Georgetown, Fordham Receive Largest Gifts in their Histories

Georgetown University has received the largest philanthropic gift in its history, an $87 million endowment to support medical research at the university’s medical center.

The gift originated in a $1.2 million charitable trust established by the will of the late Harry J. Toulmin in 1965. His widow, businesswoman and philanthropist Virginia Toulmin, managed the trust for the following 45 years and grew it to its current value. A longtime Georgetown volunteer leader, she died on June 13 at age 84.

The gift will fund the Warwick Evans and Mary Mason Washington Evans Medical Research Endowment, in honor of Harry Toulmin’s grandparents. His grandfather, Warwick Evans, was the first graduate of Georgetown’s School of Medicine in 1852, and went on to become a professor of anatomy there.

Fordham University also recently received the largest gift in its history: $25 million from Mario J. Gabelli, CBA ’65. The gift will help propel Fordham’s campaign to its $500 million goal, and the university will rename the undergraduate business college the Gabelli School of Business.

Gabelli, a philanthropist, investor and chairman and CEO of GAMCO Investors Inc., is a native of the Bronx and resident of Greenwich, Conn. He is a second-generation American, the first in his family to attend college and a summa cum laude graduate of the former College of Business Administration at Fordham. [Georgetown University, Fordham University]