$125 Million Is Pledged to Big Medical Center

Atlantic, which has plans to spend all its remaining billions in assets by 2020, works around the world on issues of aging, improving health-care delivery for the poor, providing education and health care to children, and promoting human rights.

It is the largest supporter of the university’s $1.68 billion health sciences complex on the new campus, having previously given gifts totaling $145 million for a cancer-related program and a cardiac program.

The new gift is to help finance hospitals with a total of 289 beds. It would put more than 1,000 people to work in construction and create several hundred long-term jobs in health care.

Mr. Feeney is a leading proponent of giving away one’s wealth while living, and his daughter Diane has also emerged as an advocate for foundations that donate more of their assets than is required by law.

“Just think,” Mr. Feeney said Thursday, reflecting on the global economic downturn, “if wealthy people had given away more of the money they had over the last decade, they wouldn’t have lost it.”