Brown Foundation Matching Grant, 1963
With a remarkable matching gift proposal and the endowment of three professorships, the Brown Foundation expressed its initial interest in Southwestern.
After Herman Brown’s passing, George R. Brown decided to continue to express his brother’s interest in Southwestern through the Brown Foundation’s Matching Gift proposal. In September of 1963, in a special meeting with students in the Fine Arts Building, President Fleming reported that “Southwestern University is the recipient of gifts and grants totaling $1,350,000 from the Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston.”
The Foundation had agreed to make a gift of $500,000 which would be matched by $1,000,000 raised by Southwestern. During this time, students were concerned about the feasibility of achieving the $500,000 double matching grant for permanent improvements to the campus as the challenge to raise one million needed to be completed first in three years. President Fleming expressed his hopes that the money would be raised during the school year, as he described the grant to be an “educational breakthrough” as it was a form of intelligent giving that had the power to strengthen the entire University structure.
In the end, the campaign was successful, and the improvements funded by the campaign in the next few years included Brown Commons, two men’s dormitories–Herman Brown and Moody-Shearn, and a major addition to Cody Memorial Library. Along with these capital projects, the Foundation also established three additional professorships which were later raised to endowed chairs. The three positions were valued at $250,000 each and were named the Herman Brown Professorship in English, the Margaret Root Brown Professorship in Fine Arts, and the Lillian Nelson Pratt Professorship in Science. The Foundation also raised the already existing Lucy King Brown Chair of History to be a $250,000 unit. These positions later became the backbone of the Brown Symposium program.
In making the gift, Brown, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, expressed his desire to contribute to the traditional standards “and offerings of Texas’ oldest university.” He also explained that the pride and pleasure of the Foundation was intended to benefit the present soundness of the University, as well as, “the respect and love we hold in our memory for the person in whose names the professorships are to be maintained.”
George Brown’s gift through the Foundation looked to Southwestern’s past and shaped Southwestern’s future at the same time. It was initiated to commemorate two alums, his brother Herman Brown and his sister-in-law Margarett Root Brown, and their love for Southwestern. But the impact on Southwestern’s infrastructure and intellectual life from the gift since then has been significant in itself as well as being significant because it was the first phase of a longer-standing philanthropic relationship between the Brown Foundation and Southwestern. Current students encounter the Brown name in multiple places throughout the campus, and it all started with this matching grant in 1963.
