Announcing a historic gift to Johns Hopkins

Dear Colleagues,

I am thrilled today to make an announcement of truly historic significance: Michael R. Bloomberg, devoted alumnus, visionary entrepreneur, extraordinary philanthropist and the distinguished Mayor of the City of New York, has committed $350 million to The Johns Hopkins University.

This gift is the largest that our university has ever received. With this gift, Mike's lifetime philanthropy to Johns Hopkins will exceed $1 billion, which we believe makes him the largest single contributor to an American institution of higher education in history.

In announcing the gift today, Mike observed that:

"Johns Hopkins University has been an important part of my life since I first set foot on campus almost five decades ago. Each dollar I have given has been well-spent improving the institution, and just as importantly, making its education available to students who might otherwise not be able to afford it. Giving is only meaningful if the money will make a difference in people's lives and I know of no other institution that can make a bigger difference in lives around the world through its groundbreaking research—especially in the field of public health."

The majority of Mike's most recent gift, $250 million, will endow 50 new professorships across the university to be known as the Bloomberg Distinguished Professors.

Each year for the next five years, ten new professorships will be created. The vast majority of the professorships will be used to recruit outstanding colleagues from across the country and, indeed, the world. Faculty appointed to these chairs will hold a formal appointment in two or more of the university's divisions. The Bloomberg Distinguished Professors will enhance significantly the university's longstanding commitment to research, teaching and service that spans disciplinary boundaries, which is manifest in areas as diverse as neuroscience, global health, international studies and biomedical engineering. These professorships will be a very tangible way for us to knit our one university even more closely together.

The Bloomberg Distinguished Professorships will be the cornerstone of a larger effort to raise $1 billion during our forthcoming campaign to facilitate and enrich our capacity for collaborative work across disciplines. In particular, the professors will help to anchor the signature initiatives, a set of compelling interdisciplinary priorities that are emerging through an extensive consultative process begun more than two years ago, involving all of the university's deans and directors and more than 100 faculty members.

As I have reported to you previously, with generous investments from other donors and seed capital from the deans, the President and the Provost, we recently launched initiatives in individualized health and the science of learning. With the benefit of this most recent gift, we expect to announce shortly initiatives in three other areas: water sustainability, urban revitalization and global health. We also anticipate announcing additional initiatives centered on new and emerging collaborative scholarship, teaching and service opportunities.

$100 million of this breathtaking $350 million gift will be dedicated to need-based financial aid for undergraduate students, ensuring that the most talented and committed students are admitted to the university's classrooms, regardless of economic circumstance. Over the next 10 years, 2,600 Bloomberg Scholarships will be awarded. This gift adds to the $64 million that Mike has previously provided to undergraduate financial aid, and the $54.5 million in financial assistance he has provided to other students across the university.

The gift that Mike is announcing today builds on a truly remarkable legacy of giving to the university.

Mike graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1964 from the School of Engineering.

While here, he served on the Student Council, joined the Omicron Delta Kappa leadership society, and became President of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. To pay his tuition, he worked as a parking lot attendant at the Hopkins Club. In his senior year, he was elected president of his class.

Over the next several decades, as Mike built his own company in the financial news and information sector, he would give to his university in practically every way possible: through his leadership, his counsel, his expertise, and his philanthropy.

From 1987 to 2002, he served on the Board of Trustees and chaired the first several years of the Johns Hopkins Initiative Campaign, which concluded in 2000 and raised more than $1.5 billion. From 1996 to 2002, he served as the 13th chair of the Board of Trustees, helping to guide the university through a vast array of major strategic decisions.

Through the years, Mike has reshaped the university through his boundless philanthropy. His gifts have funded research, fueled public health initiatives around the world, provided an education to our neediest students, and helped to build a hospital and much of the physical structure of the university.

There is little doubt that the modern history of Johns Hopkins has been inextricably and profoundly shaped by the remarkable dedication and generosity of Mike Bloomberg.

He is a visionary philanthropist on the order of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Leland Stanford and our own founder, Johns Hopkins.

We are so much better for his unprecedented generosity, leadership and service.

On behalf of the faculty, the students, the alumni, the patients and the staff associated with our university, I want to express our earnest appreciation and gratitude for this most extraordinary gift, from this most extraordinary graduate.

Sincerely,

Ronald J. Daniels
President