Phil Knight - Philanthropy

Philanthropy

In 2000, Knight was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame for his Special Contribution to Sports in Oregon. He is believed to have contributed approximately $230 million to the University of Oregon, the majority of which was for athletics. On August 18, 2007, Knight announced that he and his wife, Penny, would be donating an additional $100 million to the University of Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund. This donation is reportedly the largest in the University's history.

His significant contributions have granted him influence and access atypical of an athletic booster. In addition to having the best seats in the stadium for all University of Oregon athletic events, he has his own locker in the football team's locker room. An athletic building is named for him, the library for his mother, the law school for his father, and the basketball teams' home, Matthew Knight Arena, is named for his late son, who died in a scuba diving accident.

However, Knight's contributions to the Athletic Department at the University of Oregon have also led to controversy.

Public outcry surrounding Nike's labor practices precipitated protests in 2000, led by a group of students calling themselves the Human Rights Alliance. Protests included a ten-day tent-city occupation on the lawns in front of Johnson Hall, the main administration building, demanding that the university join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) which was founded by United Students Against Sweatshops.

University President Dave Frohnmayer signed a one-year contract with the WRC. Knight's reaction was to withdraw a previous US$30 million commitment toward the Autzen Stadium expansion project and to offer no further donations to the university. Nike had endorsed the industry-supported Fair Labor Association, instead. In a public statement, Knight criticized the WRC for having unrealistic provisions and called it misguided, while praising the FLA for being "balanced" in its approach. The students disagreed, saying the FLA has conflicting interests, but President Frohnmayer sided with Knight's assertion that the WRC was providing unbalanced representation.

In October 2000, citing a legal opinion from the university's counsel, President Frohnmayer released a statement saying that the university could not pay its membership dues to the WRC since the WRC was neither an incorporated entity nor had tax-exempt status, and to do so would be a violation of state law. The Oregon University System on February 16, 2001, enacted a mandate that all institutions within the system choose business partners from a politically neutral standpoint, barring all universities in Oregon from membership in the WRC and FLA. Following the dissolved relationship between the university and the WRC, Phil Knight reinstated the donation and increased the amount to over $50 million dollars.

Also controversial was Knight's successful lobbying to have his friend and a former insurance salesman, Pat Kilkenny, named as Athletic Director at the university. Kilkenny, another wealthy athletic booster, had neither a college degree nor any prior experience in athletics administration. Kilkenny attended but did not graduate from the university, leaving the school several credit hours short of completion. He had been the chairman and chief executive officer of the San Diego-based Arrowhead General Insurance Agency and grew his business into a nationwide organization with written premiums of nearly US$1 billion when he sold the company in 2006. ESPN's Outside the Lines spotlighted Knight and his donation-backed influence on the university's athletics in an April 6, 2008, episode.

In 2006, Phil Knight donated $105 million to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He also provided monetary support to his high school alma mater, Cleveland High School, for its new track, football field, and gymnasium.

In October 2008, Phil and Penny Knight pledged $100 million to the OHSU Cancer Institute, the largest gift in the history of Oregon Health & Science University, renamed Oregon Health Sciences University in 1981. In recognition, the university renamed the organization the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute.