$10 million gift from Joe and Julie Serra puts family’s name behind the future of stadium-raises their giving to over $20 million

For nearly four decades, Joe and Julie Serra have given to Michigan State University the way many longtime fans do: steadily, without much fanfare, one season and one check at a time.

Recently, the Flint-area couple made a commitment that changes the scale of that relationship. Michigan State announced Thursday, Oct. 1, that the Serras have pledged $10 million to FOR SPARTA, the athletic department’s $1 billion capital initiative, the largest gift their family has ever made to the university, with the money directed toward Spartan football and improvements at Spartan Stadium.

The couple framed the decision less as a transaction than as a thank-you. “Michigan State has been an important part of our family’s life for many years, and we are grateful for the friendships, experiences, and memories we’ve shared through this university,” Joe and Julie Serra said in a statement.

“We have great confidence in President Guskiewicz and are excited about the leadership Dan is bringing to Spartan Athletics. We believe Michigan State has a tremendous opportunity ahead. Spartan Stadium is a special place for our family and for so many Spartans, and we’re proud to make this commitment and help invest in its future.”

The “Dan” in that sentence is Dan Bartholomae, who arrived from Western Michigan University and took over as Michigan State’s vice president and director of athletics on Aug. 31, succeeding J Batt, who left for Kentucky this summer.

The Serra pledge is among the first major gifts of his tenure, and he described it as a vote of confidence in a department still finding its footing under new leadership. “Joe and Julie’s commitment is an incredible expression of trust in the future of Spartan Athletics, and I am grateful for their confidence in our team,” Bartholomae said.

“We plan to direct their support toward improvements at Spartan Stadium, strengthening a place that means so much to our student-athletes, fans and generations of Spartans. Their generosity gives us an opportunity to invest thoughtfully in the experience we want to create at Michigan State.”

The timing places the gift squarely inside the most ambitious building plan in the history of Michigan State athletics. Spartan Stadium opened in 1923, and the university is now moving ahead with a roughly $500 million modernization of its east side, a project that calls for a new East Tower with premium seating and year-round use.

Construction manager Barton Malow and architect Populous are working toward a schedule that begins major construction in 2027 and targets an August 2029 opening, with the Spartans continuing to play home games in the stadium while one side is torn down and rebuilt.

MSU has not said exactly which elements of the stadium work the Serra money will fund, only that it will support Spartan football and stadium improvements as that larger vision takes shape.

FOR SPARTA itself was unveiled in December 2025, the same week Pat Fitzgerald was introduced as head football coach, and it arrived with momentum.

The athletic department had quietly raised nearly $250 million before the public launch, and days later Acrisure founder Greg Williams and his wife, Dawn, announced a $401 million commitment to the university, including $290 million for athletics, pushing the initiative past the halfway mark.

The broader Uncommon Will, Far Better World campaign, a $4 billion effort running through 2032, has since helped Michigan State post the best fundraising year in its history: more than $736 million from 63,616 donors between July 2025 and June 2026.

The Serras’ pledge is not headline-making, but it is the sort of leadership gift from a long-loyal family that campaigns depend on to sustain their second act.

“Joe and Julie have built their relationship with Michigan State one experience, one conversation, and one act of generosity at a time,” said Kim Tobin, MSU’s vice president for university advancement.

“That is what makes this moment so meaningful. This extraordinary commitment is not simply about what they are giving; it reflects how deeply they care about the people and possibilities of this university.” Jacob Kirkham, senior vice president of the Spartan Athletic Foundation, said the couple’s willingness to step forward “helps build momentum as we invite others to invest in the future of Spartan Athletics.”

The Michigan State connection runs through Julie. She is an MSU alumna who spent her career as a kindergarten teacher and has remained a familiar presence in the Flint-area community in retirement. Joe, by contrast, is a proud graduate of a much smaller school down the road, Albion College, where he played three seasons of basketball for coach Mike Turner and co-captained the Britons’ 1981 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship team before earning his economics and management degree in 1982.

The two were dating while he was at Albion, and Julie visited so often that, as the college once put it, she feels as if she graduated from there too.

Their giving to Michigan State began in 1989, and Joe has since become part of the university’s inner circle as a member of President Kevin M. Guskiewicz’s Green and White Council, a group of business and civic leaders advising MSU on how to prepare students and strengthen Michigan’s economy.

“Joe and Julie’s extraordinary generosity reflects a commitment to Michigan State that extends far beyond philanthropy,” Guskiewicz said.

