19. STEVE and JEAN CASE—a total of over $40 million: $10 million over three years to POWERUP: BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE (Va.). … $1 million to D.C. COLLEGE ACCESS (Washington, D.C.). … $1 million-plus to AMERICA’S PROMISE (Va.). … $1 million-plus to HABITAT FOR HUMANITY (Va.), and more than $30 million in other gifts, including many under $1 million. The family’s foundation was created recently with a $150 million gift. It will focus on underserved children in the areas of technology, health care, and education, especially but not exclusively in the Northern Virginia area. Case is a co-founder of America Online.
20. IRWIN HELFORD—$36 million to the CITY OF HOPE NATIONAL MEDICAL CENTER in Duarte, Calif. The gift is the largest ever to the cancer-research center and will help build a new $154 million hospital to replace the current 50-year-old building. Helford said he was touched by the compassion and quality of care at City of Hope and that his gift was prompted by a need for more caring treatment in an era when hospitals seem money-driven and callous. Helford said he was “hooked” by City of Hope after he met an uninsured 11-year-old girl who was cured of a grapefruit-size tumor on her hip by the hospital’s doctors. Helford, 64, is chairman of Viking Office Products and vice chairman of Office Depot, with which Viking merged in 1998. Helford dropped out of college to join the Navy for a brief stint during the Korean War and never returned to get his degree. He started his management career at Reliable Stationery in Chicago, where he stayed for 23 years. In 1983, he moved to California to head Viking.
21. EDMUND T. PRATT JR.—$35 million to DUKE UNIVERSITY (N.C.) to endow the School of Engineering, which will be named in honor of the retired Pfizer Inc. chairman and CEO. The gift is the second largest in Duke’s history, surpassed only by the school’s original gift of $40 million by cigarette magnate James B. Duke in 1924. Pratt graduated from Duke magna cum laude in 1947 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He received a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 1949. Pratt worked for IBM Corp. until 1962, when he became President Kennedy’s assistant secretary of the Army for financial management. He joined pharmaceutical maker Pfizer as corporate controller in 1964. By the time Pratt retired in 1992, the company’s annual revenues were nearly $7 billion per year and the company’s operations had spread to 140 countries.
22. ALBERTO W. VILAR—a total of more than $33 million: a $16 million pledge to the ROYAL OPERA HOUSE, Covent Garden, London, England. The main new foyer in the redeveloped theater will be named the Vilar Floral Hall. $2 million of the gift will fund a Young Artists Program. Also, $10 million to his alma mater, WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE (Pa.), for a new technology center—the largest gift in the school’s history. Plus $5 million to CARNEGIE HALL (New York City): $2.5 million to restore the Seventh Avenue façade, $1.5 million to underwrite performances by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and $1 million in general operating expenses. Also, $1 million to the VILAR CENTER FOR THE ARTS (Beaver Creek, Colo.) to promote a distinguished artists series program to attract world-class artists. In 1999 he gave more than $1 million to underwrite productions at the Kirov (Mariinsky) Opera and Ballet Co. (St. Petersburg, Russia), the Salzburg Festival (Salzburg, Austria), the Spoleto Festival (Spoleto, Italy), the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Festspielhaus (Baden-Baden, Germany), as well as sponsoring the Worldwide Competition for Young Singers known as Operalia. He is the founder of Amerindo Investment Advisors.
23. RON BURKLE, TED FORSTMANN, and JOHN WALTON—an additional $30 million to the CHILDREN’S SCHOLARSHIP FUND. Low-income families with children entering grades K-to-8 in the United States are eligible to apply to the foundation’s lottery that will award 40,000 four-year partial tuition scholarships. With the expansion, CSF awarded nearly $170 million in scholarships in April. Forstmann is the co-founder of the investment firm Forstmann Little & Co.; Ron Burkle is the managing partner of the Yucaipa Cos.; and John Walton is a director of Wal-Mart.
