$50 million gift to medical school from Stanley C. Middleman to support early-stage research

Penn Medicine’s announcement of a $50 million gift from Stanley C. Middleman adds a major new chapter to the Philadelphia businessman’s philanthropic record—and reveals a clear through line in his giving: investing in institutions that can improve people’s lives at scale, whether through medical research, pediatric care, education, military support, or basic needs such as food security.

The gift, announced Thursday, will establish the Middleman Fund at Penn Medicine. Income from the fund will support early-stage research into cancer, autoimmune diseases, infectious diseases, and other serious conditions, with the broader goal of moving promising ideas more quickly from the laboratory into treatments that can reach patients. It is Middleman’s first gift to Penn.

In recognition of the contribution, Penn will rename its research facility at 3600 Civic Center Boulevard the Middleman Center. The building, which sits at the western edge of Penn Medicine’s campus, underwent a $376 million expansion that opened last year. The project added seven floors, as many as 37 laboratories, and approximately 217,000 square feet of research space.

The facility is designed to bring together scientists, physicians, medical students, patients, and experts from other parts of the University of Pennsylvania, including engineering and business. Its research infrastructure includes the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Penn, the High-Throughput Institute for Discovery—which tests patient samples to help inform diagnoses and treatments—and a Biosafety Level 3 laboratory equipped to handle infectious-disease specimens.

“I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and I’m proud to support Penn Medicine and the extraordinary work being done there to advance medicine and improve people’s lives,” Middleman said in the announcement. He described the new center as a place that would bring together “the people and ideas” needed to develop new approaches to treatment and scientific discovery.

Penn President J. Larry Jameson said the center would create an environment intended not merely to generate scientific ideas but to carry them through to the point at which discoveries change patients’ lives. That emphasis on translation—from research to practical therapies—gives Middleman’s gift a distinctive focus within his wider record of support for hospitals and health-related causes.

Middleman’s most prominent previous healthcare commitment was to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In 2021, he, his wife, Roslyn, and the Middleman family made a transformational gift supporting CHOP’s second inpatient hospital in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The facility was named the Middleman Family Pavilion. The amount of the family’s gift was not disclosed.

The pavilion opened in January 2022 as a more than 250,000-square-foot hospital intended to bring CHOP’s pediatric services closer to families in Philadelphia’s suburbs and throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. It includes 52 private inpatient rooms, a pediatric intensive-care unit, operating rooms, radiology services, and the Madlyn K. Abramson Emergency Department, the first dedicated 24-hour pediatric emergency department in the King of Prussia area.

The CHOP gift was not simply a naming opportunity attached to a completed building. The family’s support helped make possible the expansion of a major pediatric institution beyond its Philadelphia campus, while Middleman’s role as a member of CHOP’s Foundation Board of Overseers placed him within the hospital’s philanthropic leadership structure. Freedom Mortgage and its employees also contributed toys for children receiving inpatient care.

At the time of the pavilion’s naming, CHOP said donors collectively had contributed $65 million toward a $75 million fundraising goal for the King of Prussia hospital. The hospital’s public announcement credited the Middleman family with helping the institution extend specialized pediatric care to families who might otherwise have had to travel into Philadelphia.

Middleman’s giving to education has also been closely connected to his Philadelphia roots. He attended Temple University, graduating with an accounting degree in 1976, and in 2021 the university opened the Stanley Middleman Center for Jewish Life—Rohr Chabad at Temple. The center serves as a gathering place and “home away from home” for Jewish students.

A separate account from Rowan University identifies a $1 million Middleman gift to build the Stanley Middleman Center for Jewish Life there. That contribution reflects another dimension of his philanthropy: support for student life, religious identity, and the institutions that shaped his own path.

His charitable activity has also extended into Philadelphia’s cultural life. Public biographies and interviews identify Middleman as having served on nonprofit boards connected with the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and CHOP’s foundation. Those roles suggest a pattern of engagement that goes beyond writing checks: Middleman has frequently paired financial support with board service and institutional involvement.

