Johns Hopkins Gazette: October 2, 1995


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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Go back to Previous Page

Go to Gazette Homepage