Donor cancels $75 million of gift to Sanford Burnham Prebys
An anonymous donor who pledged to give a record $275 million to the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has canceled $75 million of the gift for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.
The money — which was meant to help speed drug development — was cut out of the overall donation in December 2015, almost two years after the original $275 million was announced amid great fanfare.
The donation remains the largest single gift in San Diego County history, even though it has been reduced in size.
SBP, which is heavily funded by the public, has never disclosed the $75 million cut.
The cancellation appears in a financial review of the Institute by Deloitte, one of the nation’s largest accounting firms.
Institute executives also did not disclose the cut during a 2016 interview with the UnionTribune that focused on financial problems that SBP is having at its satellite campus in Orlando.
SBP President Kristiina Vuori said in a statement Tuesday, “The anonymous pledge is a highly confidential philanthropic agreement and, as a matter of long-standing practice, the Institute does not comment publicaly on the status of a pledge beyond the initial announcement.
“As noted in the audit statement, SBP and the donor mutually eliminated certain future conditions from the pledge agreement as these conditions were no longer applicable after summer 2015.
“The $275 million is a 10-year pledge and therefore a work in progress. We are highly confident that in time, the $275 [million] pledge will be fully reinstated.
“The amendment in the pledge agreement will have no impact on the Institute’s 10-year business plan which called for $200 million over 10 years from the anonymous pledge.
In fact, the business plan was further empowered by the generous $100 million gift from Conrad Prebys in June 2015.”
SBP has been suffering financial strain at its campus in Orlando, which was opened more than a decade ago with $300 million in incentives from various stakeholders in Florida. The Institute has tried, without success, to withdraw from the operation.
The cancellation of $75 million in donation money “is not that common, in the way it sounds it happened,” said Maria Di Mento, a reporter who covers philanthropy at the Chronicle of Philanthropy in Washington D.C.
“It’s more common for a donor to pledge a lot of money, and maybe even start paying some of it off, and become unhappy with how it is being spent, and they then attempt to rescind the pledge or the money.”
Di Mento added that “$75 million is a lot of money. It can do a lot, it can endow a lot. If the donor wanted to make a point, this is a good way to do it.”