Much of his philanthropy, however, has been organized through Freedom Mortgage, the privately held mortgage company he founded in 1990. Middleman built the business into one of the nation’s largest independent mortgage lenders and servicers, with a particular focus on government-insured lending and mortgages for veterans and military families.

In 2013, he established Freedom Cares, the company’s charitable and employee-engagement program. Its work has centered on four recurring campaigns: a holiday toy drive, Rucksacks to Backpacks, which provides school supplies to children of active-duty service members, National Guard members, and reservists; Freedom From Hunger, which supports food banks through Feeding America; and Project Gratitude, which sends messages of appreciation to members of the military.

That structure has allowed Middleman to combine personal giving with employee participation. In 2023, Freedom Mortgage reported more than $660,000 in donations through Freedom Cares and nearly 2,300 hours of employee volunteer work. The company said that year’s giving included $100,000 raised through Rucksacks to Backpacks, more than $50,000 raised for Feeding America through employee and vendor contributions matched by Middleman, and a $60,000 holiday campaign benefiting CHOP, the Salvation Army, and Toys for Tots.

Freedom Mortgage has also used its corporate platform to support families facing acute financial hardship. Through the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Opens Doors Foundation, the company has backed housing grants for families with critically ill or injured children who need help meeting mortgage or rental payments. The program works with CHOP and other children’s hospitals around the country.

Food insecurity has been another sustained focus. In one nationwide campaign, Freedom Mortgage employees raised $281,000 for Feeding America, and Middleman matched and increased the contribution to $1 million for distribution among food banks responding to the needs created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, a Freedom Cares campaign involving more than 500 employees and business partners produced a $90,000 donation to Feeding America, which the organization said represented approximately 900,000 meals. The contribution supported food banks, including Philabundance in Philadelphia, the Food Bank of South Jersey, the Maryland Food Bank, Feeding South Florida, Feeding San Diego, and other regional organizations.

The military has remained a particularly consistent priority. Freedom Mortgage has supported the USO, the Salvation Army, Homes for Our Troops, and other organizations serving veterans, active-duty personnel, and military families. The company’s Rucksacks to Backpacks program has distributed tens of thousands of backpacks and school supplies through USO locations, while Project Gratitude has collected handwritten notes and video messages for service members.

That focus is closely tied to Middleman’s business history. Freedom Mortgage became a major lender and servicer of government-backed mortgages, including loans for veterans, and the company has presented its charitable work as an extension of its relationship with military households. Middleman has said that the company’s responsibility does not end with helping people secure homes but includes supporting the communities in which employees, customers, and service members live.

The $50 million Penn gift therefore broadens, rather than changes, the direction of Middleman’s philanthropy. At CHOP, his family helped expand access to pediatric care; at Temple and Rowan, his giving has supported education and Jewish student life; through Freedom Cares, he has backed food security, children, veterans, and military families. At Penn Medicine, the focus moves upstream, toward the uncertain and often underfunded stage of research before a treatment exists.

That early-stage emphasis may be the most consequential feature of the new gift. Research conducted before a therapy is ready for clinical use can be difficult to fund because its results are uncertain, its timeline is long, and the path to a marketable treatment is rarely straightforward. By directing investment income toward work in cancer, autoimmune disease, infectious disease, and related fields, the Middleman Fund is intended to give Penn researchers the time, infrastructure, and flexibility to pursue ideas that could eventually benefit large numbers of patients.

Penn has not publicly disclosed a cumulative total for Middleman’s personal and family philanthropy, and the amount of the CHOP gift remains undisclosed. But the institutions and causes associated with his giving show a consistent geographic and personal logic: Philadelphia-area universities and hospitals, organizations serving children and families, support for Jewish campus life, and nationwide programs connected to veterans, hunger, and housing stability. The Penn commitment is the largest publicly identified personal gift from Middleman to date and places biomedical research at the center of the next phase of his philanthropic legacy.