$150 Million Gift: Billionaire Benioffs Expand Health Care Giving to Hawaii
The Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, are building on their extensive giving to health care in the Bay Area.
By Maria Di Mento
Senior Editor
March 12, 2024 | Read Time: 4 minutes
A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:
Hawaii Pacific Health and Hilo Medical Center
Marc and Lynne Benioff gave two donations totaling $150 million to these two nonprofits to expand access to health care in Hawaii, where the Benioff’s own property. Of the total, the couple gave $100 million to Hawaii Pacific Health, a nonprofit health-care system, to back a big renovation project that will triple the size of Straub Medical Center, a Honolulu hospital that is home to the state’s only burn unit and also houses lifesaving services, and community outreach, education, and clinical research programs.
The Benioffs gave the remaining $50 million to Hilo Medical Center to expand its family birthing center, intensive-care unit, neurosurgical program, and behavioral health services. It will be renamed the Hilo Benioff Medical Center and the Straub Medical Center will become the Straub Benioff Medical Center. The donations will also connect the two medical centers to University of California at San Francisco Health, which will provide support to Hawaii patients who need specialized care.
The couple have given significant sums to UCSF Health since 2009, including $254 million to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland. They also support at ocean conservation and efforts to help people struggling to find housing, among other causes. They’ve appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 multiple times since 2010.
University of Miami Miller School of Medicine
Ken Griffin gave $50 million through his Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund to support research and enhance patient care at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. The center’s new research facility will be named the Kenneth C. Griffin Cancer Research Building.
Griffin founded Citadel Investment Group, a Miami hedge fund, and has given extensively to arts and culture groups, medical care and research, universities, and other nonprofits. He appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2014, when he gave Harvard University $150 million, primarily to support financial aid.
Middlebury College
M. Brooks Michel left $40 million, the bulk of his estate, to his alma mater for endowment and wrote in his will that he did so because he believed education has the power to address the challenges facing society.
Michel earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the college in 1955. He spent his sophomore and junior years at the Middlebury School Abroad in Madrid and received a postgraduate certificate from the Université Paris-Sorbonne. He then worked as an English teacher in Bogotá, Colombia, before joining the U.S. Information Agency, where he was stationed in Panama and Venezuela.
In 1965, Michel started working as an interpreter and spent decades as a simultaneous interpreter with fluencies in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. He held corporate and government assignments the United Nations, the State Department, and the Organization of American States, among other institutions, in 29 countries and 49 states. Michel died in July.
His family ties to the college go back to 1896 when his great-uncle, Charles Andrew Munroe, graduated. Monroe, a financier and public utilities executive, served as a Middlebury trustee from 1929 to 1940, and Michel’s grandfather, Theodore Hapgood Munroe, graduated from Middlebury in 1900.
University of California at Los Angeles
Chuck Lorre pledged $24.5 million million through his Chuck Lorre Family Foundation to increase the existing endowment for the Big Bang Theory Scholarships program, which he established in 2015 to support low-income STEM students; and to create the UCLA Chuck Lorre Scholars Program, which will provide four years of scholarship, mentorship, and other support services beginning the summer before STEM students’ freshman year, as well as opportunities for graduate school funding.
Lorre is a Hollywood writer and producer of the television sitcoms Two and a Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, and Roseanne, among others. University officials said in a news release that his latest donation will double the amount of undergraduate scholarship recipients with financial need to 80 each year.
California Polytechnic Institute
Lynda and Stewart Resnick gave $20 million to launch the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Student Success Center, a professional development center that will house career services, programs that support Cal Poly’s growing numbers of first-generation college students, and student diversity and belonging programs.
The Resnicks own the Wonderful Company, which makes Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful, and Wonderful Pistachios, among other food and beverages. The couple have given extensively to support education, agriculture, arts and culture, and other causes over the years. They have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors four times since 2008.
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Lawrence Neubauer gave $15 million to help to establish the Garrett Isaac Neubauer Center for Cardiovascular Innovation, where researchers will focus on finding ways to improve pediatric cardiovascular care and will work on developing new treatments for congenital heart disease.
Lawrence Neubauer is an investor and attorney who is a senior partner at Quilvest Capital Partners, an international wealth-management and private-equity firm, and serves as chairman of the firm’s global real-estate investment committee. He previously served in leadership posts at Centre Partners and SG Capital Partners and co-founded Malakand Capital. His son, Garrett Neubauer, died from congenital heart disease in 2001.
To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
