The Patterson Foundation in Sarasota, Florida has just announced it has received a bequest of $225 million from the estate of Dorothy Clarke Patterson, who died last year. The significant gift makes the Patterson Foundation the 19th largest grant-maker in the state of Florida and the largest in Sarasota.

In addition to the major gift, the former Longboat Key resident left no instructions for how she wanted the bequest managed, providing a unique opportunity for the foundation to chart its own course. In the past, the foundation Patterson founded with $3 million following her husband's death in 1997 has donated to Sarasota groups including Habitat for Humanity and a local high school and food bank. Newly appointed foundation head Debra Jacobs (at right) will certainly be hard at work defining the mission of one woman's unrestricted largesse.

Minnesota Mom Jill Youse started sending her own breast milk to Africa in 2006, soon after which she began helping other moms around the country do the same through her organization, the International Breast Milk Project (IBMP). In just the past couple of years IBMP has successfully shipped over 85,000 pounds of milk to infants in Africa, primarily babies fighting illnesses that often abate when breast milk is introduced. Youse set up a program for women who have suffered the loss of an infant through the Madison Cassady Program , so that grieving mothers who still had milk stored in their freezers didn't have to throw it all away. Also distributed in the U.S. to children born prematurely or whose mothers cannot produce milk, donations are made easy for moms. Coolers and the necessary equipment arrive shipped to their doors and are later picked up and sent to babies in need. Even FedEx has chipped in to provide transport for the mothers' milk. Recognized as one of "Earth's Mothers" by Oprah Winfrey a little over a year ago, Youse and IBMP are revolutionizing how new moms think about breastfeeding, convincing them to add a few more mouths along the way.

This past weekend I've been reading The Billionaire's Vinegar which touches on the wine collection of William Koch but it's his brother David who has been in the news most recently. David H. Koch who is said to be the wealthiest person in New York City has, according to the NY Times agreed to contribute $100 million toward the renovation of the New York State Theater. The gift will put Koch's name on the door and will also be the largest private capital donation in the Lincoln Center's history. Koch says that he has been going to the New York State Theater for 40 years (he's 68) and he was aware the theater needed modernization. As of this fall it will be known as the David H. Koch Theater making it the same big name change of a New York institution in four months for a $100 million gift. The New York Public Library will be naming its main building after the Wall Street financier Stephen A. Schwarzman in return for his donation.

Koch has an estimated net worth of $17 billion. He will donate the money over 10 years, paying the first $15 million payment this summer and then $10 million annual payment for eight years plus a final $5 million installment. The deal does specify that the theater could be renamed for a new donor after 50 years with the Koch family retaining the right of first refusal. Koch has said he believes that a naming opportunity should last for a specific amount of time so that an institution can later pursue another round of fundraising.

Could the Kavli prize someday have the same cachet as the Nobel prize? That's what industrialist Fred Kavli is hoping for. The 80-year-old multimillionaire has created what he believes will be the prize to win in the modern age. The Kavli Foundation rewards research in nanoscience, astrophysics and neuroscience, the three scientific fields he believes are most beneficial to the happiness and survival of the human race. Kavli's foundation has established research institutes at Harvard, Yale, Stanford and 12 other universities.

On Wednesday the first Kavli Prizes in Astrophysics, Nanoscience and Neuroscience were handed out to seven winners, from the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan and the US. Each will receive a scroll, medal and a share of the $1,000,000 prize for each subject. The astrophysics prize was awarded jointly to Maarten Schmidt, of the California Institute of Technology, US, and Donald Lynden-Bell, of Cambridge University, UK, both of whose work underpins our understanding of quasars. The nanoscience recipients are Louis E. Brus, of Columbia University, US, and Sumio Iijima, of Meijo University in Japan, who share the nanoscience prize for their respective discoveries of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, also known as quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes. The neuroscience prize went to three scientists who collectively have deciphered the basic mechanisms that govern the development and functioning of the networks of cells in the brain and spinal cord. Pasko Rakic, of the Yale University School of Medicine, in the US, explained how the neurons in the embryonic brain arrange themselves during development into the complex, densely interconnected circuitry of the adult cerebral cortex. Thomas Jessell, of Columbia University, US, has revealed the chemical signals behind the differentiation of early progenitor cells into the complex assembly of different types of neurons that make up neuronal circuits. Sten Grillner, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed how neural circuits in mammalian spinal cords generate motor commands for rhythmic movements such as locomotion. His lamprey model is seen as the first and so far only vertebrate neuronal system controlling an integrated function that is understood at a molecular and cellular level.

Kavli's company Kavlico, which developed sensors for military and civilian aircraft, the space shuttle and automobiles, was sold in 2000 for $345 million and currently his real estate holdings have an estimated value of about $300 million.

[via LA Times]

Arizona real estate developer Jerry Bisgrove makes our Big Givers list with the recent announcement in the Arizona Republic that he has pledged $25 million to the Valley of the Sun United Way Foundation. For every dollar pledged to the United Way over the next five years, Bisgrove's Stardust Foundation will give 50 cents up to $25 million. The donation is the third-largest pledge to any United Way in the country. In recent years, Bisgrove has also donated more than $25 million to Science Foundation Arizona and $20 million to the Arizona Family Housing Fund. Bisgrove has also been a member of the United Way Foundation's Tocqueville Society for more than 16 years, a club for those who give over $10,000 each year. His foundation focuses on lower income families and neighborhoods and has also give to the Arizona Humane Society, the YMCA, Habitat for Humanity and the Macehualli Work Center, a day-laborer center. Bisgrove made his money in trucking but is now the chairman and CEO of Stardust Companies which includes Stardust Development, a a real estate land development company, developing approximately 3,000 lots per year.

David Rockefeller is a big giver who is part of the trend of not waiting until death to announce large donations. He has just pledged $100-million to Harvard University, his alma mater. This is the third time he has dropped $100 million on a donation, in 2005 that he planned to give $100-million apiece to the Museum of Modern Art and to Rockefeller University. All three organizations will receive the money upon his death (Rockefeller is 92) but in the meantime he will be giving out an an annual payment of $2.5-million a year until he dies which works out to roughly the interest on the money. The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that Rockefeller has given or pledged a total of at least $1-billion to nonprofit institutions over his lifetime.

Dame Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop who died in 2007, makes our Big Givers list posthumously. The Telegraph reports on the details of her estate which were recently revealed. Roddick donated her entire £51 million fortune to philanthopic causes before her death from a brain hemorrhage in September 2007. She had once referred to leaving money to your family after death as obscene and wanted her money to go toward green issues and work in developing countries. She left behind £665,747 which all went to inheritance tax because per the rules in the U.K. individuals have to pay this tax if they do not survive for seven years after making monetary gifts. She had founded The Body Shop in 1976 and sold to L'Oreal in 2006 for £625 million.