This week, the Huntsman family — one of the most philanthropic in the United States — made a $150 million gift to the University of Utah to establish the Huntsman Mental Health Institute.
The gift was a continuation of the large-scale charitable giving by the family’s patriarch, billionaire industrialist Jon Huntsman Sr., who died last year, and his wife, Karen. Jon Huntsman was one of the most philanthropic men of his generation. He was among the first to give away over $1 billion in his lifetime — long before Warren Buffett and Bill Gates created the Giving Pledge to induce billionaires to commit to donating at least half of their fortune to charity.