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
Stu and Kim Lang never went to the University of Guelph. And neither studied business.
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’s name.
The Langs, both Queen’s 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.
In 2019, the couple’s foundation donated $21-million to the school, which was renamed for Mr. Lang’s father, who founded Toronto-based CCL in 1951. The Lang family’s stake in CCL is worth approximately $2.1-billion.
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.
“We see business skills as essential to everything we do as a society, so our gift will have infinite impact,” said Mr. Lang, who earned an engineering degree. “Our donation is meant to support Guelph’s vision of business as a force of good.”
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The donation will launch a program called Lang GoodWorks that incorporates values-based decision-making in business. The couple’s 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.
“The Langs’ gift will help us create a collaborative learning experience, with graduates who are competitive but not cutthroat,” said Dr. Sara Mann, dean of business at the University of Guelph.
The business school will also use the Langs’ gift to fund research and the extension of programs that combine business courses with the curriculums at Guelph’s veterinary and agriculture schools.
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.
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’s football team, while working as an executive at CCL.
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’s.
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The Lang’s gift is $1-million more than the donation financier Stephen Smith made to Queen’s University’s business school in 2015. Mr. Lang said he went to Mr. Smith for guidance on philanthropy and joked that his slightly larger gift “is a sign of friendly competition.”
Mr. Smith, who has stakes in a collection of lenders and mortgage insurers, also gave $100-million to Queen’s engineering school in 2023.
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.
Last year, 286 people donated $1-million or more to educational institutions, according to a March report from the non-profit Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
Those large donations had decreased slightly in frequency and value since 2024 – likely a blip caused by economic uncertainty driven by the trade war with the United States, according to Michael Logue, a partner at national fundraising consultancy KCI.
“Some donors may not be – even mega donors – in a position to make that really significant gift," he said. However, he noted that he expects those donations to keep rising.
Even if the number of donors is decreasing, the people who do spread their wealth are giving more, according to Jeff O’Hagan, a senior consultant at fundraising consultancy Global Philanthropic Canada.
While a $1-million donation was considered large 20 years ago, it’s now more and more common to see gifts upward of $10-million, he said, as Canadians’ personal wealth is growing.
Household wealth in Canada went up $1-trillion last year, with the wealthiest 20 per cent holding an average of $3.5-million 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.
The contributions come as many postsecondary institutions in Ontario struggle because of a now-revoked tuition freeze, lower enrolment of high-paying international students and less per-student provincial funding compared with the national average.
“There are more people now that realize that governments don’t cover the cost of everything,” Mr. O’Hagan said. While gifts won’t address the roots of postsecondary financial issues, he said, donors use gifts to address broader social issues through universities.
That’s the point of large donations – not just having your name on a building, Mr. Logue said. It’s why some donors don’t necessarily have personal ties to the receiving institutions.
“It’s not necessarily as much about the institution. It’s about, what’s the donor’s personal mission that they want to accomplish through their philanthropy? And then how can we marry those two together?” he said.