“They believe deeply in this university, our student-athletes, and the power of MSU to make a difference. I’ve seen that commitment firsthand through Joe’s leadership on our Green and White Council, where he brings his experience as a business leader to help us prepare Spartans for the future and strengthen Michigan’s economy.”

The fortune behind the gift was built one car at a time in Genesee County. Joe’s father, Albert “Al” Serra, opened a single Chevrolet dealership in Grand Blanc in 1973. Joe joined him in 1982, straight out of Albion, and helped turn Al Serra Chevrolet into one of the highest-volume Chevrolet stores in the country.

After a stint as chief operating officer of Saturn Retail Enterprises in Charlotte, N.C., he came home in 2000 and bought Serra Automotive from his father and other shareholders. Under his leadership, the Fenton-based company has grown into one of the 10 largest privately held retail automotive groups in the nation, with more than 3,000 employees and dozens of dealerships across multiple states.

Joe has been named a General Motors Dealer of the Year, led both the Michigan and Detroit auto dealers associations, and chaired the North American International Auto Show in 2009. In 2022 he handed day-to-day operations to his son, Matt, now the company’s president, opening a third generation of family leadership and freeing Joe to focus on long-range growth and, increasingly, on giving.

That giving has its own family lineage. Joe has often credited his mother, Lois, with a habit of helping others quietly and without wanting credit. “I can think of very few people that can go their whole life always thinking of others first,” he once said of her.

The family formalized its philanthropy in 1997 with the Serra Foundation, a private foundation that Julie serves as president and Joe as vice president. Its public tax filings show a steady stream of grants to the institutions that shape everyday life around Flint and beyond: Michigan State, the McLaren Flint Foundation, Grand Blanc Community Schools, St. John Fenton School, the Flint Institute of Arts, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Junior Achievement, local YMCAs, children’s services agencies and a handful of universities around the country.

Joe has said that what draws him back to Genesee County, even with stores in seven states, is its people.

“The people are all hardworking, and they care about each other,” he said. “They all give back, and that’s what we try to do as well.”

In recent years, the couple’s gifts have grown larger and more public. In 2019, they pledged $5 million to Albion College, paid in $1 million installments over five years, to expand the school’s Dow Recreation and Wellness Center for all students and to begin reimagining Kresge Gymnasium, where Joe once played.

The result, the Serra Fitness Center, was completed in early 2020 and formally dedicated in 2021, and the expanded Dow facility now carries the Serra name. “We’ve been really fortunate and blessed beyond our dreams,” Joe said at the time.

“We benefited from Albion; let others benefit.” Julie described the goal as “a place for all students,” a space where they could say, “There is another part of this college that’s welcoming to me.”

In early 2024, the Serras returned with another $1 million to restore Kresge, built in 1925 and the oldest active intercollegiate athletic facility in Michigan, funding new locker rooms, bleachers, lobby renovations, and a new training room. “Julie and I are true believers in Albion College,” Joe said.

Last fall, the couple’s philanthropy turned deeply personal.

Joe, who has endured a heart attack, multiple stents and quintuple bypass surgery, which he attributes to genetics despite a healthy lifestyle, chose to have his open-heart surgery close to home at McLaren Flint rather than travel to a big-city medical center.

In October 2025, he and Julie gave the hospital $6 million, its largest gift in more than 50 years, to fund a specialized ECMO life-support program for patients in severe heart or lung failure, renovations to the cardiac catheterization lab, expanded cardiac rehabilitation, and a dedicated clinic for high cholesterol and triglycerides.

“Julie and I walked in to meet with my cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Batra, with many concerns, and left completely at ease,” Joe said. He later acknowledged that the couple usually keeps its charitable work private and went public only because the hospital hoped the announcement would draw attention to what he called “this jewel in our backyard.”

Taken together, the Serras have made more than $20 million in publicly announced commitments in the past seven years alone, alongside decades of smaller, steadier support that rarely made the news.

The pattern is consistent: they give where their own lives have been shaped, to the college that formed Joe, the hospital that cared for him, the community that built the family business, and now Julie’s alma mater and a stadium the family calls a special place.

When the rebuilt east side of Spartan Stadium opens, if all goes to plan, in the late summer of 2029, it will rise in part on a gift from a retired kindergarten teacher and a car dealer from Grand Blanc who have been showing up for Michigan State since 1989.

“Spartan Stadium is a special place for our family and for so many Spartans,” the couple said.