Gifts Roundup: Pritzker Heir Gives $10 Million to Improve Foster Care

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by The Chronicle:

Burr and Burton Academy

Barry and Wendy Rowland donated $20 million for a new building and several other construction projects around the private school’s campus.

Barry Rowland is a former chief administrative officer at the Boston finance firm Eaton Vance. The couple have two grandsons who attended the academy. The Rowlands have given the school a total of at least $55 million including this latest gift.

Georgia Tech

Alice Clark gave $15 million through her A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. The money will create and endow the A. James Clark Scholars Program in the College of Engineering.

Her late husband, A. James Clark, was the head of Clark Construction Group and Clark Enterprises. He died in 2015. The family attracted attention last year when Alice Clark gave a $219.5 million grant through the foundation to the University of Maryland, her husband’s alma mater.

University of California at Los Angeles

Tony and Jeanne Pritzker gave $10 million through their family foundation for the newly opened UCLA Pritzker Center for Strengthening Children and Families.

Along with its research efforts, the center offers programs that seek to improve the lives of foster children and their families, help youths avoid entering the child-welfare system, and provide foster parents, other caregivers, and adoptive families the skills and resources to promote family stability.

Tony Pritzker is an heir to the Hyatt Hotels fortune and a managing partner of the Pritzker Group, a venture-capital firm. The couple gave the university $20 million in 2013, with $3 million of that gift directed to help students who were in foster care.

Temple University

Steve Charles donated $10 million to endow the university’s libraries. A new library is scheduled to open next year and will be named for the donor.

Charles co-founded immixGroup, a firm that helps technology companies do business with the federal government. He sold it in 2015. Charles graduated from Temple in 1980 with a degree in advertising and serves on the university’s Board of Trustees.

Canisius College and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center

Patrick Lee donated a total of $4 million through his foundation to the two institutions as a way to honor is late son Patrick (Pat) Warn Lee, who died in 2017.

Two million dollars will endow a professorship within Roswell Park’s Supportive and Palliative Care program, and the other $2 million will create a scholarship fund at Canisius.

The donor founded Enidine Incorporated, a manufacturing company, and later the holding company International Motion Control. He sold the latter in 2007 to ITT Corporation for $395 million.

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