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25 September 2025 — the gift announced; 2013 — the family's earlier 33 million dollar gift
The gift: The largest single documented gift attached to any institution in this record was announced on 25 September 2025: 150 million dollars from Matthew Walsh, a 1968 Notre Dame graduate who became co-chair of his family's Chicago construction company, Walsh Construction, and his wife Joyce, to the university's School of Architecture. The university called it an unprecedented commitment in the 160-year history of American architectural education, and in recognition the school takes the donors' names as the Matthew and Joyce Walsh School of Architecture at Notre Dame. The gift is an endowment-scale investment — expanding the school's global reach, research capacity and faculty — rather than a building, and it stands at the head of the ranked table on its face: no bequest, campaign or commitment in the South Bend record is larger.
The earlier gift: The Walshes' 2025 gift was their second transformation of the same school. In 2013 they gave 33 million dollars to build the school its home — the 100,000-square-foot Walsh Family Hall, opened in 2018 — and they funded the 2014 renovation of the university's academic facility in Rome, where the architecture school's students study. One family's documented giving to one school thus runs to more than 183 million dollars across twelve years, the largest donor-to-institution line in this record.
Sources:
- University of Notre Dame news release (25 September 2025) — the 150 million dollar gift, the school's renaming, and the 2013 gift of 33 million dollars for Walsh Family Hall.
- Inside Higher Ed (9 October 2025) — the Walsh gift and the Rooney gift announced in the same fortnight, totaling 205 million dollars.