A Good Year for Giving

Large donations continue apace even in a recession

Even though the nation was in a recession for most of last year, three gifts

of more than $1-billion were made by donors at the top of The Chronicle’s list of the most-generous donors of 2001.

Gordon and Betty Moore’s gift of $5.8-billion to their San Francisco foundation coupled with their $300-million pledge to the California Institute of Technology was nearly twice the amount of the next two donations on the list. Mr. Moore helped to found the Intel computer-chip company.

Bill and Melinda Gates contributed $2-billion to their foundation, in Seattle. James E. Stowers, who founded a mutual-fund company, and his wife, Virginia, gave $1.1-billion to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, in Kansas City, Mo.

For the second year, The Chronicle compiled its list of the nation’s top donors in cooperation with Slate, an online magazine that began publishing such rankings in 1996.

John D. Hollingsworth Jr., a land developer who died two years ago at age 83, claimed the fourth spot on the 2001 list. His estate, which is estimated to be worth $400-million, will be split among several Greenville, S.C., charities.

The main beneficiaries are Furman University, which is to receive $180-million, and the local YMCA, which is to receive $40-million.

Eli and Edythe L. Broad closed out the top five with the bulk of their $388-million donation earmarked for three family foundations, the Broad Foundation and the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Foundation, in Los Angeles, and the Broad Art Foundation, in Santa Monica, Calif. Mr. Broad is chairman of SunAmerica, a financial-services company in Los Angeles.

Financiers Outdo Technology Executives

Last year only donors who had paid their gifts in full were included on the list; this year the ranking of donors includes both paid gifts and pledges. The total amount in gifts that were paid in 2001 was $10.4-billion, while $2.3-billion was pledged. The sum distributed in 2001 surpasses the total given away by the top donors of 2000, which was $7.4-billion.

As might be expected because of the financial declines in the technology industry, half as many donors on the 2001 list made their fortunes in technology compared with the big donors of 2000. Donors who made money through finance were most plentiful on this year’s list.

In addition, no donors younger than 35 were on the list this year. Last year, a 26-year-old donor who had a computer-security business made the list; this year, the youngest donor is Melinda Gates, who is 36.

Two of the top five donors, the Gateses and the Broads, were among the top five last year. Other repeat donors elsewhere on this year’s list include Ted Turner (No. 6), Elmer Rasmuson (No. 10), Peter B. Lewis (No. 11), Alberto W. Vilar (No. 12), John W. Kluge (No. 18), Jeffrey S. Skoll (No. 19), and Lorry I. Lokey (No. 27). Bequests accounted for a third of the list this year, compared with one-sixth of the list in 2001.

The list shows how the biggest gifts in philanthropy are made by only a small number of donors. While the top three donors competed for their rankings by making gifts worth more than $1-billion, two donors who pledged or bequeathed $11-million a piece tied for last place on the list.

Thirty of the top donors on this year’s list would not have been included had The Chronicle only counted outright donations. The Chronicle included pledges this year to be sure that major commitments were not missed simply because they were to be paid in relatively small amounts over many years.

Hospitals and Colleges

Hospitals and medical centers made the biggest gains as recipients of large gifts. Health-care institutions received only three of the gifts made by donors on the 2000 list, while 17 hospitals and medical centers received donations from members of the 2001 list.

Colleges and universities continued to be the main recipients of largess from big donors. Forty-three colleges were beneficiaries of the donors in 2001, while 49 higher-education institutions received gifts from people on the 2000 list.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga received a pledge of $25-million from a local resident, John T. Lupton, whose family owned Coca-Cola bottling companies. The unrestricted gift, the largest gift an individual has made to a public college or university in Tennessee, comes at a crucial time. In the past three years, the state has cut a total of $2.6-million from the university’s budget.

“We’ve had terrible budget problems for several years,” says Margaret N. Kelley, vice chancellor for university advancement. Now “people are saying, ‘Yay, I might get something done that I’ve been wanting.’”

The university solicited ideas from faculty and staff members on how to spend the money. The first gift installment will be used for small projects, including improving the music conservatory, and large ones, including possibly starting new academic programs in engineering and education.

Creating Charities

Three donors contributed money to nonprofit organizations they started themselves:

• David and Cheryl Duffield contributed $37-million to Maddie’s Fund, a charity in Alameda, Calif., that they formed in 1994 to save the lives of homeless and injured animals. The foundation was inspired by the couple’s miniature schnauzer, Maddie. Mr. Duffield started the computer software company PeopleSoft.
• Ted Turner pledged and paid a total of $330.4-million to three groups he started, all in Washington. A $250-million pledge went to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a group he began with the former senator Sam Nunn to reduce the risk and spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Mr. Turner also donated $74.8-million to the United Nations Foundation, a charity he created in 1997 with a pledge of $1-billion. In addition, Mr. Turner gave $5.6-million to the Better World Fund, a nonprofit group he founded to teach people about the work of the United Nations. Mr. Turner is vice chairman of AOL Time Warner.
• Samuel J. Heyman, chairman of a chemical and mineral manufacturing company in New Jersey, created the Partnership for Public Service with a $25-million pledge last year. The group, in Washington, seeks to attract talented employees to federal government jobs by improving job-recruitment programs as well as by increasing the public’s understanding of government service.

