On Sept. 23, 2026, Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny Knight, announced they have committed $1 billion to the University of Oregon (UO), with a plan to establish a new engineering college there. University spokesperson Molly Blanchett announced the gift in a press release early Wednesday morning. She said the Knight College of Engineering will be housed at UO’s Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact in Eugene. That campus was also possible thanks to major gifts from the Knights.

“The gift is the third commitment the Knights have made at this scale in 10 years, following $500 million in 2016 and $500 million in 2021 that created and expanded the Knight Campus,” Blanchett said in a release Wednesday. She said the new college will educate engineers and applied scientists in bioengineering and other high-demand disciplines. She said it would also attract faculty and researchers to the growing campus.

Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, and his wife, have supported the institute for more than a decade, previously giving it more than $200 million, including a $75 million gift earlier this year. Along with creating the new women’s hospital, their new donation will help the medical center expand cardiovascular care and clinical research and training programs for the heart institute’s medical personnel. It will also make it easier to integrate patient care across the medical center.

The donation is particularly significant because it comes at a moment when U.S. hospitals are seeing far more pregnant patients who are also managing chronic health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, addiction, and behavioral and mental health issues. It also lands at the same time healthcare organizations are struggling with the impact of government funding cuts.

Medicine and medical research have been among the top causes capable of attracting mega-philanthropy ever since the birth of modern philanthropy in the late 19th century, said Benjamin Soskis, a historian whose work focuses on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.

Counting pledges and direct gifts, the Knights’ latest commitment pushes their total charitable giving to more than $9 billion over the past two decades, with about $2.5 billion of that going to their family foundation and donor-advised funds. They have appeared on the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 list of the biggest donors 12 times since 2006.

Just last week, the Knights announced a $1.1 billion gift to Providence St. Vincent Medical Center and Providence Heart Institute. That gift is pledged over a 10-year period, with the first distribution of funds this year. Last year, the couple pledged $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Research Institute. These recent, massive gifts further cement the Knights as Oregon’s leading philanthropists.