto, Pa.): $1.5-million from Joseph DiSepio, of Monroe Township, N.J., a retired banker, and his wife, Marguerite Scharpf DiSepio, to endow a professorship in computer science.

South Texas College of Law (Houston): $10-million unrestricted bequest from Fred Parks, a Houston lawyer who graduated from the college in 1937; the money will be used for endowment.

U. of Mary (Bismarck, N.D.): $1.2-million unrestricted bequest from Harley McDowell, of Bismarck, who owned fast-food franchises in North Dakota, and his wife, Margaret; $1-million from David M. Heskett, chairman emeritus of the Montana Dakota Utilities Resources Group, in Bismarck, and his wife, Margaret, for unrestricted use; and $1-million from Phyllis Tarnasky, of Bismarck, an artist and a former hospital lab technician, and her late husband, Ralph, a physician, for unrestricted use.

U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor: $2-million from Robert B. Fiske Jr., a senior partner at Davis, Polk & Wardwell, in New York, to help repay the loans of law-school graduates who go on to work for the government.

U. of Rochester (N.Y.): $10.2-million bequest from Helen (Bunny) F. Gowen, and her husband, Fred, who was an executive at the Mackay-Shields Financial Corporation, in New York, to support academic programs and to establish two professorships.

Worcester Academy (Mass.): $9.5-million unrestricted bequest from Jacques C. LeBermuth, a former banker and bonds trader, who attended the school but never graduated.