Heifer International Receives $3.5 Million Gift
By Wesley Brown
Arkansas News Bureau
wbrown@arkansasnews.com
LITTLE ROCK — The family of an Episcopalian bishop and a wealthy oil heiress donated $3.5 million to Heifer International to build an education wing next to the nonprofit's new world headquarters in the downtown River Market district.
The family of Polly Murphy Keller Winter, a member of the Murphy Oil family whose late husband was the bishop for the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas, announced the gift during a ceremony Tuesday at Heifer's squeezed downtown offices.
Jo Luck, president and chief executive officer of Heifer, said the gift will go toward building a new hunger education center, which will be named the Polly Murphy and Christoph Keller Jr. Education Center.
"This is a very special day for us," Luck said of the largest financial gift ever for the world hunger organization. "This will help us increase our impact on hunger and poverty."
Luck said the education center will be separate from the nonprofit's new $14 million headquarters, which is scheduled to be completed and ready for a grand opening on March 16.
The Rev. Christoph Keller III, son of the late Right Rev. Christoph Keller Jr. and theologian-in-residence at St. Margaret's Cathedral in Little Rock, said that his family decided to make the multimillion-dollar gift after a series of initial meetings with Luck and Heifer board members.
"We initially were thinking of a smaller gift," Keller said after the festive ceremony. "All of us are amazed at the transformation that is taking place in downtown Little Rock. We are happy to have this opportunity to participate in this campaign."
Bill Clark, chair of Heifer's current fund-raising efforts, said the nonprofit's world headquarters and 26-acre campus are being completed in three phases at a cost of more than $75 million.
The grand opening of the world headquarters will end the first phase, "and that is on schedule and nearing completion," Luck said.
The construction of the education center and a wetlands area surrounding the offices will complete the second stage of the project, which is more than halfway to its $12.5 million goal, Clark said.
Groundbreaking on the center is expected to begin after a nine-month planning period, and will take up to 18 months to complete, he said.