$25 million latest gift from Dee and Jimmy Haslam to Cleveland Clinic brings their philanthropy to $382.5 million
Cleveland Browns owners Dee and Jimmy Haslam have once again turned toward a cause close to home, pledging $25 million to Cleveland Clinic in a latest gift announced. The investment will help the health system grow and advance strategic initiatives that bring quality care to more communities across the country.
It’s a familiar rhythm for the couple, whose giving has become woven into the fabric of Northeast Ohio. This latest commitment builds on the Haslams’ earlier transformational gift that established the Haslam Family Section for Cardiovascular Genetics and the Haslam Family Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine at Cleveland Clinic — support that has already helped expand genetic testing and deepen research into inherited heart conditions.
“Dee and Jimmy Haslam have been among Cleveland Clinic’s most dedicated and visionary supporters for many years,” said Tom Mihaljevic, M.D., CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic. “Their generosity has strengthened patient care, fueled innovation and supported transformative initiatives throughout our organization. As Cleveland Clinic continues to grow and bring our model of care to more communities, support from community leaders like Dee and Jimmy enables us to reach more patients and expand access to the highest quality healthcare close to home” .
For the Haslams, it’s not just an act of generosity — it’s personal. “We are honored and humbled to further invest in Cleveland Clinic,” the couple said in a joint statement. “We believe in their commitment to expand quality healthcare, creating access in Northeast Ohio and beyond”
Lara Kalafatis, Cleveland Clinic’s Chief Philanthropy Officer, put it simply: donors like the Haslams give the health system room to dream bigger. “Dee and Jimmy’s extraordinary generosity demonstrates the vital role donors play in helping us expand access to care, advance research and innovation, and invest in the future of healthcare,” she said. “We are deeply grateful for the Haslam family’s continued partnership and their commitment to helping us shape the future of healthcare”
For a couple whose public identity is tied to Sundays at Huntington Bank Field, the Haslams’ philanthropic story reads more like a decades-long love letter to the communities that shaped them. As CEO and Chairman of the Haslam Sports Group, Dee and Jimmy have said giving back “has always been a core family value,” and the receipts back it up.
In Northeast Ohio alone, the family’s philanthropic investment has topped $150 million since 2014, spread across education, health and human services, equitable opportunity and youth football.
Cleveland Clinic has been a steady beneficiary of that generosity: today’s $25 million pledge follows the family’s $30 million gift in 2024 that created the Haslam Family Section for Cardiovascular Genetics, pushing their support for the health system past $55 million in just two years.
Just up the road, University Hospitals has received its own share of Haslam generosity — $20 million in 2023 to open a sports medicine center, and $12.5 million this spring for chronic lymphocytic leukemia research, a cause made deeply personal after Dee’s own 2021 diagnosis with the disease.
The couple’s giving reaches well beyond hospital walls, too. Their Haslam Giving Foundation has invested nearly $100 million since 2005 in organizations serving families in Knoxville, Cleveland, and Columbus, including an $11 million commitment to Breakthrough Charter Schools that has opened doors for thousands of Cleveland students.
And back at their alma mater, the University of Tennessee, the Haslam family’s lifetime giving now exceeds $195 million, anchored by a record-setting $130 million gift to the Haslam College of Business this past June.
Taken together, it’s a portrait of philanthropy built not on single grand gestures but on decades of showing up, again and again, for the hospitals, schools, and neighborhoods the Haslams call home. As Dr. Mihaljevic put it, their latest gift is simply the newest chapter in a “generosity” that has “strengthened patient care, fueled innovation, and supported transformative initiatives” for years.
Founded in 1921, Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit academic medical center with 23 hospitals, 300 outpatient facilities, and locations spanning Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Canada, the UAE, and England.