Paulson's $250 Million to Hebrew University: The Dollar Goes Further in Jerusalem
The largest gift in the university's 101-year history: unrestricted, record-setting, and framed as a value thesis — a dollar at Hebrew University goes ten times further than at Harvard.
Hedge fund manager John Paulson announced Saturday night at Hebrew University's Board of Governors gala a $250 million commitment, the largest gift in the school's history. The money will establish a new Faculty of Engineering, expand medicine and biomedical research, and fund trauma and post-traumatic stress research, alongside a new think tank linking faculty expertise to public needs. The historic Mount Scopus campus will be renamed the Alina and John Paulson Campus, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem. The gift is unrestricted: Paulson told interviewers a Hebrew University education costs far less than a comparable American one while its research output stands with elite institutions, and that given its quality and productivity he could think of no more deserving university for philanthropic support. It follows roughly $46 million in earlier Paulson gifts, bringing his lifetime total to about $300 million. The gift is the third-largest individual gift ever to an Israeli university and the latest in a three-year surge of mega-gifts from Jewish philanthropists to Israeli universities and hospitals, landing days after Steven Lavin's $30 million pledge to the same university to train more physicians. — eJewishPhilanthropy, Oct 17; GlobeNewswire (university release), Oct 17; CTech, Oct 17
Mega-Gifts
Hales Give $50M to Breast Cancer Research, Largest Ever
Karen and Rob Hale gave $50 million October 16 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the largest single gift ever made to breast cancer research, following their $10 million gift in 2024. Eleven million goes to BCRF Ventures, a new venture philanthropy fund announced at the Clinton Global Initiative to carry promising science from the lab to patients, and the gift establishes the Hale Family Collaborative of New England Investigators. Five priority areas: breast cancer in younger women, metastatic disease, artificial intelligence, immunotherapy, and prevention. Repeat mega-donors stepping up; venture philanthropy funding the valley between discovery and treatment; a personal thesis inside the gift — Karen Hale's mother is living with metastatic disease.— Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Oct 16
Jacobs and Levy's $5M Endows Oncology Research at Atlantic Health
Bruce I. Jacobs and Kenneth N. Levy, co-founders of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, pledged $5 million October 14 to Atlantic Health's Clinical Research and Innovation Institute, the largest research donation in system history, honoring the firm's 40th anniversary. The gift creates a permanent endowment generating annual income for investigator-led oncology studies across the system. Corporate milestone philanthropy structured as permanent research capacity, not a one-time check.— ROI-NJ, Oct 15
Leadership Moves
Seminary President Takes Bethel Advancement Post
Jody Hill, D.Min., was named vice president of advancement at Bethel University, starting October 6. He was most recently president of Memphis Theological Seminary; earlier, at Blue Mountain Christian University, average annual giving rose 40% and donor counts 52% during his tenure. He is also a New York Times bestselling author ("38: The Chucky Mullins Effect") and a former Ole Miss football player. A president moving into advancement leadership — the profession as a destination, not a ladder rung.— Bethel University, Oct 6
Ammons Returns to Morehouse to Close a $500M Campaign
Richard Ammons becomes interim vice president for institutional advancement at Morehouse College, where he held the same job in the 1980s. He brings more than 40 years of advancement experience, including vice president roles at Macalester and Colby, where he managed a staff of 43 and led a $370 million campaign. He walks into the final stretch of Morehouse's $500 million "Making Men of Consequence" campaign, which has raised more than $376 million; a national search for the permanent VP is underway with Isaacson, Miller. An interim closer is a discipline hire: campaigns end on tracking.— Pulse2, Oct 2
Research Desk
Tax Law Will Cut Giving $5.7B a Year — While Adding 8 Million Donors
The Lilly Family School of Philanthropy with CCS Fundraising analyzed the One Big Beautiful Bill's tax provisions (report published March 2026, new to this paper): total U.S. giving falls about $5.69 billion a year, roughly 1%, while the number of households who give rises by about 8 million. A capped universal charitable deduction for non-itemizers adds $4.39 billion; a 35% cap on deductions for high-income households subtracts $6.1 billion alone; the 0.5% floor for itemizers subtracts $2.43 billion; the 1% floor on corporate deductions subtracts $1.55 billion, about 3.5% of all corporate giving. The report predicts bunching — donors near the deduction floors giving biennially — and notes most corporations lose the tax incentive to donate. Down dollars, up donors: the whole year-end strategy in two lines. Segment, don't average.— IU Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, March; NonProfit PRO, March
No New AFP or CASE Releases This Window
