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Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, has received a $100 million gift, the largest single donation to an HBCU in history, according to a press release from the college Thursday.
The donation is from businesswoman and philanthropist Ronda Stryker, a member of Spelman’s Board of Trustees since 1997, and her husband, William Johnston, chairman of the wealth management firm Greenleaf Trust.
Helene Gayle, president of Spelman College, said in the release that the college was
“invigorated and inspired by this incredible act of generosity.”
“This gift is a critical first step in our school’s mission to eliminate financial barriers to starting and finishing a Spelman education,” Gayle said.
Spelman plans to put $75 million toward endowed scholarships for future students. The rest of the money will be spent on improving campus housing, developing academic programming related to democracy and public policy, and addressing other needs.
The announcement follows other recent historic gifts to HBCUs. The United Negro College Fund, which represents private HBCUs, received $100 million earlier this month from the Lilly Endowment Inc., a foundation focused on religion, education and community development. That donation was the largest unrestricted private grant in UNCF’s history and will go toward a pooled endowment for 37 HBCUs.
Blue Meridian Partners, a national philanthropy group, also donated $124 million last year to the HBCU Transformation Project, a joint effort to bolster HBCUs by UNCF, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund—which represents public HBCUs—and the Partnership for Education Advancement, an organization dedicated to strengthening these institutions.
HBCUs typically have smaller endowments than predominantly white institutions. Endowments per full-time student at public non-HBCUs are three times those of public HBCUs on average, according to a 2021 report from the Century Foundation, a progressive, nonpartisan think tank. Private non-HBCUs have endowments per full-time student that are seven times the size of private HBCUs’.
