Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, gave $2 billion on Thursday to Oregon Health & Science University for its Knight Cancer Institute. It’s the biggest gift made public so far in a year that has seen few mega-gifts. The massive donation will nearly double the size of the institute, which was named for the Knights when they donated $100 million to launch it in 2008.
The money will expand the cancer center’s clinical trials and basic cancer research and bolster a range of support services for cancer patients and their families, including psychological, genetic, and financial counseling; nutritional care; survivorship support; and other therapies.
“It can seem impossible to navigate the health care system after being diagnosed with cancer. We’re going to change that,” said the institute’s president, Brian Druker, in a news release. “We have revolutionized the way we detect and treat cancer. Now we are going to transform the way we care for patients while continuing to develop innovative treatments.”
This is the fourth gift of $100 million or more the Knights have given to the university, bringing their total giving there to more than $2.7 billion over the past 17 years, according to the Chronicle’s tally.
The couple, whose net worth stands at about $35 billion, have been giving huge sums to charity for decades and have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 11 times since 2006.
Including this latest donation, the Knights have given more than $7.8 billion to nonprofits over the past 20 years. More than $2.2 billion of that has gone to the Knight Foundation and other Knight family giving vehicles.
While Oregon Health & Science is now the biggest beneficiary of the Knights’ lifetime giving, the couple has made a significant mark on other organizations, including Phil Knight’s two alma maters: University of Oregon, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1959, and Stanford University, where he got his MBA in 1962.
The Knights have given a total of at least $2.2 billion to the University of Oregon, much of it going to support scientific and related programs. Among those donations was $500 million they gave in 2016 to launch the Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact, a scientific research and development center, and another $500 million in 2021 to expand research programs, new facilities, and support for students and faculty at the Knight Campus.
Meanwhile, they have given Stanford at least $580 million over the past two decades, including $400 million in 2016 to establish Knight-Hennessy Scholars, a graduate program that is focused on preparing the next generation to become global leaders, and $105 million to Stanford’s business school to create the Knight Management Center. The couple also gave Stanford $75 million three years ago to launch the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, an effort to learn what causes cognitive decline and degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s and how to delay and treat such neurodegeneration.
The bulk of their biggest giving has gone to science, health, and business programs. The couple also gave $400 million in 2023 to the 1803 Fund, a Portland, Ore., nonprofit, for its Rebuild Albina project, an effort to revive the economic and cultural prosperity of a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland that fell into neglect in the 1970s. The Knights have also supported college athletics, environmental programs, and sports and recreation activities for youth, among other causes.
To learn more about America’s wealthiest philanthropists, see the Chronicle’s annual the Philanthropy 50 report on the most generous U.S. donor. And check out our database of gifts of $1 million or more to see who else is giving big to charity.
