A N.J. powerbroker’s redemption: George Norcross gives $100 million

A former southern New Jersey political powerbroker, George Norcross III, gave $100 million to Cooper University Health Care and its MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper. The gift will back a range of education, job-training, and other locally focused programs aimed at helping people throughout southern New Jersey.

Norcross founded and is chairman of Conner Strong & Buckelew, an insurance and risk-management firm in Camden, N.J., and a former co-owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer. His family has ties to the health system going back five decades. 

His father, George Norcross Jr., served on the Cooper Hospital Board of Trustees from 1976 to 1983 and spent years working with the late N.J. Gov. James Florio  to create the Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.

Norcross III, who has served on the health care system’s board since 1990, was a powerful fundraiser for New Jersey state Democrats and a prominent leader in the decades-long urban renewal efforts in Camden. He stepped away from politics in recent years and moved to Palm Beach, Fla. Accused of engineering a real estate scheme, he was charged with racketeering in 2024 but the case against him was dismissed early this year. 

Other recent big gifts include:

Vanderbilt University at San Francisco

Nvidia Corporation founder Jen-Hsun Huang and his wife, Lori Huang, gave $75 million to establish the Jen-Hsun and Lori Huang College of Art, Architecture and Design, housed at Vanderbilt’s newly acquired San Francisco campus. The site is home to the 120-year-old California College of the Arts, which is closing at the end of this academic year. Jen-Hsun Huang, who Forbes estimates is worth about $170 billion, started AI chip maker Nvidia in 1993. The couple appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors in 2023.

Memphis Zoo

Diane Smith pledged $50 million to launch the first phase of the zoo’s extensive renovation project and to help raise an additional $50 million from other donors. Once completed, the zoo will be home to updated and interactive animal habitats, advanced animal care and conservation programs, and new education and visitor spaces. Smith is the widow of Fed-Ex founder Fred Smith, who died last year. The couple appeared on the 2022 and 2023 Philanthropy 50 lists.

University of Cambridge

K. Lisa Yang gave $34.5 million to support research aimed at improving the health and well-being of autistic people and their families. Through the donation, the university will become part of the Yang Tan Collective, a group of research centers at Harvard and MIT that focus on human health, disease, and environmental challenges. Yang helped to establish the collective in 2017.

About $28 million of her Cambridge donation will be used to create The K. Lisa Yang Centre for Autism Research, and the remaining $6.5 million will launch the K. Lisa Yang Autism Clinical Centre. Yang has given extensively to medical and scientific research and to help people who are physically or cognitively disabled. She has appeared on the Philanthropy 50 twice in recent years for giving huge sums to a variety of research programs at universities.

Active Minds

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave a $20 million unrestricted gift through her Yield Giving Fund. Leaders of the youth mental-health nonprofit said they will use Scott’s donation to support the nonprofit’s  advocacy efforts and its national mental-health programs. This latest donation follows a $4 million gift Scott gave the organization in 2021. Scott, a novelist who helped to create Amazon with her former husband, Jeff Bezos, has given $26 billion to nonprofits to date.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.