The Biggest Billionaire Donors To HBCUs

On Monday, Howard University announced an unrestricted $80 million donation from billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott—the latest in a string of gifts Scott has made to historically Black colleges and universities over the past two months that total nearly $300 million.

Despite political pushback on diversity, equity and inclusion—or perhaps because of it—billionaire donations to HBCUs have picked up dramatically this year. Chronically underfunded by the government and hit by student loan cuts, at least 8 HBCUs have received billionaire gifts since the 2024 presidential election.

In addition to Scott’s big contributions, last month Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank’s foundation gave $50 million to Atlanta’s HBCUs, while private equity billionaire Robert F. Smith, who famously paid off loans of 2019 graduates at Morehouse College, is planning to expand an initiative that provides loans of up to $20,000 per year ($40,000 total) to sophomores, juniors and seniors at more than 70 HBCUs, tribal colleges and minority-serving institutions.

They aren’t the only ones. In all, Forbes found at least nine billionaires who have made major donations to HBCUs, some stretching back decades. Notable donors include NBA legend Michael Jordan and musician Jay-Z, who both gave in 2021, as well as Oprah Winfrey, who wrote her first known check back in 1989. Their donations have helped fund student housing, support journalism programs and cover student loans. In total, these billionaire HBCU backers have given more than $1 billion combined.

The money goes a long way. “We’re providing opportunities to people who might not otherwise have access to higher education,” says Wayne A. I. Frederick, Howard’s interim president. “You’re not just changing their lives, you’re often helping create generational wealth and opportunities for families who have never had that access before.”

The recent $80 million gift is the largest single donation Howard has ever received. It comes on top of $40 million Scott gave the 14,500-student school in 2020 and a $12 million check she wrote in 2023. The Washington, D.C., university plans to allocate about most of the newest funds from Scott to support the student body, he says, with $17 million designated for a new academic medical center.

Meanwhile, Huston-Tillotson University, a liberal arts college in Austin, Texas, with around 1,000 students, received $150 million—the largest single donation to an HBCU—in September, from a family foundation established by late Texas financier William Lewis Moody Jr. (d. 1954). The school is planning to use the funding to support student living, academic spaces and its overall strategic plan.

“Some of the dollars that have been flowing to HBCUs have been going to state-supported schools, and that’s really great,” says Melva K. Wallace, president of Huston-Tillotson. “But you have small private institutions who have been plugging along and doing the work for over 150 years like HT. That money could really transform the lives of students who desire a liberal arts education.”

The financial gap between HBCUs and traditional, predominantly white institutions remains immense. According to a May 2024 White House report, the endowments of public HBCUs stood at about 50% of their public non-HBCU counterparts in 2021. The divide is even deeper at private schools, where the average HBCU endowment per full-time student is about one-fifth of the endowment at private non-HBCUs.

Billionaires, however, tend to give big bucks not to HBCUs or smaller traditional universities, but instead to elite institutions that are already well-funded, such as Harvard ($56.9 billion endowment), Yale ($44.1 billion endowment). Howard’s endowment stands at around $1 billion; Huston-Tillotson’s was around$15 million before the recent gift.

Wall Street billionaire Ken Griffin has pledged more than $500 million to Harvard. The widow of investor David Gottesman (d. 2022) pledged $1 billion in 2024 to cover all tuition for all future students of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In August, Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife Penny made what is believed to be the largest single pledge ever to a university: $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University to support cancer research. That single gift is worth more than all known billionaire donations to HBCUs ever.

Here are some of the biggest known givers to HBCUs among Forbes’ billionaires list.