37-Year-Old Billionaire Gives $100 Million to St. Jude

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Billionaire Jared Isaacman pledged $100 million to expand the hospital’s research efforts and to help it raise money from other donors who want to join Isaacman and several others on Inspiration4, the world’s first all-civilian mission to space.

One passenger will be chosen from donors who give at least $10 to the hospital this month, another will be chosen from new merchants on an online store belonging to Isaacman’s company, and the other will be a frontline medical worker from the hospital.

Isaacman founded Shift4 Payments, a payment processor, and he co-founded Draken International, a company that trains pilots for the U.S. armed forces. Isaacman, who is 37, is a pilot who in 2009 set a world record for circumnavigating the globe in a light jet and used the event to raise money for the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Michigan State University Athletics

Mat Ishbia committed $32 million for a variety of programs. Of the total, $20 million will be used to expand the Skandalaris Football Center, $2 million will create a special fund to support career services for student-athletes, and another $2 million will back the men’s basketball program.

Ishbia is chairman, president, and CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage, a mortgage company in Pontiac, Mich. He graduated from the university’s Eli Broad College of Business in 2003 and played on the men’s basketball team from 1998 to 2002. He served as a student assistant coach from 2002 to 2003.

Colgate University

Daniel Benton donated $25 million to support the university’s plan to build new spaces for the arts and other programs. Of the total, $20 million will help pay construction costs of the new Benton Center for Creativity and Innovation, the anchor of a new complex on Colgate’s Middle Campus to house computer science, film and media studies, theater, and dance.

Benton is founder and CEO of Andor Capital Management, a hedge-fund firm in Greenwich, Conn. He graduated from the university in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and is the parent of a 2010 Colgate graduate.

Pacific Symphony

Charlie and Ling Zhang gave a building valued at $6.16 million to house the organization’s administrative offices. The couple are longtime donors to the orchestra, and Charlie Zhang serves on its Board of Directors. He founded the fast-casual restaurant chain Pick Up Stix, which he later sold.

Charlie Zhang was born in China and was among the tens of millions of young people during China’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s who were sent from their homes in cities out to the country’s rural areas and forced into hard labor working in China’s rice patties.

Music provided solace. He said playing an old clarinet that belonged to a brother was one of the few comforts he had in those years. An uncle helped him come to the United States in 1982, and he worked in restaurants until he could save enough money to start one of his own. Zhang went on to found or co-found a number of popular restaurants throughout Orange County, Calif.

University of North Carolina School of the Arts

David Loring and John Dickens pledged $2 million to establish a merit-based scholarship in the university’s School of Dance. Loring is a former dancer who was a company member of the Dutch National Ballet in the 1970s and American Ballet Theatre.

He later transitioned into musical theater and performed in Broadway musicals such as Mame and The Phantom of the Opera. Loring is a 1968 high-school graduate of the school, then known at North Carolina School of the Arts.

Phillips Collection

Joe and Lynne Horning gave $2 million through their Horning Family Foundation to endow the art museum’s chief diversity officer position, which the museum created in 2018.

Joe Horning founded Horning Brothers, a real-estate management and development company in Washington, D.C. Lynne Horning is an artist and arts-education advocate. She has served on the museum’s Board of Trustees since 2007.

The couple have given extensively over many decades to arts, education, and efforts to help low-income and disadvantaged families in Washington.

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