Oregon billionaires Phil and Penny Knight committed $1.1 billion to the Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and the Providence Heart Institute to build Oregon’s first hospital dedicated to women’s health, the medical center announced Tuesday.
Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, and his wife, have supported the institute for more than a decade, previously giving it more than $200 million, including a $75 million gift earlier this year. Along with creating the new women’s hospital, their new donation will help the medical center expand cardiovascular care and clinical research and training programs for the heart institute’s medical personnel. It will also make it easier to integrate patient care across the medical center.
“Women’s health needs change throughout life, and too often patients are asked to navigate multiple specialties and care settings on their own,” Ray Moreno, the medical center’s CEO, said in a statement. “The Knights’ gift is an opportunity to bring these resources together, expanding access for women across Oregon and creating a strong foundation to bridge care gaps in women’s health.”
Philanthropy to fill the gaps
The donation is particularly significant because it comes at a moment when U.S. hospitals are seeing far more pregnant patients who are also managing chronic health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, addiction, and behavioral and mental health issues. It also lands at the same time healthcare organizations are struggling with the impact of government funding cuts.
“Resources are scarce, and healthcare is increasingly looking to philanthropy to fill in the gaps,” Dan Oseran, the heart institute’s executive medical director, told the Chronicle. “A gift like this reduces that friction a little bit and provides the ability to do things we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.”
Medicine and medical research have been among the top causes capable of attracting mega-philanthropy ever since the birth of modern philanthropy in the late 19th century, said Benjamin Soskis, a historian whose work focuses on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.
“They are some of the few institutions that can reliably absorb big-dollar donations,” Soskis said. “At a moment when there is more and more talk about the wealthy warehousing fortunes, the Knights have updated a standby of the traditional philanthropic playbook to provide a model of getting a lot of money out the door now.”
Billions in giving based on relationships
Counting pledges and direct gifts, the Knights’ latest commitment pushes their total charitable giving to more than $9 billion over the past two decades, with about $2.5 billion of that going to their family foundation and donor-advised funds. They have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 12 times since 2006.
The Knights’ charitable giving is often the result of long-term relationships they have built with nonprofit leaders they have come to trust over time.
“These are very personal decisions based on their trust and belief in the institutions and the people that they work with,” said Oseran of Providence Heart Institute. “Each step along the way, when you can point to those achievements and successes, it engenders greater confidence that they have in your being good stewards of their philanthropy. That’s the dynamic of how we got to this ($1.1 billion) gift.”
The couple, whose net worth stands at about $25 billion, according to Forbes, have given huge sums to a range of Oregon nonprofits. They have given more than $2.7 billion to Oregon Health & Science University over the years, including a $2 billion donation for its Knight Cancer Institute last year. They launched the institute with a $100 million gift in 2008.
They have donated more than $2 billion to the University of Oregon, Phil Knight’s alma mater, to support scientific and related programs, including $500 million in 2016 to launch the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact. They gave another $500 million in 2021 to expand research programs, build new facilities, and support students and faculty at the Knight Campus.
The couple also gave $400 million in 2023 to the 1803 Fund, a Portland, Oregon, nonprofit, for its Rebuild Albina project, an effort to revive the economic and cultural prosperity of a once-thriving Black neighborhood that fell into neglect in the 1970s.
The Knights have given at least $580 million to Stanford University, where Phil Knight earned an MBA. That includes $400 million in 2016 to establish Knight-Hennessy Scholars, a graduate program, and $105 million to Stanford’s business school to create the Knight Management Center. They also gave Stanford $75 million in 2022 to launch the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, an effort to learn what causes cognitive decline and diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and how to delay and treat degenerative brain conditions.
Educating donors can lead to surprising support
The Knights have also supported college athletics, environmental programs, and sports and recreation activities for youth, among other causes.
Gifts like the Knights’ latest one prove that spending time with donors and educating them about an organization’s work is extremely important and can lead to surprising windfalls, said Erin Hall, a development consultant and former nonprofit CEO.
“I don’t think we can ever do enough of that because that is how donors find out everything about your organization and that is how donors feel good about where their investment is going,” Hall said. “What a great way to leave a legacy and to be able to watch your investment come to life. That’s a pretty cool thing for a donor, and that’s going to also keep the donor engaged for the next need that that organization has.”
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Maria Di Mento is a senior editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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