An East Coast memorial and a West Coast institute dedicated to the memory and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have each received gifts of $1 million or more.

On Monday, insurance provider Aflac, Inc., announced a $1 million gift for the King memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The D.C.-based Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, the organization charged with coordinating the fundraising for the project, has raised a third of the $100 million in private donations needed to complete the monument — the first to honor an African American or individual of color on the Mall — and plans to begin construction in 2006, the Washington Post reports.

The project has received $32.5 million from corporate and other private sponsors, and must raise an additional $68 million by next year to cover construction costs, foundation officials said. "Failure is not an option," said the organization's president, Harry E. Johnson, Sr.

In related news, Stanford University and the San Francisco-based Mumford Family-Agape Foundation have each pledged $1 million toward the funding of the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford, the Palo Alto Weekly reports.

The gift will be matched by Stanford's dean of humanities, who agreed to contribute matching grants on a one-for-two basis to the institute's endowment, established last year with a $1 million gift from former San Francisco 49er great Ronnie Lott. The gifts ensure Stanford's commitment to providing a permanent home for the institute and the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, which was established at Stanford in 1985 by Dr. King's widow, Coretta Scott King.