Showing Initiative: Alumnus, Trustee Bloomberg Pledges $55 Million Dennis O'Shea ---------------------------------- Homewood News and Information Business news entrepreneur Michael R. Bloomberg has pledged $55 million to Johns Hopkins, the largest gift in the university's history. Bloomberg, founder and owner of Bloomberg Financial Markets and a 1964 Johns Hopkins graduate, said the gift will be divided among the university's eight schools and its Milton S. Eisenhower Library. Some will also go to Johns Hopkins Medicine's effort to build both a cancer treatment center and a cancer research building. Part of the gift will be used for endowment, the primary focus of the $900 million Johns Hopkins Initiative, a fund-raising campaign for both the university and the Johns Hopkins Health System. The rest will go toward capital projects, such as the cancer buildings, renovation of the library, and construction of a new building for the School of Nursing and two student buildings on the Homewood campus. "Very few people get the opportunity to really change the world," Bloomberg said. "Hopkins defends our freedom with research for the intelligence and military communities. Hopkins cures and prevents disease around the world. It expands our culture and teaches our youth. Hopkins discovers and invents and makes the world a much better place for our families. "There's no organization I know of, of a comparable size, that does so many different things so well. When I give a dollar to Hopkins, the impact is enormous. I can't think of anything I could do with my money that would bring me more pleasure. I'm personally improving the world and people's lives with my gift. What better thing could I do? How better can I repay society for all the opportunities I've had?" Bloomberg, who chairs the Johns Hopkins Initiative, said the gift represents his initial commitment to the campaign, bringing it more than halfway to its goal just a year after its October 1994 public launch. Gifts and pledges now total $466.8 million, 52 percent of the $900 million goal. Gifts and pledges for endowment and capital purposes total $334.4 million, 64 percent of the $525 million goal for those critical needs. "The good news is that we are halfway there. The sobering news is we have halfway to go," Bloomberg said. "What we now have to do is redouble our efforts." Bloomberg, 53, chair-elect of the university's board of trustees, has previously given the university $8 million, supporting, among other projects, construction of the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy on the Homewood campus. He said he was influenced in planning his latest gift by the example of Zanvyl Krieger, a 1928 graduate who in 1992 committed $50 million to the endowment of the School of Arts and Sciences. The Krieger gift, more than three times the size of the largest previous donation to the university, was the key development in the years of planning that preceded the public launch of the Johns Hopkins Initiative. It encouraged the university and health system to set their ambitious $900 million goal. Bloomberg said a $20 million gift last year from trustee Champ Sheridan and his wife, Debbie, and another this year from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, as well as other major campaign gifts, notably from the Orioles and Orioles owner Peter Angelos, had also raised his sights. "I'm just trying to follow on in their footsteps," he said. "My hope is this will not be the biggest gift the campaign receives. I'd be ecstatic if someone came along and used me as an example the way I've used these people as an example. Nothing would give me more pleasure." Daniel Nathans, interim president of the university, said Bloomberg's gift--and the achievement of half the campaign goal so quickly--is important confirmation that trustees and other friends of Hopkins are enthusiastic and confident. They demonstrate, he said, that the campaign is moving forward in the time between President William C. Richardson's departure and the election of a new president. "Mike's leadership of this campaign has been extraordinary," Nathans said, "and this gift is more extraordinary still. It's an amazingly generous response to this university's priority need, endowment support. And it's an important example to alumni of colleges and universities everywhere of the incredible impact they can have in higher education." ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bloomberg Makes Gift As A Parent There's an awful lot of Mike Bloombergs wrapped up in his $55 million gift to Johns Hopkins. Mike Bloomberg the businessman made the money. Mike Bloomberg the alumnus has loved Hopkins since his student days. Mike Bloomberg the trustee has invested a huge chunk of himself in nurturing the university and making sure it thrives. But it is Mike Bloomberg the parent, he says, who is really making this gift. "There are lots of good things to do with your money, but what better legacy to leave than a better world for your children than what they came in with or what you had?" says Bloomberg, a father of two. "That's an awful lot better thing to do for your children than leaving them money that they can just go and spend on the more humdrum things," he