The American Civil Liberties Union has received a gift of $8 million gift from Peter B. Lewis, chairman of Cleveland-based insurance company Progressive Corp, keeping the organization on track to meet its goal of raising $50 million for its endowment, the New York Times reports.

According to ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, the gift from Lewis, which includes $2 million for general purposes and $6 million for the ACLU endowment, will support the organization's efforts to fight antiterrorism measures that it sees as a violation of Americans' civil liberties.

ACLU membership has grown dramatically since the September 11 terrorist attacks. After attracting 59,607 new members in 2000, the organization signed up 75,000 people in 2001 and an additional 90,000 in 2002, bringing its current membership to 330,000. "What this demonstrates is that a growing portion of the American public is concerned that government efforts to ensure national security undercuts core American values such as fairness, equality, and freedom," said Romero.

This is not the first time that Lewis has contributed to the ACLU. In July 2001, he gave $7 million to the organization's endowment fund — a gift that was successfully applied to a matching grant from the Ford Foundation, which had contributed $7 million to the organization's endowment campaign in June 1999.

Lewis's philanthropy has been in the spotlight since last summer, when he put a hold on his charitable donations to Cleveland-area nonprofit organizations to protest what he felt was lackadaisical oversight by the board of directors of Case Western University. But Lewis, a longtime ACLU member, told the Times that his latest gift — the largest from an individual in the history of the organization — comes with no strings attached. "I just think that what they work on is very important."