Mellowes family and Charter Manufacturing Foundation give $50 million to the Medical College of Wisconsin

The Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) announced on October 19 a $50 million gift from Linda T. and John A. Mellowes and the Charter Manufacturing Foundation to advance precision medicine. The college said it is the largest investment in precision medicine in its history and matches the largest philanthropic gift it has received. BizTimes identified that earlier gift as $50 million from the Kern Family Foundation.

What the gift will pay for

According to the college, the money will build the data infrastructure needed for precision care, attract, support and retain talent in Milwaukee, and develop medical education grounded in genomics and data science. MCW also said Marni J. Falk, MD, whom it described as an internationally recognized leader in genomic medicine, mitochondrial disease and precision therapeutics, will be executive director of a new institute.

The announcement did not give a timeline, a spending breakdown or a payment schedule.

A second, larger gift

This is not the couple's first major gift to the college. In May 2022, MCW announced a $10 million gift from the Mellowes that created three endowed chairs and an innovation fund, and it renamed its genomics center the Linda T. and John A. Mellowes Center for Genomic Sciences and Precision Medicine. Linda Mellowes chaired MCW's board of trustees from 2008 to 2010, the college said then.

With the new gift, that center becomes the Medical College of Wisconsin Linda T. and John A. Mellowes Institute for Genomic Medicine and Precision Therapeutics. The Hub for Collaborative Medicine, the shared space at the heart of the Milwaukee campus, becomes the Medical College of Wisconsin Linda T. and John A. Mellowes Health Innovation Center.

What the donors and the college said

"The Medical College of Wisconsin is a place people trust, and when you're facing a serious health challenge, getting your health back is all about trust," the Mellowes said in the announcement. Shekar N. Kurpad, MD, PhD, MCW's president and CEO, said the gift "will reshape how we understand, prevent, diagnose and treat diseases for generations to come."

What other institutions can learn

In our view, a donor's first major gift is often the start of a larger one. Here a $10 million gift that named a center in 2022 was followed four years later by a $50 million gift that turns the same center into an institute, under the same family name. Development offices can treat a named program as the start of a relationship and report results to its donors along the way. For another recent gift for genetic medicine, see the Smilow Foundation's $25 million for a heart gene-editing center at Penn.