Welcome to Fundraising Friday, AB Today's weekly digest of recent developments in development.
A $10 million donation from Phil Morse, vice chairman of the Boston Red Sox since 2004, will help build a new 40,000-square-foot athletics facility at Kimball Union Academy, the private boarding school in Meriden, N.H., that counts Morse among its Class of 1960. The new facility will include a weight room, locker rooms a dance studio and multipurpose space. As reported by WCAX in Burlington, Vt., total cost of the project is between $35 million and $40 million, and the school hopes to break ground in the spring of 2027.
Texas State University announced Tuesday a $2 million joint gift from Houston-based alumni Scott and Lynda Irvine and Chris and Shannon Rasmussen in support of a $16 million project to enhance the school's baseball and softball facilities. According to Chron., the donation will update the baseball and softball facilities with new indoor batting cages, a pitching lab, a weight room, a training room, locker rooms, a hospitality club level and coaches' offices as Texas State joins the Pac-12 Conference at the start of the 2026-27 season.
The Illinois State University athletics department announced a commitment of $2.5 million donation less than two weeks before the ISU football team lost the FCS national championship Jan. 5, 35-34, in the first-ever FCS title game to reach overtime. The gift, from an anonymous former Redbird quarterback, is the largest ever allocated to the ISU football program and the second largest gift in the athletic department's history. It will go toward enhancing the football program in the future and its quest to recruit and retain first-class student-athletes to Normal.
A $500,000 challenge gift, announced Tuesday, will help bring about significant improvements to the tennis complex at Washburn University in Topeka, Kan. As reported by local CBS affiliate WIBW. The gift from Kent and Rhonda Lammers is part of Washburn’s Athletics Corridor master plan and is designed to inspire additional giving by doubling the impact of contributions toward the project.
Total amount of these gifts:
$14,000,000
Running total for 2026:
$14,000,000
Total amount tracked by AB Today in 2025:
$1,671,578,500
