(Bloomberg) -- They aren't just the largest checks written by the best-known donors to high-profile causes. Instead, the Bloomberg News Philanthropy Tracker rounds up 10 notable gifts announced in a month's time, with the aim of capturing the diverse ways donors and causes match up.
Funds directed to a theater festival in Stratford, Ontario, an effort to prosecute war criminals and a competition to find a cure for Alzheimer's all made the cut in October. To submit a gift for consideration, email agordon01@bloomberg.net.
October Gifts:
$150 million: Beth and Larry Gies, 51, CEO of Chicago-based holding company Madison Industries, to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business for scholarships, faculty and programming. The couple met at the university where he majored in accountancy. They've also supported the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research at Stanford University and the Chicago Jesuit Academy.
$34 million: Dian and Dwight Diercks, 49, senior vice president of software engineering at semiconductor maker Nvidia Corp., to the Milwaukee School of Engineering to build an artificial-intelligence center. Dwight had a scholarship to MSOE covering half of tuition and graduated in 1990. Four years later he was Nvidia's 22nd hire.
$25 million: Jane and Dan Och, 56, founder and chief executive officer of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, to the Spine Hospital at New York-Presbyterian in Manhattan.
$25 million: Jean and Ric Edelman, founders of Edelman Financial Services, for an XPrize competition focused on a cure for Alzheimer's disease. The funds will support prize money and operational support for competing teams. Ric Edelman said he and Jean “have seen firsthand the devastating impact of this dreadful disease on so many of our firm's clients.”
$20 million: New York Private Bank & Trust's Howard Milstein family to Cornell University for an undergraduate program in technology and humanity that will offer liberal-arts majors a computer science curriculum and summer internships at Cornell Tech. Milstein and his son Michael Milstein are Cornell graduates.
$10.85 million: Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance's Criminal Justice Investment Initiative -- funded by settlements with international banks for violating U.S. sanctions -- to two nonprofits and three social enterprises. Among the gifts, Drive Change received $3 million to train formerly incarcerated individuals in mobile-food vending. The Door received $1.88 million for helping youth make the transition out of foster care.
$7.8 million: Dan Bernstein, 52, a senior strategist at Bridgewater Associates, and his wife Claire Foerster to the Stratford Festival theater company of Stratford, Ontario. The funds will help replace the Tom Patterson Theater. Bernstein grew up attending the festival and continued the tradition with his wife and daughters.
$4 million: Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine, 51, co-managing partner of Bain Capital, to Lift, which pairs volunteers with low-income parents of young children. The Lavines got involved five years ago and their gift, the organization's largest, sets up an innovation fund to support and share the Lift model in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington.
$1 million: Amal and George Clooney's Clooney Foundation for Justice, to the Sentry, to aid in the prosecution and asset seizure of people financing genocide and other war crimes. The Clooneys set up the foundation in late 2016, and tapped Boies Schiller partner David Pressman, former U.S. representative on the United Nations Security Council, to run it. This grant follows ones to Unicef, Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Watch.
Undisclosed amount: Allison and Roberto Mignone, of Bridger Management, to the American Museum of Natural History to renovate the halls of gems and minerals -- and fill them with new eye-catching specimens like two amethyst geodes from Uruguay. The couple are lead donors on the $30 million project but it's a family affair: Their children collect rocks and have their own case at home to display them. One daughter took her first steps at the museum. Roberto Mignone is a museum trustee and Allison is vice chair of the museum's capital campaign.
To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Dan Reichl, Josh Friedman
©2017 Bloomberg L.P.
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