February 13, 2018 | Read Time: 5 minutes
Sanford Health
Sioux Falls, S.D.
Donor: Denny Sanford
Sum donated: several gifts over 15 years totaling $1 billion
Economic impact: Since Mr. Sanford’s largest gift of $400 million in 2007, the number of employees at the nonprofit medical center has tripled, to 29,000. Centers that he supported — which focus on genetic medicine, Type 1 diabetes, and breast cancer — have brought more high-paying jobs to the area. The city’s unemployment rate is 2.9 percent, among the lowest in the country.
University of Oregon
Eugene, Ore.
Donors: Phil and Penny Knight
Sum donated: $500 million
Economic impact: The Knights pledged money in 2016 for a new three- building campus that would help fast-track scientific discoveries and the process of turning those discoveries into innovations to improve the quality of life for people in Oregon and elsewhere.
The project’s construction phase will contribute nearly $100 million a year to Oregon’s economy, according to ECONorthwest, an economic-forecasting firm the university hired. When the campus is up and running, the annual impact on the state is expected to be $80 million. The projections include federal research grants that the new campus will probably receive and indirect economic benefits, such as local spending by the new employees.
Oregon Health & Science University
Portland, Ore.
Donors: Phil and Penny Knight
Sum donated: $500 million
Economic impact: The Knights pledged $500 million in 2013 for OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute but required the university match the gift with donations from government and private sources. The university met that challenge by 2015 and raised an additional $200 million in bond funds from the state. The Knight Cancer Research Building is under construction and is expected to open this summer.
ECONorthwest expects $892 million of total economic output during the two-year construction phase, and 860 new jobs and $134 million a year once the new building is fully operational.
Indiana University School of Medicine
Indianapolis
Donor: Donald Brown
Sum donated: $30 million
Economic impact: Mr. Brown pledged his commitment in December 2016 to establish the Brown Center for Immunotherapy and urged the medical school “to use the work of the center to catalyze the formation of new companies and the creation of new jobs.” The state legislature appropriated $25 million to remodel a campus building that will house the new immunology center.
Anantha Shekhar, the medical school’s executive associate dean for research affairs, says the center will bring 30 to 40 new employees to the medical school, but he believes far more Indianapolis jobs — as many as 150 — will be created thanks to commercialization of the center’s research. The new immunology center is already in discussions with Cook Regentec, a local company focused on regenerative medicine, about commercializing some technologies. “We fully expect that we will be creating new jobs that aren’t university jobs but are high-end biotech jobs,” Mr. Shekhar says.
Community Foundation of Elkhart County, Ind.
Donor: David Gundlach (bequest)
Sum donated: $150 million
Economic impact: Mr. Gundlach’s 2012 bequest has bumped annual spending by the once-tiny foundation to $8.5 million per year — 14 times as much as in the year the gift was received. The local economy is thriving, but it depends heavily on the boom-and-bust cycles of its primary industry — recreational vehicles. The community foundation is supporting Enfocus, a charity that provides fellowships that pay half the salary of new college graduates who incubate new businesses or work on community projects.
Pete McCown, the community foundation’s president, also chairs a regional economic-development commission that aims to make the area more attractive to a new generation of businesses; an old Studebaker factory has been converted into a technology park. “We have intellectual capital here that is less expensive than in San Francisco,” he says. “We want the next hip graduate from MIT to choose to relocate to Elkhart or South Bend.”
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Needham, Mass.
Donor: F.W. Olin Foundation
Sum donated: $400 million
Economic impact: The college, founded with this $400 million gift, struggled financially after the 2008 economic crisis and had to end its policy of allowing students to attend tuition-free. Even so, the college’s presence in Needham has invigorated the local economy, says Greg Reibman, president of the Newton-Needham Regional Chamber. The college helped the chamber secure a $100,000 federal grant to develop the N-Squared Innovation District, a 500-acre area west of Boston that is home to an increasing number of technology businesses, including TripAdvisor.
“Having a top engineering college here has been essential to our efforts to grow our economy though business attraction,” Mr. Reibman says.
Salvation Army
26 cities throughout the United States
Donor: Joan Kroc (bequest)
Sum donated: $1.5 billion
Economic impact: In 2004, Ms. Kroc left one of the biggest gifts ever made to a social-service group — for the development of community centers, often in distressed communities, that combine religious services with gyms and swimming pools. In a 2015 study, Partners for Sacred Places found a $1.7 billion economic impact from construction of the centers and a continuing economic “halo effect” of $258 million a year.
Tuomi Forrest, the group’s executive vice president, says the study helps the Salvation Army raise additional support from donors and local businesses that care about economic impact.
“The Salvation Army was very interested in being able to talk about the impact and value of Mrs. Kroc’s gift to them,” Mr. Forrest says. “They were getting questions like, ‘How can you show this investment was worth it, beyond anecdote?’ That’s why we’re doing this policy work.”
