The University of Southern California has announced a $20 million gift from Marc and Lynne Benioff toward construction of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine at USC.

The chair and CEO of Salesforce.com, Marc Benioff has served as a member of the university’s board of trustees since 2010. While he is widely recognized for his leadership of and success with Salesforce, Benioff also is known for embedding philanthropy into the core of his business with the creation of the 1-1-1 model, in which Salesforce donates 1 percent of its equity, employee hours, and product to nonprofits and educational institutions.

In recognition of the couple's latest gift, the lobby of the Ellison Institute will be named in honor of Benioff's father, Russell, who died of prostate cancer in 2012. Benioff has attributed his work ethic and entrepreneurialism to his father, a retail store executive who got his start at his parents’ San Francisco department store and later became president of a chain of apparel stores in the Bay Area.

"Marc and Lynne Benioff stand among our nation’s most visionary philanthropists, and their extraordinary gift invests in USC’s commitment to new technologies and research that fight cancer," said USC president C.L. Max Nikias. "Their gift also ensures that our university will remain at the fore of this field, and continue to bring hope and resolve to the fight. We should all applaud the Benioffs’ dedication to our collective fight against cancer."