Twin Cities Business: Bill George Donates $1M to Harvard
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The former Medtronic CEO’s family foundation has already donated to Harvard in the past, but opted to accelerate its giving timeline in the face of federal funding cuts.
By Dan Niepow, TCB
April 29, 2025
Bill George, the former Medtronic chief executive and prominent Minnesota philanthropist, knows that his $1 million donation to Harvard won’t plug the multibillion-dollar hole the school is facing. But he hopes he’s setting an example.
On Tuesday, the George Family Foundation announced that it is giving $1 million to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership to “extend and expand” the foundation’s namesake fellowship program there. The money will provide scholarships to select students pursuing a joint degree from the Kennedy School and Harvard’s business school. It will also help expand “co-curriculum programming” designed to foster future leaders in the public and private sectors.
George acknowledged that his nonprofit foundation was looking to donate to Harvard even before the Trump administration halted at least $2.2 billion in grants to the university earlier this month. In fact, the George Family Foundation had already provided about $8 million to Harvard’s Kennedy School since 2007. But the federal funding freeze motivated George to accelerate his timeline.
“We felt the need is quite pressing, given the funds being taken away” George said in an interview with TCB on Tuesday. “We became quite concerned.”
The foundation’s recent $1 million foundation will provide funding for the George Leadership Fellowship program at Harvard for the next five years.
In total, the George Family Foundation makes about $5 million in donations a year to various causes. George runs the foundation with his wife Penny.
George, a full-time Minnesota resident and part-time professor at Harvard, has long spoken about the need for “purpose-driven leaders,” and he’s hopeful the donation will help nurture new ones. “A lot of leaders right now are being challenged in their values,” he said. “I think it’s very important – whether running public or private institutions – that your values are consistent.”
He also warned about the dangers of engaging in what he described as “anticipatory compliance” – leaders and organizations blindly falling into line out of fears of retribution. “I think that’s a huge mistake,” he said. “Leaders have to stand up and be counted, and be true to what they believe. If it lines up with a lawsuit, take the lawsuit. Do the right thing, because people will remember when you did the right thing a lot longer than they’ll remember a lawsuit.”
“At a time when the need for principled leadership is so urgent, the George Family Foundation is leading by example by investing in equipping and enabling emerging public leaders at [the Center for Public Leadership],” the center’s faculty director Anthony Foxx said in a statement. “Thanks to their support, we will be able to grow our efforts to foster the kind of principled, effective public leaders who are able to solve real problems and work across differences to advance the common good.”
The Trump administration, in a stated bid to stem antisemitism on American campuses, moved to withhold funds to Harvard after the university declined to agree to a list of demands, including much tighter federal oversight. Harvard has since sued the Trump administration to restore the federal funding. For his part, George maintains that most of the funds being withheld “have nothing to do with antisemitism.”
“These are funds for research into pancreatic cancer, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Alzheimer’s,” George said of the funds being withheld. “[Harvard] has been making tremendous progress. … In my experience at Medtronic, you cannot stop and start research. If you do, it’s like starting over entirely.”
Though George’s donation isn’t earmarked for research, George said he hopes “others step up” to fill in the gap.