23. A. ALFRED TAUBMAN—$30 million to the UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN for the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, the most generous single gift ever made to a school of architecture in the United States. (Also, see Taubman’s group gift above to the Detroit Institute of Arts.) The university has renamed the school in Taubman’s honor. He attended the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning and has been a longtime friend and adviser to the college. In 1991, the university awarded Taubman an honorary degree. One of the university’s most generous benefactors, he contributed to the university’s A. Alfred Taubman Health Care Center and Taubman Medical Library. This latest gift to the university is the largest gift he has made to any institution.
23. HENRY B. TIPPIE—a $30 million pledge to the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, the largest gift ever made by an individual to the university and the fifth-largest donation to the business department of any U.S. college. The College of Business Administration will be renamed the Henry B. Tippie College of Business in honor of the alumnus. Tippie, who graduated from the university with an accounting degree in 1949, made his first donation of $10 to the U of I in 1957. Every year since, he has donated money. From an impoverished childhood, Tippie now holds interests in several multimillion-dollar companies and is the vice chairman of the board of the Rollins Truck Leasing Corp. The $30 million includes $3 million in past donations, as well as commitments for the future.
26. JOE and TERESA LONG—a total of $26.2 million; $20 million to the ARTS CENTER STAGE in Austin, Texas, to help renovate Palmer Auditorium into a multi-venue performing arts center, which will be renamed the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Center for the Performing Arts. The gift is the largest cash gift to the arts in the city’s history. “I heard Arturo Toscanini conduct the New York Philharmonic almost 50 years ago in Gregory Gym [at the University of Texas],” Joe Long said. “There was quite a to-do in the papers, even then, about the lack of proper acoustics.” Both Longs grew up in small Texas towns. They met while teaching school in Alice, Texas, after both attended the University of Texas in the 1940s. “The money convinced Joe he didn’t want to stay in the teaching profession,” Teresa Long said. She earned a doctorate in education in 1965; Joe graduated from UT Law School in 1958 and practiced financial law in Austin for many years. He merged two local institutions to create First State Bank. In 1998, Long sold his 94 percent interest in the bank to Minneapolis-based Norwest Bank. The Longs gave an additional $6.2 million to the UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN for scholarships and professorships.
27. WALTER J. KLEIN—a film and videotape archive worth approximately $25 million to the NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL OF THE ARTS from this Charlotte, N.C., founder of the film production company that bears his name. The collection comprises some 1,000 commercials, documentaries, and short films made for corporations and other institutions over the past 50 years. The collection’s monetary estimate comes from the company’s own records and represents what the materials cost to produce at the time, said Klein’s son Robert, who is president of the Walter J. Klein Co.
27. DAVID H. KOCH—$25 million over 10 years to the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY for the Center for Cancer Research from this alumnus. While no definitive decision has been reached on how to distribute the funds, the donation may be used to support postdoctoral work and to sponsor chairs for cancer research. Although Koch has not stipulated the type of cancer research he wishes to fund, he has expressed a great interest in the study of prostate cancer. MIT President Charles M. Vest said, “Major funding with such flexibility will enable us to very significantly strengthen our world-class basic cancer research. … The level of this gift in support of research is unprecedented in modern MIT history.” Koch and his family earned their fortunes in the oil business.
27. THE MILKEN FAMILY FOUNDATION—a second $25 million commitment to CaP CURE, the nonprofit organization the Milken family created in 1993 with an initial $25 million gift. Michael Milken was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1993 and has lost several family members to cancer. Milken created the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate (CaP CURE) shortly after he was diagnosed with the disease. CaP CURE was founded to fund prostate cancer research and to convert that research into treatments and cures. In the past five years, CaP CURE has awarded more than $50 million to more than 350 research projects worldwide. It has become the largest private source of prostate cancer research funding in the United States, second only to the National Cancer Institute. Milken was a Wall Street financier.