Netflix CEO to donate $120M to Spelman, Morehouse and United Negro College Fund

Largest single individual gift ever to support historically black colleges and universities will benefit some Atlanta college students. Leticia Lance has the story. This came completely unexpectedly. It was an announcement that built like a crescendo. He said on the phone, we'd like to make a gift of $20 million. And I just about fell out of my seat. By the next day, they had thought about it longer and talked about it and really wanted to make a gift that as they said, um, made their palms sweat. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillen, made history donating the largest individual gift ever to historically black colleges and universities, $120 million in all to be split equally between Spelman College, Morehouse College, and the United Negro College Fund over 10 years. Current events really made him and Patty feel that this was the moment to do something meaningful and to do it in a way that was a call to action. Netflix was the first media company to publicly take a stand with Black Lives Matter, posting this tweet in March. The donation could not come at a better time for Morehouse College. Last month, it announced layoffs, furloughs, and pay cuts. But I think this is a moment for optimism among HBCUs generally and broadly that this gift will speak to other philanthropists. Hastings and his wife did not want the scholarships to be named after them. Spelman will name theirs after 1938 alumna, Dovie Johnson Roundtree and Morehouse will name theirs after Michael L. Lomax, an alum and the United Negro College Fund CEO.