Indiana’s Kelley School Lands $100 Million Gift, Launching Thomasson Graduate School

The Thomassons’ $100 million gift is the largest from individuals in IU history. Photo courtesy of Jeff and Benita Thomasson

Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business is getting a $100 million infusion and a new umbrella brand for its graduate programs, thanks to a gift from alumni Jeffrey H. and Benita L. Thomasson.

The gift, the largest ever made to IU by an individual and amon the largest ever made to any business school ever (see table below), will fund graduate education at Kelley and expand scholarships for undergraduates at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. In recognition of the donation, the IU Board of Trustees has approved creating the Jeffrey H. Thomasson Graduate School at the Kelley School of Business, a new umbrella for Kelley’s graduate programs. Combined with the couple’s earlier giving, their total support for IU now tops $111 million.

“For more than a century, the Kelley School of Business has prepared leaders who have shaped companies and industries in Indiana and around the world,” IU President Pamela Whitten says in announcing the gft. “The Thomassons’ extraordinary generosity builds on that proud legacy, creating new opportunities for generations of students and ensuring that IU will continue to lead and shape the future of graduate business education. We are deeply grateful to Jeff and Benita for their belief in IU and their transformational investment in our students and their futures.”

A NEW UMBRELLA FOR 19 PROGRAMS

The Kelley School of Business name itself is unchanged; the new name applies only to the graduate division, not the school as a whole or its undergraduate program. The Thomasson Graduate School brings together Kelley’s 19 graduate programs across the Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses. The gift also funds endowed faculty positions and underwrites a new Thomasson Scholars Program for graduate students, extending an existing Thomasson Fellows Program already in place for Kelley undergraduates.

“Through the Jeffrey H. Thomasson Graduate School at Kelley, we are uniting our world-class graduate degree programs under a single, bold promise: to prepare human-centered leaders for a high-velocity business world,” Kelley dean Patrick Hopkins says. “This generous gift ensures we can deliver on that promise and provide students with an even more connected, supported and innovative educational experience.”

The Thomassons are separately giving $5 million to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IU Indianapolis, expanding the Thomasson Scholarship for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing careers in philanthropy, nonprofit leadership and community impact.

FROM KELLEY MBA TO OXFORD FINANCIAL

Jeff Thomasson earned his MBA at Kelley before founding Oxford Financial Group at age 23; the firm has grown into one of the Midwest’s largest registered investment advisory businesses. Benita Thomasson holds a master’s degree in elementary education from the former IU Purdue University Indianapolis and a master’s from the Lilly Family School.

“Benita and I have personally experienced how philanthropy and education change lives, and we’re honored to create those same opportunities for current and future IU students,” Jeff Thomasson says. “The Kelley MBA program set the foundation for my career, and this gift is our way of paying forward the investment people made in us. We hope it encourages others to do the same, creating opportunities that will ripple across generations.”

The couple’s giving to IU predates this gift by decades. They established the Thomasson Foundation in 1992, and in 2022 the foundation created the Thomasson Fellows Program, which provides scholarships to socially conscious undergraduates at Kelley. In 2024, the Thomassons also funded scholarships tied to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s Pitch Your Passion competition.

A SMALL CLUB OF 9-FIGURE DONORS

Gifts of $100 million or more to business schools remain rare. Only a handful of individual donors have crossed that threshold: David Booth’s $300 million to Chicago Booth in 2008 stands as the largest, followed by Stephen Ross’s $250 million to Michigan Ross and Jay H. Shidler’s $228 million to Hawai’i–Mānoa. A tier of three $150 million gifts – from Larry Gies to Illinois, H. Fisk Johnson to Cornell, and Robert and Dorothy King to Stanford – along with John and Marion Anderson’s $142 million to UCLA, David Tepper’s $122 million to Carnegie Mellon and Philip Knight’s $105 million to Stanford, round out the donors who have given above the $100 million mark.

At $100 million, the Thomassons join a group that includes Eli and Edythe Broad’s 2019 gift to Yale, Ernest Rady’s 2015 gift to UC San Diego, Jim Moran’s 2015 gift to Florida State, and two separate $100 million gifts to Columbia Business School, from Ronald Perelman in 2013 and Henry Kravis in 2010. Notably, Tennessee’s Haslam College of Business landed its own $100 million gift earlier this year, from Dee and Jimmy Haslam, earlier this year.

The gift is part of IU’s Never Daunted fundraising campaign, aimed at expanding student opportunity, funding innovation and strengthening Indiana communities.

Since 2006, 16 donors have given gifts to U.S. business schools of $100 million or more. Another 27 have given $50 million or more:

DON’T MISS HASLAM COLLEGE OF BUSINESS TO RECEIVE THE BULK OF THE LARGEST GIFT IN U OF TENNESSEE HISTORY

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