Three foundations in Atlanta have created a stock fund worth $295-million that will benefit the health sciences at Emory University.
The endowment may well be the largest gift ever made in American higher education.
The new entity, to be known as the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Fund, was established by the Lettie Pate Evans, Joseph B. Whitehead, and Robert W. Woodruff Foundations, all long-time benefactors of Emory. The three foundations, although legally separate, are supported by Coca-Cola stock and share the same president and several board members. Their founders all had ties to the soft-drink company, of which Mr. Woodruff, who died in 1985, was president.
Emory expects the fund to provide at least $3-million a year for its Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center. At least half of the fund’s earnings each year will support another Emory health unit, the Winship Cancer Center. The university hopes that the additional support for the cancer center will hasten its designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center affiliated with the National Cancer Institute. Such a designation, which would be a first for a cancer facility in Georgia, would make the center eligible for certain federal research funds to which it does not now have access.
The president of Emory, William M. Chace, said the university had not solicited the gift. He and Michael M.E. Johns, who was recently named executive vice-president and director of the health-sciences center, were told of the fund only a few weeks ago at a meeting called by the foundations.
They learned then that the foundations not only had established the fund, but had decided on its structure and selected a five-member board, made up of some of the members of the health-sciences center’s board, to oversee it.
They also learned that Charles R. Hatcher, Jr., who was Dr. Johns’s predecessor at the health-sciences center, had been quietly working behind the scenes, providing the foundations with the budgetary information that helped them to make their decision.
Dr. Chace called the endowment a tribute to Dr. Hatcher and those who preceded him, a gift that would elevate the health- science enterprise at Emory."This fund will augment the strength of the Winship Cancer Center and will place the center in a good position to be recognized as a comprehensive cancer center,” providing"first-class research into all the oncological problems that we know of,” he said.
Dr. Hatcher, who spent 34 years at Emory, said the three foundations were aware of the financial pressures besetting academic health centers and wanted to alleviate some of them.
“As we have to become more competitive, the profitability of the clinical enterprise is eroding,” he said."If we’re going to keep funding those enterprises at the same level, we’re going to have to have additional sources of income.”
His successor, Dr. Johns, who joined Emory on July 1, agreed that the fund would help to sustain Emory’s health-sciences programs at a time when academic medical centers across the nation are facing formidable hardships, including the challenge of supporting their research and clinical missions. The greatest help that results from the endowment, he said, may be its ability to provide resources"that are flexible, when so many revenue streams are constrained.”
“I hope the fund serves as an example to others that are thinking of gifts to academic health-sciences centers,” Dr. Johns said.
He has formed an advisory committee, made up of deans, program directors, and others from the health-sciences center, to recommend how the gift might best be used. Emory will soon present those recommendations to the directors of the fund, who must approve the spending plans. Already, however, $1.8- million has been designated for the cancer center in this academic year.
Dr. Johns said the proceeds from the fund might also be useful in supporting new programs for which"the core pieces are in place,” but for which equipment or other resources are needed.
“What we want to do is to use these dollars to leverage our efforts and push ourselves beyond where we are today,” he said."It’s not there to backstop programs that aren’t making it, but to initiate new directives to propel us forward.”
The relationship among Emory, Mr. Woodruff, and his foundation dates back at least 60 years, Dr. Chace said. He estimated that the foundation already had given the university more than $300-million. The foundation recently gave $80-million to Emory during its five-year fund-raising campaign, which began in 1990 and brought in $420-million.
Mr. Woodruff gave generously to Atlanta and to Emory, but he shunned publicity for his philanthropy. He attended the university for one semester, when it was located in Oxford, Ga., but never earned a college degree. For a time, he had also been a member of Emory’s Board of Trustees.
James M. Sibley, who was a friend of Mr. Woodruff’s and is a member of all three foundation boards, said the benefactor had been particularly passionate about finding a cure for cancer, since his mother died from the illness. The Winship Cancer Center was named for his mother, Emily Winship Woodruff, and her family.
“This is carrying out something that we thought would please Robert Woodruff,” Mr. Sibley said.
According to the 1996 edition of The Foundation Directory, published by the Foundation Center, the Woodruff Foundation had assets of $1.7-billion in 1994, placing it among the country’s wealthiest. The Whitehead Foundation had assets of $587.6-million, and the Evans Foundation $168.7-million.
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