Gift overview in 2006

Biggest beneficiary: California Community Foundation
Other key beneficiaries: University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Mount St. Mary's College, National Parkinson Foundation, United Negro College Fund
Donor's background: Ms. Palevsky's wealth grew from investments she made after receiving a $40-million divorce settlement in 1968 from her husband, Max Palevsky, the founder of Scientific Data Systems, an early computer company that was sold to Xerox in 1969.

Donations in 2006

Ms. Palevsky, who died in March at 80, bequeathed more than $200-million -- the bulk of her estate -- to the California Community Foundation, in Los Angeles. Ms. Palevsky's will states that the foundation can use the money however it wishes.

With advice from Ms. Palevsky's family, foundation officials have decided to use the gift to create an endowment -- to be named for Ms. Palevsky -- that will support arts and culture groups, civic-participation projects, civil-liberties groups, public education, and programs and organizations that advocate for elderly people, women, children, and needy families, causes that Ms. Palevsky supported throughout her life.

A private, intellectual woman, Ms. Palevsky was much more comfortable among her many books than she was with large crowds of people. She rarely attended charity events, but was well known within the Los Angeles nonprofit world as a supporter of the arts and groups that served poor people or others who had trouble getting aid from government or business. She was also known for supporting women's causes and female Democratic candidates running for public office.

"She was an extraordinarily progressive, feminist woman," says Antonia Hernández, the president of the foundation, who says Ms. Palevsky's final gift came as a surprise. Ms. Hernández became acquainted with Ms. Palevsky in the 1980s, when Ms. Hernández was the president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a Los Angeles group to which Ms. Palevsky often donated.

According to Ms. Palevsky's accountant, the donor set up her will 15 years ago but never contacted the foundation to tell officials there that she was leaving the organization such a windfall. Previously, Ms. Palevsky had only made a more modest gift, of $2,200 in 1997, after reading a newspaper article about the foundation's efforts to ease the textbook shortage within Los Angeles public schools.

Because of Ms. Palevsky's gift, the community foundation's assets have now skyrocketed to more than $1-billion, up from more than $800-million, and it now plans to grant $20-million a year, double what it could give previously.

In addition to the California Community Foundation, Ms. Palevsky left $6.1-million to the University of California at Los Angeles, for professorships of $1-million each to the history, French, and classics departments, and for fellowships and scholarships in the College of Letters and Science. The money will also support a campus child-care center, an honors program, a humanities center, and a research library. Ms. Palevsky graduated from the university in 1947.

She also left $1.1-million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for its ancient-art division, the department of prints and drawing, an intern program she had previously established, the museum's library, endowment, and the museum's Islamic-art division (to which she had given 650 objects from her own collection in 1973). She also bequeathed $1-million each to Mount St. Mary's College, in Los Angeles; the National Parkinson Foundation, in Miami; the United Negro College Fund, in Fairfax, Va.; and $2.6-million to 38 additional nonprofit organizations.