Troy, N.Y. — Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute today announced that Jack McDonnell, Class of ’61, of Reston, Virginia, has made an unrestricted gift of $1 million to support Renaissance at Rensselaer: The Campaign for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

“We are so appreciative of the support that Jack McDonnell continues to provide to Rensselaer,” said Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson. “His unrestricted gift allows us the flexibility to meet the needs of the priorities of The Rensselaer Plan. We have made tremendous progress over these last five years, and it is through the generosity of visionary gifts like this that the transformation will continue.”

McDonnell, Rensselaer’s 2002 William F. Glaser ’53 Entrepreneur of the Year, is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Transaction Network Services (TNS), Inc., in Reston, Virginia, an international data communications company specializing in point-of-sale transaction and e-commerce services. 

“I view my donation to RPI, first and foremost, as a payback,” McDonnell said. “It was there that I was first exposed to computers. I built a special-purpose computer for my master’s thesis and never looked back.

 “I was the recipient of someone else’s philanthropy — several times,” McDonnell said, beginning with his education at the all-scholarship Regis High School in New York City.

McDonnell also received a full scholarship to attend Manhattan College, earning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and a fellowship that brought him to Rensselaer, where he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 1961. 

Commissioned as a lieutenant in the United States Air Force after his graduation, McDonnell served as an engineer assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He returned to NSA as a contractor to build a variety of classified systems, with his final project the establishment of the first encrypted data link between NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1994 McDonnell and his wife, Jackie, established the McDonnell Charitable Foundation to support education. “There is no question that we both feel the need to give back,” he said.  “I made it unrestricted because I have served, and still serve, on some charitable boards. The hardest money to come by is unrestricted,” McDonnell said.

About the Campaign
The $1 billion Renaissance at Rensselaer: The Campaign for Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, launched in 2004, fuels the Institute’s strategic Rensselaer Plan, and supports groundbreaking interdisciplinary programs that have at their core the technologies driving innovations in the 21st century: biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, and experimental media. The campaign aims to build the Institute unrestricted endowment, and also seeks funds for endowed scholarships and fellowships, faculty positions, curriculum support, student life programs, and athletic programs and facilities. To date, the effort has raised $650 million, more than three times the amount raised in Rensselaer’s previous campaign that ended in 1993.