Music Mogul Berry Gordy Jr. Gives $4 Million to Motown Museum (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Motown Museum

Music mogul Berry Gordy Jr. gave $4 million to expand the museum’s educational and other programming, and its theater and exhibition spaces.

Gordy founded Motown Records, the legendary Detroit record label that popularized soul and pop music artists such as the Supremes, the Four Tops, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye.

The museum was founded by the late Esther Gordy Edwards, a businesswoman who was one of Berry Gordy’s eight siblings and served as chief executive of Motown Records in the mid-1960s. She died in 2011.

Ohio University Foundation

Violet Patton celebrated her 103rd birthday by giving $22 million to back the Violet L. Patton Center for Arts Education and the Patton Education College.

Patton is an investor and a retired assistant professor at Miami University of Ohio, who also taught costuming and interior design at Rutgers University. She worked as a grade-school teacher and a textbook illustrator early in her career. The bulk of her wealth comes from stock in American Home Products, which later became the pharmaceuticals giant Wyeth.

She graduated from the university in 1938 and has donated significant sums to her alma mater over the last decade. She pledged $13.3 million in 2010 to establish the Violet L. Patton Center for Arts Education and $28 million later that year to name the College of Education for her parents, Gladys and David Patton. Her latest donation will support both the center and Patton College. She appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2011.

Johns Hopkins Medicine

Billionaire hedge-fund investor Steven Cohen, and his wife, Alexandra, gave $8.7 million through their Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to launch the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, which aims to further the study of psychedelic drugs for use in medical therapies and wellness. The center’s research will focus on how psychedelic drugs affect behavior, brain function, learning, memory, the brain’s biology, and mood.

In addition, Tim Ferriss, a technology investor and self-help book author, gave more than $2.2 million for the new research center.

Cohen founded SAC Capital Advisors, a hedge fund that now goes by the name Point72 Asset Management. He and his wife have given extensively to veterans and other causes. Ferriss founded BrainQuicken, an online nutritional supplement company, which he sold in 2010 to a private-equity firm. He has invested in a number of companies including Lyft, Evernote, TaskRabbit, Twitter, Uber, and Facebook. He has written several popular books, including The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, and The 4-Hour Chef.

University of Michigan

Ron and Eileen Weiser donated $10 million to establish the Weiser Diplomacy Center, which will be housed at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and to bring diplomats and foreign-policy experts to campus. The money will also back student workshops, conferences, and internship opportunities in the United States and abroad.

Ron Weiser founded McKinley, a real estate investment firm in Ann Arbor, and served as the U.S. ambassador to Slovakia from 2001 to 2004. He graduated from the Ross School of Business and serves on the university’s Board of Regents.

Eileen Weiser graduated from the university’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance. She is in her second eight-year term on Michigan’s State Board of Education and currently chairs the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. To date, the couple have given the university more than $89 million and appeared on the 2014 Philanthropy 50.

University of Rhode Island

Richard and Jean Harrington pledged $4 million to the Harrington School of Communication and Media to renovate Ranger Hall, a historic building that houses the Harrington School.

Richard Harrington is chairman emeritus of Cue Ball, a venture-capital firm in Boston. A 1973 graduate of the university, he formerly served as president and chief executive of Thomson Reuters. The Harrington have given $12 million to the university to date.

Oregon State University

Lee and Connie Kearney gave $6 million gift to endow a deanship and the head baseball coach position.

Lee Kearney is a retired director and division manager of Peter Kiewit Sons’ Company, the international construction giant now known as Kiewit Corporation. He earned a degree in civil engineering from OSU in 1963.

The Kearneys have served on boards for the College of Engineering, OSU Athletics, and the OSU Foundation, and are longtime donors to the university.

University of Dayton

Bill and Margie Klesse donated $5 million to establish the Margie and Bill Klesse Scholars Program, which will support undergraduate scholarships; and the Margie and Bill Klesse Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowships, which will back experiential learning projects.

Both programs will give preference to students majoring in chemistry or chemical engineering, the academic degrees the Klesses pursued while attending the university in the mid-1960s.

Margie Klesse, a 1968 chemistry graduate, and Bill Klesse, who earned a chemical engineering degree later the same year, both worked in science and engineering. Bill Klesse spent his 45-year career at Valero Energy Corporation and its predecessor companies, retiring as CEO and chairman of the board in 2014.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund;
Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds gave $1 million apiece to the nonprofits. Their gift to the NAACP will be used to expand the NAACP LDF’s social and racial-justice efforts, and their donation to the Young Center will help to establish the Waymaker Fund for Immigrant Children, an effort to protect the rights of immigrant children who have been separated from their families.

Lively is a well-known actress who has appeared in the popular television series Gossip Girl and starred in a number of films, including The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Green Lantern, and The Shallows. Reynolds is an actor, screenwriter, and film producer who appeared on the sitcom Two Guys and a Girl and in a range of films including The Proposal and Deadpool.

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