Anonymous Donor Commits $95 Million to Coastal Carolina U. (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Coastal Carolina University

An anonymous donor has pledged $95 million to expand the liberal-arts university’s academic and athletic programs. In a statement, the donor describes himself as an African American entrepreneur who owns a financial consulting company, is younger than 30 years old, and lives in Alabama.

Prior to this planned gift, the university in Conway, S.C., had an endowment of $44.6 million. It is currently conducting a campaign to raise another $20 million by 2023.

Howard University, Campaign for Female Education, Tuskegee University, Xavier University of Louisiana, and Solutions Journalism Network

As part of her recent $1.7 billion giving spree, the billionaire MacKenzie Scott gave $40 million to Howard University, and $20 million each to Tuskegee University and Xavier University of Louisiana. All three universities said it was the largest gift from a single donor in their institutions’ history.

She also gave $25 million to the Campaign for Female Education toward its efforts to help 5 million girls attend school in some of the poorest rural areas of Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe over the next five years.

In addition, Scott gave $5 million to the Solutions Journalism Network.

Scott, who helped create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos, is a novelist and among the richest women in the world, with an estimated net worth of more than $62 billion. Last year, she signed the Giving Pledge, promising to give away more than half of her net worth in her lifetime.

Scott didn’t reveal how much she gave to individual nonprofits, but the Chronicle was able to obtain information about some specific gifts through its own reporting and other media sources.

Cornell University

David Duffield donated $5 million to establish the Duffield Family Cornell Promise Scholarship, which will provide financial assistance to undergraduate engineering students throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Duffield is chairman of Workday and the founder and CEO of Ridgeline, a technology company that makes software for investment managers. He graduated from Cornell with a bachelor’s degree in 1962 and an MBA in 1964.

University of Missouri at St. Louis

George and Melissa Paz have given $4 million for scholarships. George Paz retired in 2016 as CEO of Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit-management organization in St. Louis whose corporate headquarters he moved onto the university’s North Campus in 2007.

While a student there, he worked to pay for his education and graduated in 1982 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting. He now serves as president of the university’s Chancellor’s Council.

Monmouth College

Helen McNeel Wiener left $2 million to back the college’s science program, support lab space in the Center for Science and Business, and add to the Bernard A. Wiener Scholarship Fund for physics majors.

Helen Wiener was a 1938 graduate who died in 2018 at age 102. She previously created the scholarship fund in honor of her husband, who died in 2004 and was a physicist and an aeronautical engineer.

Skidmore College

The billionaire Laurie Tisch gave $1.5 million through her Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund to bolster the endowment of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery and expand its community educational programs for children throughout the region and beyond.

Tisch is an heiress to the Loews Corporation fortune, which has holdings in insurance, drilling rigs, natural gas pipelines, and hotels. She previously gave the museum a $1 million challenge gift in 2015 to endow the position of the assistant director for engagement. In 2008, her foundation gave $1.2 million to match another donor’s gift that enabled Skidmore faculty, visiting artists, and scholars to expand their access to and use of the museum’s resources in their academic coursework.

HSHS St. John’s Foundation

Babu Prasad has donated $1 million to support the neonatal intensive-care unit at HSHS St. John’s Children’s Hospital, in Springfield, Ill. Prasad emigrated to the United States in 1971. He became an anesthesiologist and worked at the pediatric hospital for 28 years until his retirement in 2004. He now works part-time at a pain-management clinic.

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