Barbara Dodd Anderson ’50 Makes Transformative Gift

Barbara astonishes the George School community by announcing her intention to create a charitable lead trust, which will provide the school with $128.5 million by 2027. This is the largest gift in the school’s history, as well as the largest single gift to an independent school in the United States. 

The trust pays out $5 million each year. Eighty percent goes directly to endowment, with the income split between financial aid and compensation for the faculty and staff, and 20 percent, or $1 million, is provided to the Annual Fund, physical plant projects, sustainability initiatives, financial aid, and faculty and staff compensation.

Attending George School had a profound impact on Barbara Dodd Anderson, whose appreciation and love for the school—particularly its teachers and students—lead her to make a series of remarkable gifts, of which this is the largest. (Others include the endowment of a faculty chair in honor of her father, David LeFevre Dodd, a Columbia University economics professor; the Barbara Dodd Anderson ’50 Financial Aid Endowment, later restructured and renamed the Barbara Dodd Anderson ’50 Scholarship; a major gift for the renovation of Main dormitory, where she lived from 1947 to 1950; and a 2006 lead gift for the Mollie Dodd Anderson Library, which opens in 2009. Barbara’s final gift to George School is a surprising $30 million unrestricted bequest that the school receives in 2011.)