Oregon Community Foundation Lands a $75-Million Bequest (Gifts Roundup)

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Museum of Science and Industry

Billionaire financier Ken Griffin gave $125 million through his Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund to the Museum of Science and Industry, in Chicago, which will be named for him.

The gift will primarily go toward endowment and to back new and current programming.

Griffin founded the Chicago hedge fund Citadel Investment Group and has given extensively to education and arts and culture groups over the last 13 years.

Gordon College

An anonymous donor donated $75.5 million for endowment and student scholarships. It is unclear if the donor is an alumnus, but Christianity Today reported the donor has been involved with Gordon for the last decade and wanted to address affordability of tuition and help low-income students attend.

Oregon Community Foundation

Bill and Ann Swindells bequeathed $75 million for endowment through their Ann & Bill Swindells Charitable Trust to the community foundation, which Bill Swindells’ father helped to found with a $63,000 gift in 1973.

Bill Swindells led Willamette Industries, a prominent lumber company founded by his great-grandfather Louis Gerlinger in 1906. It was then called the Willamette Valley Lumber Company. Swindells grew the company and led it until 2002 when it ended in a $6 billion hostile takeover by Weyerhaeuser Company, another timber giant.

Bill Swindells served on the Oregon Community Foundation board from 1983 to 1991 and died in 2018. Ann Swindells died in 2009.

University of Washington Medicine

Mike and Lynn Garvey gave $50 million to establish the Garvey Institute for Brain Health Solutions, where researchers will work on developing new treatments for brain disorders such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers at the institute will work on three main projects over the next five years: cognitive aging and brain wellness, the effects of physical and emotional trauma on the brain, and addiction.

Mike Garvey founded Saltchuk, a transportation and distribution company in Seattle, in 1982.

University of Texas at Austin

Gary Thomas pledged $25 million to help pay for a new building to house the Cockrell School of Engineering. The new building will be named for the donor.

Thomas recently retired as president of EOG Resources Inc., an oil company where he worked for four decades. Thomas graduated from the university with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering in 1972. Earlier in his career, he held various engineering and production-management positions with Unocal and Apache oil companies.

Hun School of Princeton

Ed and Lynn Breen committed $5 million to pay construction costs of a new STEM center and to expand the private school’s auditorium into a fully equipped performing-arts center.

Ed Breen is executive chairman of DuPont, a manufacturer of industrial chemicals, synthetic fibers, pharmaceuticals, building materials, and other products. He previously held leadership posts at Tyco and Motorola. The Breens’ three children graduated from the school.

New Jersey Performing Arts Center

Jonathan and Lizzie Tisch gave $5 million to back arts education, local programming, and other efforts. The stage of the arts center’s Victoria Theater will be named for the donors.

Jonathan Tisch is chairman and chief executive of Loews Hotels, headquartered in New York. Lizzie Tisch is a former vice president of Salomon Smith Barney, a New York investment bank that became part of Citigroup in 1998.

United Negro College Fund

Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey donated more than $1.1 million to the education group. The money will provide scholarships to students in North Carolina and the historically black colleges and universities they attend.

Winfrey founded the cable network OWN and other media holdings. Her popular Oprah Winfrey Show was syndicated nationally and ran from 1986 to 2011. Forbes recently pegged her net worth at $2.7 billion. She is a serial philanthropist who has appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors six times since 2003.

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