The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has announced a $ 17 million gift to expand the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. The gift, which Blank made through his family foundation, will span five years and fund a new wing of the center, located in Centennial Olympic Park next to the Georgia Aquarium. The aquarium was built by Bernie Marcus, who founded The Home Depot with Blank in 1978.
With the announcement of the donation, with which the new building will be placed next to the aquarium, Blank paid tribute to the Jewish roots of her philanthropic efforts.
“The idea of giving back, the idea of Zedaka, if you will, making a difference in the world, you know, giving back what we can’t say. We have been blessed, myself and many, many others. These are all ways for us to say thank you and give something back to society. ”
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Jill Savitt is CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.
Jill Savitt, CEO of the center, joined the Atlanta attraction from the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum in early 2019. She told the AJT shortly after arriving that she owed a debt to her Jewish heritage and how this shaped her concerns about civil liberties.
“Human rights emerged from the atrocities of World War II. The collective guilt of the international community enabled mostly Jewish lawyers to say that we need certain laws and standards. We won’t let that happen again. It is an outrage for the conscience of mankind what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust, ”she said in the April 2019 AJT story.
Savitt said the latest gift will help transform the museum, which is now largely a visitor attraction, into a civil and human rights institution with a much broader mission.
“Our goal over the next five years is to become not just an attraction, but an institution with full rights that does a lot more. And our overall goal is to help people use their own power to change the world around them. We believe that our center can do this because of the incredible stories we tell. “
The Blank Foundation’s donation is part of a major capital campaign that has raised $ 25 million, according to Savitt, roughly halfway towards a $ 50 million goal that will allow the building to be expanded with an east wing. The expansion is expected to add 50 percent to the building and exhibition space and create a complex of over 50,000 square meters.
The center has seen a rapid expansion of its programs over the past year. It has launched a program to educate the Los Angeles Police Department and a number of other projects pending with major police forces across the country, including a program that Savitt says is due to begin March 1 to educate every Atlanta department officer on human rights to train.
Blank’s gift will help expand the National Center for Civil and Human Rights by 50 percent.
Over the years the Blank Family Foundation has donated over $ 20 million to the center, which Blank believes will help bring Americans together. He was one of the original donors for the construction of the building in 2013.
Last year Blank published his book on the importance of giving back to others, Good Company, announcing that all proceeds from the book would go to the National Center.
He told the AJT at the time that the book was an urgent request to regain a sense of dignity and community that had partially disappeared from American society in recent years.
“We live much more in silos, isolated, both individually and in groups. And I think that’s a step backwards. One step forward that plays an essential role in this book is that when we live as communities we have a much higher purpose that brings us the spiritual rewards that are important to us in order to live a full and happy life respectively. “
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