Motown Founder Berry Gordy Gives $5 Million for Music Industry Education

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of California at Los Angeles Herb Alpert School of Music

The Music mogul Berry Gordy pledged $5 million to launch the UCLA Berry Gordy Music Industry Center, which will provide courses in music and the music business and specialized curriculums in songwriting and production. The gift will also back research examining the intersections among technology, streaming algorithms, and social justice.

Programs designed to support students as they enter the music industry — as artists, producers, or in other roles — will be a key component of the center, along with attracting and supporting students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.

Gordy founded the iconic record label Motown in 1960 and is credited with nurturing the careers of Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, the Jackson Five, Michael Jackson, and many other musical artists and groups from the 1960s and 1970s.

National Parks Foundation

Former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie, gave $25 million through their Ballmer Group to back a variety of programs including: Open OutDoors for Kids, which connects children and youths to national parks; Service Corps, which provides young adults with jobs building trails and restoring wetlands in the parks; and efforts to help the parks adapt to changing climates.

Steve Ballmer owns the Los Angeles Clippers, a professional basketball team, and served as CEO of the technology giant Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He and his wife are longtime donors to charity and in recent years have supported mental health programs, Black-led nonprofits focused on improving economic mobility, and efforts to curb gun violence.

Forbes estimates their net worth at nearly $127 billion. They have given more than $2 billion personally and through the Ballmer Group. The Ballmers have appeared three times on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors since 2014.

Harvard Law School

Dan Emmett gave $15 million through his Emmett Foundation to establish the Emmett Environmental Law Center, enhance the law school’s environmental law program and legal clinic, and create an environmental moot court institute. The money will also help to pay for new faculty and staff attorneys, and support student field work and other programs.

Emmett is chairman of an eponymous real estate company in Santa Monica, Calif., that owns and operates commercial property and apartment buildings in Southern California and Honolulu. He earned a J.D. degree from the school in 1964.

Upwardly Global

The billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $14 million through her Yield Giving fund to support this nonprofit’s efforts to help immigrants with professional degrees find professional-level jobs so they can rebuild their lives in the United States. The gift will speed up the organization’s recent campaign to help thousands more immigrant, refugee, and asylee job seekers find white*collar positions in coming years.

Scott is a novelist who helped create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos. She has given more than $17.3 billion to more than 2,300 nonprofits over the last four years, and in March gave gifts of $1 million and $2 million to 361 community-led charities.

Colby College

Richard (Rick) McVey gave $10 million to establish the McVey Center for Computational and Data Sciences, to provide students across all disciplines with practical expertise in these STEM fields. The gift will provide support to faculty so they can integrate computational and data science tools and insights into courses and research. Colby officials will use a portion of the gift to create new applied fields of study in public health, biomedical engineering, and environmental engineering, among other areas.

McVey founded MarketAxess, a maker of trading software for corporate bonds and other fixed-income products. He currently serves as the firm’s executive chairman. Previously, he was managing director and head of North America fixed-income sales at J.P. Morgan. McVey is the parent of two Colby alumni.

Ford’s Theatre Society

Frances and Craig Lindner pledged $10 million to expand the theater’s campus and create the Frances and Craig Lindner Center for Culture and Leadership, which will provide programs focused on President Abraham Lincoln’s legacy. The new building is scheduled to open in late 2024.

Craig Lindner is co-CEO and director of American Financial Group, a Cincinnati firm with holdings in property and casualty insurance companies. He also oversees the firm’s investment portfolios and its affiliated companies. He’s been with the firm since 1977. Frances Lindner serves on Ford’s Theatre’s Board of Trustees.

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