@kstate_pres: Woot! Today we announce a $70M gift focused on engineering excellence at Kansas State University - a truly transformational gift. #KState150
the link says they are giving $70M to OU and OSU as well. he gave the schools a ton of stock and pledged to buy back $500k every year.
edit: a link from the foundation.
yeah basically this old concrete company owner had a large amount of ownership in the company obviously, and before he passed made a note that he wanted to gift it to engineers because he would not have gotten where he was in life without them. chose KSU because a ksu alumni works there who is high up, not real big but big enough, and he was very well trusted and respected by this owner so he chose kstate as well because "they're teaching the engineers something good up there"
so they set up this foundation with these shares in the company that the owner left behind and gifted $50 mil worth of them to ksu, ou, and osu. currently the three universitys are nonvoting shareholders. the company is trying to become employee owned, and by setting up the foundation, don't have to have the IRS come in with the "gifting" of shares. since the time of the donation a few years ago, the shares have grown to about $70 mil. apparently talks are in the way to increase the buyback rate.
