N.J. Entrepreneurs Give U. Penn $50 Million for Autoimmune Research Center

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine

Stewart and Judy Colton gave $50 million to support the work of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity, a research center focused on autoimmune research and treatment for people with autoimmune disorders such as celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. The center was named for the couple when they gave $10 million to establish it in 2021.

The Coltons are entrepreneurs in Short Hills, N.J. Stewart Colton founded Alpha Metals Company, which supplies metals and chemicals to the electronics industry. He graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1962. Judy Colton is a former psychologist and teacher who went on to found Hartwood Systems, a computer consulting firm she led for 25 years.

National Alliance on Mental Illness

MacKenzie Scott gave $30 million to support the nonprofit, which advocates for individuals living with mental illness; offers classes and training for them, their families, and mental-health professionals; and promotes public awareness about mental health. NAMI officials said in a news release that they plan to set aside $5 million of the gift for use by the organization’s affiliates.

Scott is a novelist who helped start the online retail giant Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos. With an estimated $35.7 billion fortune, she is one of the wealthiest women in the world. She has given at least $12.8 billion in mostly unrestricted gifts to charity since 2020 and has devoted much of that money to nonprofits that usually do not receive multimillion-dollar gifts and to charities that help underserved or overlooked populations. She appeared on the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors of 2020.

City of Hope

Ted Schwartz gave $15 million through the Schwartz Ward Family Foundation to support immunotherapy research and to advance treatment options that could improve the quality of life for people living with cancer.

Schwartz founded Schwartz Capital Group, a Chicago investment firm, in 1996. He also started APAC Customer Services, a customer-service outsourcing company now called Expert Global Solutions. He is a City of Hope patient and cancer survivor who achieved complete remission in 2020 after a 16-year battle with lymphoma.

Norton Healthcare

David and Wendy Novak gave $15 million through their family fund, Lift a Life Novak Family Foundation, to establish the Wendy Novak Diabetes Institute, support diabetes research, and kick off the organization’s efforts to expand diabetes care for children and adults and help patients transition more smoothly from child to adult diabetes treatment.

David Novak co-founded Yum! Brands, a food and restaurant company in Louisville, Ky. He served as chairman and CEO of the company from 1999 through 2014. He became executive chairman in 2015 and retired in 2016. In 2013, the Novaks gave $5 million to the Norton Children’s Hospital Foundation to establish the Wendy Novak Diabetes Center at Norton Children’s Hospital, in Louisville, Ky.

University of Chicago Medical Center

Peter Ascoli gave $10 million through his Lohengrin Foundation to establish the Center for Motor Neuron Disease, where biologists will study the causes of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases and conduct clinical studies into potential treatments. The money will also support annual lectures, conferences, postdoctoral fellowships, and educational programs at local Chicago secondary schools.

Ascoli is the author of Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South. He taught fundraising at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, in Chicago, and was a director of development for the Chicago Opera Theater and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. He is a grandson of the late Julius Rosenwald, a notable 20th-century philanthropist and businessman who owned and led the retailer Sears, Roebuck & Company in the early 1900s.

Rosendwald created the Rosenwald Fund in 1917 and through it donated millions in matching funds to provide high-quality education and fellowships to two generations of Blacks, many of whom went on to become prominent cultural, political, and scholarly leaders, as well as drivers of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and ‘60s

American Civil Liberties Union

Sheryl Sandberg pledged $3 million to support the ACLU Ruth Bader Ginsburg Liberty Center’s efforts to back political candidates and ballot measures for abortion rights and to defend pregnant women’s rights in state courts and legislatures during the next three years.

Sandberg served as Facebook parent company Meta’s chief operating officer for 14 years and just left the post two weeks ago. Sandberg is a billionaire who has appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors five times since 2016 and gave a total of nearly $557 million during those years. She gives regularly to nonprofits that help women, gender-equality groups, food banks, education, and charities that fight poverty.

“This is an issue that I think is absolutely fundamental to who we are as women, who we are as a society,” Sandberg said about her gift to the ACLU in an interview with the Associated Press, one of the Chronicle’s partners in an effort to expand coverage of philanthropy. “The time is now. These state elections are now. And the next cycle is just two years away.”

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