Fundraising Friday: Seven-Figure Gifts to UCLA, UH Manoa and Kansas Gateway Project

Welcome to Fundraising Friday: AB Today's weekly digest of recent developments in development.

The UCLA athletic department has announced a gift commitment of $1,612,500 from alumnus Mark Kalmansohn to support the immediate greatest needs of 13 individual UCLA sports programs, including each of UCLA’s women’s teams and the men’s volleyball and men’s water polo teams. The gift, to be funded over a five-year period and termed The Mark E. Kalmansohn Targeted Immediate Impact Gift, is focused on empowering each program to adapt and expand student-athlete services at the discretion of the head coach and sport administration as UCLA transitions to the Big Ten Conference in August 2024, according to a Feb. 7 announcement on the Bruins website. Previously, Kalmansohn had given $1.3 million toward UCLA’s 2022 launch of the Women of Westwood initiative.

Student-athletes at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who grew up in Hawaii will have more opportunities to succeed in school and in their sport, thanks to an endowment established by Rie Wong, a devoted supporter of UH Athletics, the university announced earlier this month. The $1.05 million gift from Wong establishes the Edwin & Rie Wong Endowment Fund to provide academic and student support for UH Manoa student-athletes who are graduates of Hawaii high schools. The endowment is open to men and women student-athletes in any sport and extends to helping them with the costs of attending summer school. Ed Wong was a UH Manoa alumnus and one of the founding members and past president of the Nā Koa Football Booster Club.

University of Kansas Athletics recently announced another major gift toward its Gateway District project — a $35 million commitment from former student body president Brad Garlinghouse to KU Endowment. The Gateway project involves a renovation of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium and a reimagined district surrounding the stadium. Garlinghouse’s gift was the latest in a string of significant contributions to the project made late last year. As reported by The Topeka Capital-Journal, these included $25 million from R. Todd Slawson and $15 million from an anonymous family, both in October, as well as a $10 million gift from the Kimbell and Almanza families in November and a $10 million gift from Dana Anderson in August.

Total amount of these gifts:

$97,662,500