Gifts Roundup: Brandeis and Museum of Modern Art Land $50 Million Donations

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by The Chronicle:

Brandeis University

Marcia Cohn left $50 million to endow a scholarship and fellowship fund that was created by her late mother, Rosaline Cohn, in the 1970s as a memorial to her husband, Jacob Cohn, a food-service mogul who died in 1968.

Marcia Cohn died in 2015. She was the sole heir to the Cohn estate upon her mother’s death in 1997.

Jacob Cohn founded the Continental Coffee Company in Chicago in 1915, selling coffee, tea, and cocoa by horse and wagon to local restaurants and cafeterias. He built the company into CFS Continental, a national food and beverage distributor, which was sold in 1988 to the Sysco Corporation.

The family had been giving to Brandeis since 1951 but had no other connection to the university.

Museum of Modern Art

Steven and Alexandra Cohen gave $50 million through their foundation to expand and renovate the museum’s galleries and public spaces. Museum officials plan to create the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions to recognize the donation.

Mr. Cohen founded S.A.C. Capital Advisors, a hedge fund, and Point72 Asset Management. He has served on the museum’s Board of Trustees since last year.

Washington University in St. Louis

John McDonnell pledged $20 million to match contributions up to that amount from other donors for scholarships and fellowships.

Mr. McDonnell spent 35 years with the McDonnell Douglas Corporation, which his father, the late James Smith McDonnell, founded as McDonnell Aircraft in 1939. John McDonnell retired as chairman of the company after overseeing a merger with Boeing in 1997.

He has served since 1976 as a Washington trustee and holds a master’s in business administration from the university’s Olin Business School.

University of California at Irvine

Siblings Allen Chao, Agnes Kung, Phylis Hsia, and Richard Chao gave $5 million to endow two professorships at the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The money will also support research into blood cancers and cancers with hereditary links. Allen Chao is the chief executive of Tanvex BioPharma.

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Tipper Gore donated $1 million to expand the organization’s Ending the Silence project, an early-intervention program aimed at reducing the stigma surrounding mental-health issues among young people.

Ms. Gore served as a policy adviser on mental health to President Clinton, under whom her husband, Al Gore, was vice president. (The Gores are separated but not divorced.) She was involved in the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act in 1996 and organized the White House Conference on Mental Health in 1999.

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