October 10, 2013 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Deborah Simon, the heir to a real-estate fortune, announced today that she is donating $100-million to a private boarding school in Pennsylvania.
The gift to Mercersburg Academy is one of the largest ever made to a private school and will increase the institution’s endowment by more than 40 percent.
The only larger gift that has been made to a school in recent memory is the more than $128-million provided by Barbara Dodd Anderson, to the George School in 2007 and supplemented with a $30-million gift from her estate in 2011.
Ms. Simon is a member of the school’s Board of Regents and is a 1974 alumna whose father, Melvin, co-founded the Simon Property Group, an Indianapolis real-estate investment trust that owns shopping malls across the country.
A third of Ms. Simon’s gift will endow financial aid and allow the institution to offer admission to nearly any student it wants, regardless of income. The rest will support efforts to attract and pay new faculty members, academic programs for both students and teachers, and campus maintenance.
In 2010, Ms. Simon’s family donated $5-million to the school to its student center and $3-million for its theater.
But this donation, says Ms. Simon, “is the first thing I’ve done on my own.”
‘Something Extraordinary’
The gift came about in January, when the school’s board met in Florida for its winter meetings.
Douglas Hale, Mercersburg’s head of school, says he had approached Ms. Simon about giving $25-million to $30-million for the capital campaign it unveiled today. At one meeting, another board member told Ms. Simon that she, as Mr. Hale says, “had the capacity to do something extraordinary.” Not long after the exchange, Ms. Simon said she was considering giving $100-million.
The decision, she says, was easy.
“I’m a sucker for the school,” she says. Of Mr. Hale, Ms. Simon laughs: “He knew he could get me in a good way.”
The gift will add substantially to the school’s endowment—currently at $215-million—and represents a significant amount of its campaign goal. Mr. Hale says the school will seek to raise $300-million.
“My main hope is that we will be to a point where we never have to turn away any student because we couldn’t meet the full, demonstrated need,” he says. “I never want to lose a great teacher—not be able to hire one or retain one.”
Half of the donation has been paid outright, but Ms. Simon said $25-million needed to be matched with gifts from other sources. The rest of the money will go to the school after Ms. Simon dies.
An Egalitarian Approach
Ms. Simon says she has many fond memories of Mercersburg and credits the school for playing a crucial role in her adolescence. She attended the academy for her junior and senior years of high school, where she acted in plays, was a features editor for the student newspaper, and took up creative writing.
“In a lot of ways, it saved my life,” she says. “It made me more independent, emotionally stable, more confident. It was probably one of the seminal experiences in my life, as I look back on it.”
Ms. Simon says that as she continues to give, she will keep supporting groups involved in education and helping children. She spends most of her time administering the Simon Youth Foundation, an organization that helps students in danger of dropping out of high school pursue college and careers. In 15 years, the organization has helped 10,000 students graduate.
Ms. Simon says her gift was inspired by the school’s approach. “My hope is that people recognize Mercersburg as the type of school it is. It has an egalitarian way of teaching kids, it creates community, compassion, integrity.”
Big Gifts for Education
Barbara Dodd Anderson, George School, $128.5-million pledge (plus $30-million bequest in 2011), 2007
Deborah Simon, Mercersburg Academy, $100-million, 2013
Mark Zuckerberg, Start Up: Education, $100-million challenge, 2010
Walter Annenberg, Peddie School, $100-million, 1993
Frank and Jane Batten, Culver Academies, $70-million pledge (plus $20.8-million in 2008), 2008
Henry and Jane Woods, Lawrenceville School, $54-million bequest, 2010
Richard and Melanie Lundquist, Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, $50-million pledge, 2007
William Koch, Oxbridge Academy of the Palm Beaches, $50-million pledge, 2011
