Yawkeys make largest gift ever, to Dana-Farber, totaling $50 million

The Yawkey family and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have been inseparable for decades. So when Dana-Farber makes a big ask, the Yawkey Foundation pays attention.

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That relationship grew even closer this week, with the announcement that the Foundation would make its largest gift ever, $50 million, to Dana-Farber to help the cancer institute build its own standalone hospital. (As it prepares for the expansion, Dana-Farber is switching clinical affiliations from Brigham and Women’s Hospital to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.)

Before this big gift, the foundation made around $35 million in charitable donations to Dana-Farber over the years — including a $30 million gift in 2007 to support the Yawkey Center for Cancer Care, an outpatient building in the Longwood Medical Area.

Now, as a result of this latest donation, a new bridge spanning Brookline Avenue between the Yawkey Center and the new cancer hospital will be named in honor of Jean and Tom Yawkey.

The $1.7 billion, 14-story hospital is slated to open in 2031. The hospital’s “naming rights” have already been given to Josh and Anita Bekenstein and the Jonathan and Jeannie Lavine family, in honor of an undisclosed massive donation they announced in February.

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The relationship between the Yawkeys and Dana-Farber founder Sidney Farber goes back to 1953, when the institute was known as the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation. That’s when Tom Yawkey and Jean Yawkey forged one of the first partnerships between a pro sports team and a cancer research institution, by making the Jimmy Fund that supports Dana-Farber an official charity of the Boston Red Sox, which the Yawkeys owned at the time.

Foundation chief executive Alicia Verity said Tom Yawkey wouldn’t allow any advertising in Fenway Park for decades — except to promote the Jimmy Fund. That’s obviously changed, as has the Red Sox ownership. (Boston Globe owner John Henry is principal owner of the Sox today.) But the ties between the Sox and Dana-Farber’s Jimmy Fund remain, and they bill it as the longest-standing charitable partnership in pro sports.

“It’s a natural expression of what Tom and Jean Yawkey put into motion … decades ago,” Verity said of the newest gift to Dana-Farber. “You can’t cross those doors without feeling just a sense of awe about everything those doctors, researchers, and caregivers are doing.”

This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston’s business scene.

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