Record Donations

For many of the charities that received money from the donors on the list, the gifts were among the biggest ones ever garnered.

Peter B. Lewis, president of an insurance company in Mayfield Village, Ohio, gave $7-million to the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation, in New York. The ACLU of Ohio Foundation and the national office will each receive $1-million for operating expenses while the rest of the gift will establish the Peter Lewis Fund for Personal Liberty, an endowment fund to support the organization’s efforts to ensure that drug policies don’t infringe on civil liberties. The Manchester Historic Association, in New Hampshire, a local history and research museum, received $4-million from the estate of Henry Melville Fuller, a stockbroker who grew up in Manchester, says Gail Nessell Colglazier, the association’s director.

The $4-million gift will more than triple the association’s endowment, and the annual interest on the gift will help the museum expand programs and exhibits in its new building, she says. Mr. Fuller’s bequest also included two other gifts that set records for the recipients: $46-million for the Currier Gallery of Art, in Manchester, and $39-million for Trinity College, in Hartford, Conn.

In addition, gifts to two hospitals on the list shattered previous individual donation records. Alex G. Spanos pledged $15-million to Mercy Foundation, in Rancho Cordova, Calif., a charity that raises money for Catholic Healthcare West, a group of 47 hospitals and five medical practice groups in the Western United States. Mr. Spanos, a real-estate developer who was a cardiac patient at Mercy General Hospital, in Sacramento, contributed the biggest gift to the hospital’s new heart center, which will be named after him.

Across the country in Allentown, Pa., Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network received a $33.4-million bequest from Anne Constance Anderson, the largest gift ever to a hospital in the state.

Fund raisers are cautiously optimistic about receiving more multimillion-dollar gifts and pledges in the coming year, mostly because some parts of the economy appear to be rebounding and some parts have never been weakened by the recession.

For example, officials at Mercy Foundation are upbeat about raising the remainder of the $40-million needed for the new heart center, mainly because of a resilient local real-estate market. Real estate is “as strong today as it was two years ago,” says H. John Shaw III, the foundation’s president. “That’s a big reason why people still feel pretty bullish.”

And despite other pressing needs around the city because of the September terrorist attacks, donors to the $650-million capital campaign at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, have not requested any extensions or cancellations of pledge payments, says Emily K. Rafferty, senior vice president for external affairs. However, officials are tracking the stock market closely, and the museum will adjust its fund-raising plans if the economy continues to decline. “I can’t say I’m not worried,” she says. “You are seeing a lot of big corporate challenges right now. You see Kmart, Enron, Lucent — the signs are that there is difficulty out there, and that will be reflected in people’s pocketbooks.”

Conservation International, an environmental group in Washington, also has not experienced a dip in gifts or pledges. In fact, the group just received its largest donation, a series of grants totaling $261-million, from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, to be paid over 10 years. Still the group, which depends heavily on big gifts from individuals and foundations, is looking beyond loyal donors like Mr. Moore for support.

“We definitely feel a more acute need to bring in new donors and keep the donor pool growing,” says Ann Nichols, vice president of development. “It’s not that we wouldn’t be doing that anyway, but it has a heightened intensity, because of the economy.”

Other fund raisers believe donors who make multimillion- or even billion-dollar gifts stay somewhat insulated from the economy’s ups and downs. “There’s obviously some effect because of 9/11 and the economy and the uncertainties that that generates,” says Van Zandt Williams, vice president for development at Princeton University, in New Jersey. But, he adds, the people capable of giving large gifts “are still quite approachable.”

Two gifts on the list were specifically motivated by the September 11 terrorist attacks.

David and Cheryl Duffield contributed $1-million to the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund, in St. Peter, Minn., which was created to provide education assistance for financially needy families of victims. Leon Levy, a retired general partner of a New York hedge fund and a trustee of Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., pledged and paid a total of $50-million to the college. His gift was the largest among all the trustees, who pledged a total of $120-million to the college to nearly double its endowment. The gifts were spurred by the events of September 11, and a determination not to let their commitment to the institution wane, said Leon Botstein, president of the college, in a written statement.

How the List Was Compiled

Donors are under no obligation to report the amount they provide to charities to the public, so the information for The Chronicle’s list was compiled from numerous sources. Many of the gifts were drawn from those that appeared in The Chronicle over the past year. Such gifts usually are reported by the organizations that received them.

The Chronicle’s list is not a comprehensive summary of all large donations made in 2001. For example, gifts do not appear if they were made anonymously. In addition, gifts that donors make from their family foundations generally are not counted to avoid including donations twice — when the donor gives money to a foundation and when he or she decides where it should go.