Weill accelerates $170m gift to hard-up University
Former Citigroup chief executive and chairman Sandy Weill, who had pledged to give Cornell University Medical School $250m (€188m) when he died, has accelerated a cash donation to advance its building projects and replenish its foundation.
The medical college, which lost one-third of its value last year, is receiving the $170m gift sooner than planned at the request of the university's president.
Weill and his wife Joan, who run the Weill Foundation, also established a challenge gift to raise a little over $200m in additional donations for the construction of the Medical College's new $650m research building.
Weill's challenge will match contributions by other members. The facility will double the college’s existing laboratory space. The projected is scheduled to get underway later this year in New York’s Upper East Side.
The news comes after the latest report from The Charities Commission which revealed nearly a thousand charities in the UK shut between 2007 and 2008. Nearly 60% of the respondents said they had experienced a reduction in income because of the recession. Sixty one per cent said they were concerned economic downturn would affect the work they did or the activities they fund.
Cornell Medical College's foundation had roughly $5.4bn at the end of its fiscal year in June 2008. Since then the foundation has declined by one third to $3.7bn at the end of March.
Cornell’s move to speed up the giving of gifts is likely to be carried out at other universities after market dislocation led to a 24% decline in returns for the first six months of fiscal year 2009, according to a survey by nonprofit research provider, the Commonfund Institute. University endowments greater than $1bn had 21% wiped from their values while educational endowments with less than $10m showed losses of up 30.2%.
In the UK, the Government's Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills is examining two proposals which call for an increase of £2bn in funding packages to scientific start-ups in this year's budget.
Lobbyists say a dearth of venture capitalists and investment is sparking a brain drain of high-tech talent to the US, despite its own funding gap. President Obama has announced plans to increase funding for research and scientific infrastructure by $21.5bn.
A spokesman for the DIUS said the body was looking at the proposals for this year's budget but as nothing had been confirmed.
-- Write to Stephanie Baum at sbaum@efinancialnews.com and Tara Loader Wilkinson at twilkinson@efinancialnews.com
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
reddit
StumbleUpon