Phil Knight creates program to tackle poverty, climate change.
Dominick Reuter/Reuters
Nike co-founder and chairman Phil Knight pledged to give Stanford University $400 million in an effort to recruit graduate students to improve the world by focusing on issues such as poverty and climate change. The donation, given to the newfangled Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program, is one of the largest individual donations ever to a university. The program, which is modeled on the Rhodes scholarships, has raised $750 million and is one of the largest fully funded scholarship endowments in the world. The program is set to be unveiled on Wednesday.