VCU receives record $45 million cash gift
VCU received a cash gift of approximately $45 million – the largest cash gift the school has ever gotten – after losing $41 million of state funding this summer.
The Glasgows' donation will go toward efforts on the MCV campus to prevent cancer and other degenerative diseases. The rest of the Glasgow money will go towards 13 other local charities. Photo courtesy of VCU Creative Services.
Alyx Duckett
Contributing Writer
State budget cuts may have been hard on VCU this summer, but donations and gifts to the school from the private sector are making up for it.
VCU received a cash gift of approximately $45 million – the largest cash gift the school has ever gotten – after losing $41 million of state funding this summer.
The Virginia Fine Arts Museum and VCU were rewarded with bequests totaling $115 million during an announcement at the end of August. Of the $115 million, nearly $70 million will go to the Virginia Fine Arts Museum which will help support their new expansion and for the creation of a restricted art purchase endowment. The rest of the money will go towards 13 other local charities, including the Virginia Historical Society, Second Presbyterian Church of Richmond, St. Paul’s Church of Richmond and Washington and Lee University.
The money comes from trusts created in the 1950s by Arthur Graham Glasgow and Margaret Branch Glasgow totaling $125 million. Earlier this summer the trust was terminated with the death of their son-in-law, Ambrose Congreve, 104, of London.
“The Glasgow family has a very long history in Virginia with ties to both Virginia Commonwealth University and to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,” said VCU Director of Communications and Public Relations, Anne Buckley.
Since the gift was from a private source, the money cannot be used for anything the university wants. This means the gift does not necessarily fill the financial hole the cut in state funding made, and it must be used for what the Glasgow family wished.
VCU’s $45 million will go to the medical campus for research and prevention of cancer and other degenerative diseases.
VCU president Michael Rao said in a press release that the university is grateful for the Glasgows’ generosity.
“This is the kind of gift that helps elevate a university even further,” Rao said in a press release. “As a major research university, a gift of this magnitude enables us to support the people, facilities and programs necessary to make a difference in people’s lives and in the health of our community.”
This is the second substantial money gift that VCU has received this year. James and Frances McGlothlin donated $25 million in April to the School of Medicine.
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For information on the Glasgow family’s donations outside of VCU, read our article here: “Glasgow family’s influence beyond VCU”
