Summer Science Program (SSP), a nonprofit that offers students a six-week immersive science, technology, engineering and mathematics curricula on an annual revenue of between $1 million and $2 million, has received a bequest of an estimated $200 million.
Frank Steslow, the Morrisville, North Carolina nonprofit’s CEO, described the gift as “transformational.” The bequest is from the estate of Franklin Antonio, the co-founder and chief scientist of electronics firm Qualcomm who died at age 69 in May 2022. Antonio was a program alumnus, having participated in 1969. “After the program ends, the alumni typically stay involved and participate in mentorships,” Steslow told The NonProfit Times. “Through the years he became more and more interested in the kind of work we do, and obviously felt strong
enough to leave a substantial portion of his estate to us.”
The estate consists of a variety of assets, including cash, real estate and other properties, according to Steslow. “The executor is in the process of doing the assessments and liquidations,” Steslow said. “We will receive cash, and we have received the first payment — a little over $65 million.” While Antonio had made contributions to SSP before the $200 million gift, none had been anywhere near the size of his bequest. “There had been previous conversations around cultivation for a major gift, but not to this scale,” Steslow said. “And there had been no definitive conclusion [regarding a major gift while Antonio was alive].”
The bequest came without restrictions. “The board is currently working on a long-range stewardship plan,” Steslow said. Plans for how the funds will be used to growth the impact of the organization are expected to be firmed up within the next six to nine months. As part of that process, SSP leaders are searching for a professional chief investment officer, a position that will likely be outsourced to an external firm.
Potential uses of the funds include infrastructure development, increased staffing and software and technology upgrades. The gift also allows SSP to substantially grow the number of participants, perhaps by as much as an additional 75% to 100% during summer 2024, for starters. The program currently hosts 200 students each summer during a series of staggered six-week engagements. Longer-term plans might include expanding the program beyond the summer months, as well as extending its geographic reach.
“We are evaluating the landscape,” Steslow said. “We don’t want to be duplicative; we want to have the broadest impact; we want to improve the representation of underserved populations.”
The board was first notified of the gift a year ago, around the time Richard Bowdon, SSP’s previous leader who held the title executive director, announced his retirement. Steslow, who joined the organization in March of this year, said the search for Bowdon’s replacement included discussions of SSP receiving the gift. During SSP’s most recent fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2022, the organization received $648,836 in contributions and grants, down from $759,028 a year earlier. It recorded total revenue of just more than $2.2 million, up from just more than $1.6 million a year earlier.
The $200 million gift was far from Antonio’s only foray into philanthropy. In November 2017, he gave $30 million to the University of California San Diego, from which he had graduated in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in applied physics and information science. His gift went toward a programmatic expansion of the university’s Jacobs School of Engineering. That gift, which was part of an overall $2 billion campaign, supported construction of an engineering research building, which was ultimately named Franklin Antonio Hall. Antonio did not live to see the
September 2022 opening of the building. Through his estate, Antonio also left $4.9 million to the Clovis Unified School District. Antonio graduated from Clovis High in 1970, according to ABC news affiliate KFSN.
