Three-time Academy Award-nominated, two-time Primetime Emmy Award-winning and three-time Peabody Award-winning producer Jason Blum ’91, founder and CEO of Blumhouse, the company behind such films as Whiplash, Get Out and BlacKkKlansman, will make a $10 million gift to Vassar College that he asked to be used to supplement the College’s financial aid funds, President Elizabeth Bradley announced.
The donation from Blum, who has served on Vassar’s Board of Trustees since 2015, is the largest gift ever given to the college by a male alum and is a lead gift for Vassar’s upcoming fundraising campaign, which will launch this fall. “As we prepare to launch the largest campaign in Vassar’s history, Jason Blum’s gift for financial aid is catalytic and will have a positive impact on innumerable lives of Vassar students for years to come,” President Bradley said.
Blum, who majored in drama at Vassar, said his gift reflected his gratitude for the role his Vassar education played in shaping his career. “The courses I took, friends I made and the other activities I was involved in while at Vassar fueled my critical thinking skills and made me more curious about the world,” Blum said.
He said he earmarked his gift for the College’s financial aid funds because of his strong belief in the importance of access to the best liberal arts education for all applicants, regardless of their financial status. “I want to help ensure that Vassar is able to continue its commitment to admit students with the desire to succeed without regard to whether or not they can pay,” he said.
Blum announced the gift during an appearance on ABC’s Live with Ryan & Kelly last Friday.
Blum is the founder and CEO of Blumhouse, a multi-media production company that pioneered a new model of studio filmmaking, producing high-quality, micro-budget films. Through Blumhouse, he has produced over 150 movies and television series with theatrical grosses amounting to more than $5 billion, including the lucrative, iconic, genre franchises including Halloween, Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Happy Death Day, Sinister and The Purge, among many other films.
Blumhouse’s television division produces provocative programming – with streaming anthology series like Welcome to Blumhouse for Amazon and a series of films for Epix – and has expanded beyond genre with acclaimed scripted and unscripted series and documentaries, such as The Thing About Pam, starring Renee Zellweger for NBC; The Good Lord Bird, starring Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke for Showtime; The Loudest Voice, starring Golden Globe winner Russell Crowe for Showtime; A Wilderness of Error (FX); The Jinx for HBO; A Secret Love, from executive producer Ryan Murphy, for Netflix; and lauded HBO series Sharp Objects starring Amy Adams and Patricia Clarkson, among others.
He has been recognized by TIME magazine’s 100 list of the world’s most influential people and has appeared several times on Vanity Fair’s “New Establishment List.”
