Billionaire financier Kenneth Griffin gave $300 million to Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences to support a wide range of teaching, research, and other programs, including financial aid, the university announced Tuesday. Griffin has been a longtime supporter of his alma mater and has now given a total of more than $500 million, according to the university.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is home to Harvard’s undergraduate program, all of the university’s Ph.D. programs, and 40 academic departments in the liberal-arts and science fields. To recognize his decades-long support of the university, Harvard officials plan to name the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for him.
Griffin gave Harvard $150 million in 2014, and although he directed $10 million of that gift to establish a professorship at Harvard Business School, the bulk of it went to endowing financial aid for undergraduates and creating the Griffin Leadership Challenge, a fundraising effort that helped the university raise more than $400 million from other donors for the financial-aid endowment. That gift landed him at No. 16 on that year’s Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle’s annual ranking of the biggest donors.
Harvard is not the only organization to benefit from Griffin’s largess. He has given a total of at least $565.5 million to more than two dozen other nonprofits since 2006, according to a Chronicle tally. Among those donations were two gifts of $125 million apiece, one in 2019 to endow the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago and another in 2017 to the University of Chicago to recruit more economics professors, augment financial aid, and support research.
Griffin founded the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group in Chicago in 1990 and has since racked up a personal fortune that Forbes estimates at $35 billion. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard in 1989 but had started investing in the stock market while a sophomore there. He started two hedge funds with investments from his family and friends during his undergraduate years and was managing assets of around $1 million by the time he graduated.
Griffin gives primarily through his Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund and supports higher education, arts and culture institutions, and other groups. Along with his gifts to Harvard, he has devoted a significant portion of his giving to nonprofits in Chicago, where Citadel was headquartered. He moved his firm to Miami last year and as a parting gift, gave a total of $130 million to 40 Chicago nonprofits. He has since made large contributions to four Florida nonprofits, including $25 million to Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami and $8 million to the Cox Science Center and Aquarium in West Palm Beach.
To learn about other big donations from Griffin and hundreds of other big donors, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
