Film Producer and NFL Owner Steve Tisch Goes Long for Health Philanthropy

A few years back, Steve Tisch, the Hollywood film producer behind such movies as Forrest Gump and American History X, gave a $10 million gift to UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine for its BrainSPORT Program. BrainSPORT (Brain Sports concussion Prevention Outreach Research and Treatment) was founded in 2012 by UCLA's Dr. Christopher Giza. The long-term impact of concussions in football has come to the fore in recent years, and has even been tackled by Hollywood in HBO's Ballers and in the big-screen picture Concussion, starring Will Smith. Apart from this connection, as well as the fact that Tisch has children who play contact sports, Tisch also serves as chairman of the NFL's New York Giants.

Tisch's late father, Preston "Bob" Tisch was the president and co-CEO of Loews Corp., former U.S. postmaster-general and a partial owner of the Giants football team. The Tisch family collectively is worth $6 billion and the family's philanthropic legacy has left an imprint on New York. In the 1980s, the Tisch family endowed the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. We'll dig further into the Tisch clan's philanthropic operation in another post, but for now, let's focus on Steve, the only one of his siblings who moved west.

Apart from his support for UCLA, Tisch also recently gave $10 million to Tel Aviv University, creating the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television. Other higher education grantees include New York University-Tisch School of the Arts, The UCLA Foundation, which received some $2 million in a recent fiscal year, Stanford University, and Tufts University.

Tisch moves his charitable contributions through several philanthropic vehicles. The larger Steve Tisch Family Foundation gave away around $11 million in a recent year, while the smaller Steve Tisch Foundation dispersed $250,000 in a recent year. Apart from higher education, Tisch also supports youth, health and human services, Jewish causes and the arts and media. He's supported the environment, too.

In health, HIV/AIDS appears to be of particular interest. Recent Tisch foundation grantees include AMFAR - Foundation for AIDS Research, and Elton John AIDS Foundation. The story here, in part, is that Tisch's mother Joan is an AIDS advocate who funded the Tisch Building at Gay Men's Health Crisis in Manhattan. And in the 1990s, Tisch chaired AIDS Project Los Angeles, at the urging of friend and media billionaire mogul David Geffen. Besides HIV/AIDS, Tisch is also supports cancer research.

For a full rundown of Steve Tisch's philanthropy, read our glitzy giving profile of him linked below.

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