Gifts Roundup: Clooney, Katzenberg, Spielberg, and Winfrey Pledge $2 Million to Student Gun-Control Activists

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by The Chronicle:

Signal Foundation

Brian Acton, the billionaire co-founder of the messaging program WhatsApp, has donated $50 million to this new nonprofit organization, which makes an encrypted messaging app promising surveillance-free communication.

The goal of the effort is to make “private communication accessible and ubiquitous,” the foundation stated.

Mr. Acton and his business partner sold WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. He has also joined the charity as its executive chairman.

Hammer Museum at U. of California at Los Angeles

Lynda and Stewart Resnick have given $30 million to the Los Angeles museum’s capital campaign. The Resnicks own the Wonderful Company, which operates a variety of food and beverage brands like Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, and Wonderful Pistachios. In honor of the gift, the museum will name its building the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Cultural Center.

The museum’s capital campaign also received $20 million from Marcy Carsey, a partner at the Carsey-Werner Company, which produced a number of hit television programs including The Cosby Show, Roseanne, and That ‘70s Show. She has served as the museum’s board chair since 2014.

Saint Louis U.

Richard Chaifetz and his wife, Jill, gave $15 million for the right to rename its business school and support a center for entrepreneurship.

Mr. Chaifetz is the founder and chairman of ComPsych, a Chicago company that provides products and services to companies to help their employees with personal matters. He is also founder and chairman of the Chaifetz Group, a venture-capital firm. This is the second major contribution the couple has made to the university, following a $12 million gift in 2007 for its sports arena.

Since 2000, the business school has been named for John Cook, who gave an undisclosed gift for the naming rights in that year. The university says Mr. Cook agreed to give up his naming rights if it helped the institution reach its fundraising goals.

Washington U. in St. Louis

The university has received $12 million from Roger, Fran, Paul, and Elke Koch to create the Koch Center for Family Business and two endowed professorships that will educate students who inherit or work at family businesses.

Roger and Paul Koch are co-chairmen of the Koch Development Company, a commercial real-estate development firm based in St. Louis that was founded by the brothers’ grandparents.

Cincinnati Cancer Center

Scott Farmer has given $10 million through the Farmer Family Foundation to this collaboration of the University of Cincinnati, University of Cincinnati Health, and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

Mr. Farmer is the chairman and CEO of the Cintas Corporation, a manufacturer of uniforms in Cincinnati. The center will use the gift for faculty recruitment and research and to achieve federal designation as a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Wheaton College

Diana Davis Spencer has issued a $10 million pledge to her alma mater through her foundation. The Massachusetts college will use the money to integrate social-entrepreneurship education into its liberal-arts and sciences program.

Ms. Spencer serves as the president of her foundation and is a 1960 alumna and former trustee of the college. She inherited a large fortune from her father, who was the founder of Shelby Cullom Davis & Company, an investment bank in New York.

California State U. at Sacramento

Ernest Tschannen has given $9 million to help build a new science complex that will house a planetarium, observatory, “living laboratory,” and two lecture halls.

A Swiss immigrant and mechanical engineer who made his fortune in real-estate investments, Mr. Tschannen owns nearly 30 apartment complexes in the United States.

Arkansas Symphony Orchestra

The performing-arts group has received a $1.8 million bequest from Linda Garner Riggs for its education programs and to attract outstanding professional musicians to the symphony. She retired as a managing director of the investment banking firm at Stephens, in Little Rock, Ark.

Before her death in November at the age of 70, she also served as chairwoman of the symphony foundation’s Board of Directors.

March for Our Lives

The actor George Clooney and his wife Amal Clooney, a human-rights attorney, gave $500,000 to the GoFundMe campaign started by student survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., to organize a march on Washington in support of gun control. The movie producers Oprah Winfrey, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Steven Spielberg then each pledged to match the couple’s gift for a combined $2 million.

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

Corrections: An earlier version of this article mistakenly said that they Hammer Museum has a new building. It also said Wheaton College was in Illinois instead of Massachusetts.