{"id":34254,"date":"2026-05-06T14:04:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/34254\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T14:04:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:04:19","slug":"lang-family-donates-51-million-to-university-of-guelph-business-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/34254\/","title":{"rendered":"Lang family donates $51-million to University of Guelph business school"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Stu Lang and Dr. Sara Mann, Dean of the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics, at the University of Guelph, April 29. The Lang family’s gift will launch a program that incorporates values-based decision-making in business and also help fund a new three-story facility at the university’s business school.Alex Jacobs-Blum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Stu and Kim Lang never went to the University of Guelph. And neither studied business. <\/p>\n

Yet the couple, part of the family that controls $14-billion packaging and label maker CCL Industries Inc., have made the largest-ever donation to a Canadian business school by giving $51-million to a Guelph program that already bears the clan\u2019s name. <\/p>\n

The Langs, both Queen\u2019s University graduates, are making a second transformational gift to help build new facilities and programs at the Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics. <\/p>\n

In 2019, the couple\u2019s foundation donated $21-million to the school<\/a>, which was renamed for Mr. Lang\u2019s father, who founded Toronto-based CCL in 1951. The Lang family\u2019s stake in CCL is worth approximately $2.1-billion. <\/p>\n

The University of Guelph donation marks the latest and largest in a series of gifts from entrepreneurs to fund business schools at universities that face declining government funding and the challenge of raising more money from fewer donors. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe see business skills as essential to everything we do as a society, so our gift will have infinite impact,\u201d said Mr. Lang, who earned an engineering degree. \u201cOur donation is meant to support Guelph\u2019s vision of business as a force of good.\u201d <\/p>\n

McKenna family announces $20-million scholarship donation to St. Francis Xavier University<\/a><\/p>\n

The donation will launch a program called Lang GoodWorks that incorporates values-based decision-making in business. The couple\u2019s gift will also help fund a new three-story facility, with more than 60 breakout rooms and a lecture hall that seats 500 students, at a business school that started out with classrooms in a former student residence. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Langs\u2019 gift will help us create a collaborative learning experience, with graduates who are competitive but not cutthroat,\u201d said Dr. Sara Mann, dean of business at the University of Guelph. <\/p>\n

The business school will also use the Langs\u2019 gift to fund research and the extension of programs that combine business courses with the curriculums at Guelph\u2019s veterinary and agriculture schools. <\/p>\n

The Langs established ties to the university when they purchased a farm near Guelph and Ms. Lang, a horse owner, donated to the veterinary school. The couple have now given more than $100-million to the university. <\/p>\n

In 2009, Mr. Lang, who played with the Edmonton Eskimos for eight years and won five Grey Cups, began volunteering as a receivers coach for the university\u2019s football team, while working as an executive at CCL.<\/p>\n

In 2010, the Guelph Gryphons hired Mr. Lang as their head coach. Five years later, the team won the Yates Cup, the Ontario football championship that Mr. Lang won decades earlier as an undergraduate at Queen\u2019s.<\/p>\n

U of T receives $80-million in largest donation ever made to a law school in Canada<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lang\u2019s gift is $1-million more than the donation financier Stephen Smith made to Queen\u2019s University\u2019s business school in 2015. Mr. Lang said he went to Mr. Smith for guidance on philanthropy and joked that his slightly larger gift \u201cis a sign of friendly competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Smith, who has stakes in a collection of lenders and mortgage insurers, also gave $100-million to Queen\u2019s engineering school in 2023. <\/p>\n

The threshold for donations with naming rights has been rising steadily since the 1990s, when entrepreneur Joseph Rotman gave $15-million to University of Toronto and mining financier Seymour Schulich donated the same amount to the York University business schools that help define their legacies. <\/p>\n

Last year, 286 people donated $1-million or more to educational institutions, according to a March report<\/a> from the non-profit Council for Advancement and Support of Education. <\/p>\n

Those large donations had decreased slightly in frequency and value since 2024 \u2013 likely a blip caused by economic uncertainty driven by the trade war<\/a> with the United States, according to Michael Logue, a partner at national fundraising consultancy KCI. <\/p>\n

\u201cSome donors may not be \u2013 even mega donors \u2013 in a position to make that really significant gift,” he said. However, he noted that he expects those donations to keep rising. <\/p>\n

Even if the number of donors is decreasing, the people who do spread their wealth are giving more, according to Jeff O\u2019Hagan, a senior consultant at fundraising consultancy Global Philanthropic Canada. <\/p>\n

While a $1-million donation was considered large 20 years ago, it\u2019s now more and more common to see gifts upward of $10-million, he said, as Canadians\u2019 personal wealth is growing. <\/p>\n

Household wealth in Canada went up $1-trillion<\/a> last year, with the wealthiest 20 per cent holding an average of $3.5-million<\/a> each in the last quarter of 2025. In the 2023-24 academic year, individuals gave more than $694-million to postsecondary institutions, the highest amount recorded by Statistics Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The contributions come as many postsecondary institutions in Ontario struggle because of a now-revoked<\/a> tuition freeze, lower enrolment of high-paying international students and less per-student provincial funding compared with the national average. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are more people now that realize that governments don\u2019t cover the cost of everything,\u201d Mr. O\u2019Hagan said. While gifts won\u2019t address the roots of postsecondary financial issues, he said, donors use gifts to address broader social issues through universities. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s the point of large donations \u2013 not just having your name on a building, Mr. Logue said. It\u2019s why some donors don\u2019t necessarily have personal ties to the receiving institutions. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not necessarily as much about the institution. It\u2019s about, what\u2019s the donor\u2019s personal mission that they want to accomplish through their philanthropy? And then how can we marry those two together?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Stu Lang and Dr. Sara Mann, Dean of the Gordon S. Lang School…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,224,238,214,212,239,17,211,230,231,227,213,210,235,171,234,143,222,249,215,216,229,225,226,219,240,220,244,245,247,242,246,94,243,217,142,233,113,232,241,223,236,237,228,221,218,248],"class_list":{"0":"post-34254","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-northwest-territories","38":"tag-nova-scotia","39":"tag-nunavut","40":"tag-ontario","41":"tag-pei","42":"tag-photos","43":"tag-political-news","44":"tag-political-opinion","45":"tag-politics","46":"tag-politics-news","47":"tag-quebec","48":"tag-sports-news","49":"tag-technology","50":"tag-travel","51":"tag-trudeau","52":"tag-us-news","53":"tag-world-news","54":"tag-yukon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}