says. "The world that we leave our children is the most important thing." Bloomberg, 53, is a 1964 electrical engineering graduate of Hopkins. A trustee since 1987, he devotes so much of his energy to the university--occasionally landing his own chopper on Garland Field at Homewood as he zips in and out of town for a quick meeting--that you almost wonder how he's found spare time to make his millions. Bloomberg is now chair-elect of the university's board of trustees, vice-chair of the presidential search committee, chair of the Johns Hopkins Initiative, and chair of the Joint Trustee Committee on Development of the university and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. In 1981, Bloomberg founded Bloomberg Financial Markets, now one of the world's fastest-growing and most important sources of business, financial and market news and information. The New York-based company is the modern, high-tech equivalent of a ticker service, providing market quotes and other, much more sophisticated financial data and analysis to traders and investors through more than 52,000 leased terminals. But it is also much more than that. The company's Bloomberg Business News wire service, with more than 20 bureaus across the country, provides breaking news stories and analysis over the terminals and to news organizations, including most of the nation's largest newspapers. The company also publishes two magazines, co-produces a daily public television business news show with Maryland Public Television, and operates a New York City all-news radio station, a syndicated radio service and a 24-hour worldwide all-news television channel. Before starting his company, Bloomberg had been a general partner at the investment banking firm Salomon Brothers, where he headed equity trading and sales and, later, systems development. Bloomberg is a trustee of the Jewish Museum, the Spence School, the Big Apple Circus, Prep for Prep, the High School of Economics and Finance, the Institute for Advanced Study, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the New York Police & Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the S.L.E. Foundation and the U.S. Ski Team Educational Foundation. He is a member of the board and co-chair of the individual gifts committee of the Central Park Conservancy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Record Gift To Benefit All Campaigns Michael Bloomberg has many reasons for dividing his record-setting gift among the eight academic divisions, the Eisenhower Library, and Johns Hopkins Medicine's two cancer building projects. First, he says, as chair of the Johns Hopkins Initiative, he's committed to making sure every aspect of the campaign succeeds. "What I'm trying to do is ... to help every campaign," Bloomberg says. "In some of the campaigns, it will be challenge grants; in some of them it will be an outright gift." Second, Bloomberg says, he wants to demonstrate his belief that every Hopkins division is crucial to the health and success of every other. Third, and most important, he says, is that every Hopkins division contributes in its own way to the improvement of human life. "Universities require all the parts," says the 1964 alumnus of the undergraduate program at Homewood. "So the parts of the university that I don't know very much about or I don't have any great affinity for are just as important as the parts that are near and dear to my heart. "The whole organization--of the health system and the university--is inseparable," he says. Bloomberg says the precise division of his gift will be announced soon. The critical factor in the decision, he says, will be "where we can do the most good." ----------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Largest Gifts To Hopkins 1. $55 million, for the eight academic divisions of the university and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library and for the Johns Hopkins Medicine campaign for a cancer center and cancer research building, Michael R. Bloomberg, 1995. 2. $50 million, for the School of Arts and Sciences endowment, Zanvyl and Isabelle Krieger Fund, 1992. 3. $20 million, for the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, R. Champlin and Debbie Sheridan, 1994. 4. $20 million, for the Johns Hopkins Hospital Cancer Center, Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, 1995. 5. $17.7 million, for Johns Hopkins Hospital, estate of Glenn Stewart, 1982. 6. $14.6 million, real estate, for the university's unrestricted use, Elizabeth Banks and family, 1989. 7. $10 million, for the Johns Hopkins Hospital Cancer Center, anonymous, 1995. 8. $9.8 million, for the School of Medicine, anonymous faculty member, 1986. 9. $9.125 million, School of Arts and Sciences humanities programs, estate of Herbert Boone, 1983. 10. $8.1 million, for the university's unrestricted use, David Blech, 1987. 11. $8.1 million, for the university's unrestricted use, Isaac Blech, 1987. Note: This is a listing of the largest gifts ever to either The Johns Hopkins University or The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, or to both. Though they are separate corporations, they cooperate in many areas, including fund raising. -----------------------------------------------------------------