Key Takeaways
George Norcross, chairman of Cooper University Health Care, is giving $100 million to the New Jersey health system and its MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, the largest single gift in the institution's history.
Cooper announced the gift on July 28 and said the money will go toward Camden and South Jersey, prioritizing education and community programs that create jobs and training.
Norcross made the gift in honor of his parents, and Cooper said it would add the Norcross name to the institution.
Cooper University Health Care announced on July 28 that its chairman, George E. Norcross III, is giving $100 million to the New Jersey health system and its MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper. The system called it the largest single philanthropic gift in its history and among the largest ever to a health system in the state.
Norcross made the gift in honor of his parents, George E. Norcross Jr. and Anne Carol Conner Norcross. Cooper said the money will go toward Camden and its wider South Jersey service area, with a focus on education and community programs that create jobs, training, and opportunity. The system said it would add the Norcross name, though it did not say how.
Norcross has chaired Cooper's board for years and has been a central figure in Camden's redevelopment. Cooper is a leading academic health system in South Jersey, and its MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, run in partnership with the Houston cancer institution, is the region's main cancer program.
The gift lands as Cooper pursues a roughly $3 billion expansion in Camden, one of the poorest cities in the country. A hospital that anchors jobs and care in a place like that carries weight beyond the building itself.
That number is worth sitting with. It arrives in a stretch of outsized giving to big institutions, from the late T. Denny Sanford, who gave away more than $4 billion, to Jensen and Lori Huang's $75 million gift to Vanderbilt. Where checks this size land shapes who gets care and who gets work.
People Also Ask
How much is George Norcross giving to Cooper University Health Care?
Norcross is donating $100 million to Cooper and its MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper, which the health system called the largest single gift in its history.
What will the Norcross gift to Cooper fund?
Cooper said the money will support Camden and its South Jersey service area, prioritizing education and community programs that create jobs, training, and opportunity.
Who is George Norcross?
Norcross is the longtime chairman of Cooper University Health Care and a prominent New Jersey business and political figure, and he made the gift in honor of his parents.
Why does a hospital gift matter for Camden?
Camden is one of the poorest cities in the United States, so a major health system there anchors both medical care and local jobs, giving a gift of this size outsized local impact.
Sources: The Philadelphia Inquirer, NBC10 Philadelphia, NJBIZ.