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The 1996 SLATE 60
The 60 largest American charitable contributions of 1996.

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Posted Sunday, Jan. 26, 1997, at 3:56 AM ET

Introduction

The 1996 SLATE 60
The 60 largest American charitable contributions of 1996.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Other known gifts of over $1 million in 1996.

The Top 10 Anonymous Gifts of 1996

New 1997 Gifts

10. WILLIAM DAVIDSON--$30 million to the AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR TECHNION-ISRAEL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY in Haifa, Israel, from the CEO of Guardian Industries, which makes glass products. In 1992, Davidson also gave $30 million to the University of Michigan School of Business Administration to establish an institute to help countries make the transition to a free-market economy.

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12. WILLIAM H. GATES III--$15 million to HARVARD UNIVERSITY (Mass.), part of a joint gift with Microsoft No. 2 Steve Ballmer of $25 million to benefit research and teaching in computer science and electrical engineering. Of this, $20 million will be used to construct a state-of-the-art facility for research and teaching that will be named after Gates' and Ballmer's mothers. The remaining $5 million will endow a professorship. Gates' $15 million portion of the gift is his largest gift to date to Harvard. ALSO--$12 million to the UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON (jointly with his wife, Melinda French Gates) to help pay for a proposed $52 million building for the University of Washington Law School. At the suggestion of the university, the building will be named after Gates' father, William H. Gates II, who graduated from the law school in 1950. The gift was awarded in June 1995, but it was publicly announced only in May 1996. Gates also gave the University of Washington $12 million in 1991 to establish a department of molecular biotechnology, and $10 million in 1995 to fund an endowment for undergraduate students, in honor of his mother. 1996 TOTAL: $27 million.

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13. PHILIP H. KNIGHT--$25 million to the UNIVERSITY OF OREGON from this 1959 graduate, who is chairman of the board and CEO of Nike. Of this, $15 million will be used to endow up to 17 professorships. The remaining $10 million will be put toward the construction of a new law library. The law library will be named in honor of Knight's father, William Knight, who graduated from the university in 1932.

13. ALFRED LERNER--$25 million to COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY (N.Y.) from the chairman and CEO of MBNA Corp., one of the nation's largest credit-card companies. Lerner is an alumnus of the university.

13. CHARLES B. WANG--$25 million to the STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT STONY BROOK, the largest private gift made to a SUNY campus. The gift will fund the Charles B. Wang Asian-American Center. Wang is an entrepreneur and founder of Computer Associates, based in Islandia, Long Island.

16. THOMAS H. LEE--$22 million to HARVARD UNIVERSITY, the seventh-largest gift received by the university and the largest contribution given by anyone of Lee's generation. Of the total, "a whopping $19 million" may be spent at the discretion of President Neil Rudenstine and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Jeremy Knowles. The remaining $3 million will fund projects in medicine, the arts, and education. Lee is the founder and CEO of the Thomas Lee Cos., a venture-capital firm based in Boston. He is married to Ann Tennenbaum, a Savannah, Ga., native and graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (N.Y.).

17. SIDNEY KNAFEL--$20 million to HARVARD UNIVERSITY for its capital campaign.

17. PETER M. NICHOLAS--$20 million to DUKE UNIVERSITY for its School of the Environment from this alumnus who says he enrolled at Duke only after failing the eye exam at the Naval Academy. Nicholas is president of Boston Scientific Corp. in Massachusetts and a trustee of Duke. He said he pledged the money, "first and foremost, as a vote of confidence in Duke University." Half the donation will help pay for a wing in the new Levine Science Research Center; the remaining $10 million will be divided among endowments for professorships, a fellows-in-residence program, and unrestricted endowment. "To environmentalists, the gift is an unusual show of support for an area of research that has long been a poor relation to schools of medicine and law."

17. THE FAMILY OF THE LATE SEN. H. JOHN HEINZ--$20 million to establish a research center in his name where experts from academia, industry, government, and the nonprofit sector can join to seek firmer ground for environmental policies in science and economics. The sponsors said the gift was one of the largest single philanthropic grants offered in environmental circles. TERESA HEINZ, widow of Sen. Heinz and chairwoman of the Heinz Family Philanthropies, is an active environmentalist and vice chairperson of the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group that has made a mark developing strategies that use financial incentives to lower the costs of protecting the environment. The donation to establish the Heinz Center comes from the Vira I. Heinz Endowment, one of the philanthropies associated with the family.

17. FREDERICK P. ROSE and SANDRA ROSE--$20 million to the AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Frederick Rose, chairman of Rose Associates, a real-estate investment company, and Sandra Rose, a consultant, made the gift anonymously last autumn to help rebuild the museum's planetarium. Rose is a museum trustee and chair of the planetarium project.

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