$50 million for students marks the latest milestone in Arthur Blank’s extraordinary $1.7 billion of giving

For a lot of students at Atlanta’s historically Black colleges, the hardest part of finishing college isn’t the classes—it’s the last few thousand dollars standing between them and a diploma.

Recently Arthur Blank’s family foundation stepped into that gap with a $50 million, 10-year commitment to help students at Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morris Brown College actually graduate.

The idea is straightforward: if you’re doing the work, staying in good standing, and you’ve already used up every other form of aid, the foundation will cover the remaining balance so you don’t have to drop out with the finish line in sight.

Most of the money is going to Clark Atlanta, Morehouse, and Spelman (about $16.5 million each), with a smaller amount for Morris Brown. The hope is that nearly 10,000 students will get help over the next decade.

It’s already working.

More than $4.2 million had reached nearly 600 students.

Some of them walked across the stage this spring.

One first-generation student at Clark Atlanta put it simply: the diploma wasn’t just for her. It was for her family too.

Foundation leaders have called it a material investment in hope, and the early numbers back that up.

Sometimes the difference between graduating and not is just a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.

This program is designed to erase that difference.

Blank has supported these same schools for years—funding an innovation lab at Spelman and improving athletic fields at several campuses—so the scholarship push feels like a natural next step rather than a one-off gift.

That same long view shows up across the rest of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation’s work.

Started in 1995 and shaped by Blank’s mother Molly’s belief that you only pass through life once so you should make it count, the foundation has now given away more than $1.7 billion.

In 2012 Blank signed the Giving Pledge, committing to direct the majority of his resources toward philanthropy.

The foundation focuses on Atlanta’s Westside, democracy, the environment, mental health, youth development, and a handful of founder-driven priorities.

Some of the larger bets have become landmarks: roughly $200 million toward the new Arthur M. Blank Hospital at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, years of support for

First Tee (more than $25 million total), a $20 million grant earlier this year to help open a Tiger Woods learning lab in Atlanta, plus steady work on community development, sports facilities tied to the Falcons and Atlanta United, and projects in Montana.

In 2025 alone the foundation distributed more than $250 million.

What ties it together is a consistent focus on removing real barriers—whether that’s a hospital bed for a child, a chance for a teenager to learn life skills through golf, or the last bit of tuition that lets a student finish school.

The HBCU scholarships are the clearest recent example: students who were already doing the academic work now get to finish what they started, graduate, and carry that momentum forward.

For Blank, that kind of practical, lasting impact is the point of the giving.