No significant new AFP or CASE research landed October 12-18. The Lilly tax analysis above is the freshest authoritative benchmark; nothing was manufactured to fill the space. — Juno's research desk
AI in Fundraising
Blackbaud Details Platform for Good; Raiser's Edge NXT Rebuilt
The follow-through to the bbcon Lantern unveiling: Platform for Good, a unified operating system beneath Blackbaud's products, with a data core, an intelligence layer powered by the Social Impact Signal Graph, and an action layer with agents. Raiser's Edge NXT, the industry-standard fundraising CRM, is being rebuilt from the ground up as cloud-native and AI-powered, with a Strategy Assistant delivering benchmarks and recommendations in the flow of work, drawing on more than $1 trillion in giving history. Also announced: Blackbaud Marketing embedded in NXT, an Accounts Payable Agent preview, Payment Assistant with BILL, Deposit Connect, and a Higher Education Connected Campus with Student First. The incumbent is not bolting AI onto the old system; it is rebuilding the system around intelligence that understands giving behavior. That is the infrastructure of AI around fundraising.— MarTech Series, Sept 30; Blackbaud newsroom
Lantern Watch: No Movement This Week
Blackbaud's fundraising-native language model remains on its announced timeline: select Raiser's Edge NXT and Agents for Good capabilities in 2027, broader availability after. No launch date or new product details shipped in the past seven days. — Blackbaud newsroom, Sept 29
bbcon Startup Pitch: The AI-Native Cohort
Eleven startups competed in Blackbaud's 2026 Social Good Startup Pitch Competition at bbcon, and the AI entries are worth knowing: DonorAtlas, an AI-native donor intelligence platform; Givalgo, AI agents automating grantmaking and due diligence; Kindora, AI-powered grant discovery; MatchNice, real-time donation matching. Watch where venture-backed AI lands around the big platforms, not just inside them.— Valley Journals, Oct
Trends
DAF Day Opened Giving Season; the Play Is in Your Own File
DAF Day, October 8 — the second Thursday of October — kicked off giving season. Last year it drew more than 4,400 nonprofits and 30+ DAF providers with upward of $2 million in directly observable grants. The Chariot DAF Fundraising Report's standout finding: when an existing donor switched from credit card to their DAF, their support of that same organization doubled at the median. Nearly nine in ten DAF donors still give outside their DAF each year, and seven in ten DAF gifts are under $1,000. Separately, DAFs granted a record $64.89 billion in 2024, up 19% in a single year. Your biggest DAF opportunity is already in your donor file. The tactic: a DAF option on the donation form and a DAF reminder in the year-end push.— Foundation Source, Oct 8; Gravyty, Oct
Young Wealthy Donors Use More Vehicles, Support More Causes
A Bank of America Private Bank study of 1,431 wealthy individuals finds Gen Z and millennial donors with $3 million or more in investable assets support an average of 12 causes, versus eight overall. Forty-seven percent use charitable trusts, 24% use family foundations, and 30% engage in fundraising — versus 5%, 2%, and 11% among Boomer and Silent Generation donors. Only 56% give plain cash, versus 92% of older donors. Nearly half of all wealthy donors volunteered in 2025, up from 42% in 2023, and 75% of high-net-worth clients say they would be more likely to select an advisor knowledgeable about philanthropy. The wealth transfer arrives in structured vehicles. Capture the vehicle, not just the gift.— Wealth Professional, Oct 1
Workforce Data: Nothing New This Week
No new fundraiser workforce, wage, or turnover data landed October 12-18. The sector benchmarks from last edition — burnout rising, wages lagging, hiring difficulty — stand. — Juno's research desk
The CRAFT Lens — This Week Through the Framework
Capture. Paulson gave about $46 million before he gave $250 million, and Lavin gave to the same university the same week — donor concentration is a pattern you can see if your data is set up to see it. The Bank of America study adds the vehicle mandate: younger donors use charitable trusts, family foundations, and DAFs at multiples of older donors' rates. Capture has to track the vehicle, not just the gift.
Refine. Chariot's finding is a data-health finding: when an existing donor switched from credit card to DAF, support doubled at the median. If your CRM cannot identify the DAF holders already in your file, you are leaving doubled gifts on the table. Clean gift types, soft credit, and source codes before year-end, not during it.
Analyze. The Lilly analysis is an analysis lesson: a $5.69 billion decline and 8 million new donors do not average out. Segment your numbers by household bracket and corporate reliance instead of managing to the mean. The 35% cap alone costs $6.1 billion — that tells you exactly where the dollars live.
Formulate. The week's big gifts share a formulation pattern: each carries the donor's thesis. Paulson's unrestricted gift carries a value thesis — the dollar goes further here. Hale's carries a theory of change — five priority areas plus a venture fund for the lab-to-patient gap. Proposals that carry the donor's thesis win.
Track. Morehouse brought back a 40-year veteran to close the final stretch of a $500 million campaign sitting at $376 million. Campaigns end on tracking: pipeline discipline, not new prospects, finishes the job.