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‘The same green heartbeat’ — Lithia Motors leader delves into its $12 million gift to SOU By Kevin Opsahl Nov 08, 2022 12:45 AM A A Bryan DeBoer, president and CEO of Lithia Motors, at the Sept. 15 press conference where company announced it would donate$12 million to SOU to fund scholarships and special programs. [Photo by Denise Baratta] On a warm October afternoon, Lithia Motors President and CEO Bryan DeBoer pointed to the expansive view of downtown Medford he can see from an outdoor deck atop the building bearing the company’s name on Bartlett Street. But DeBoer, who runs the largest new vehicle retailer in the world, has yet another view — a philanthropic one for his alma mater, Southern Oregon University. “We both had the same ideas about diversity, sustainability, academics and putting SOU on the map as one of the first green universities,” DeBoer said. Lithia Motors has long supported the Lithia & GreenCars/Raider Golf Tournament,which funds student athlete scholarships at the Ashland college. But a meeting earlier this year with SOU president Rick Bailey helped lead to something more. A $12 million gift agreement was forged, the largest in the Ashland institution’s history. Bailey and DeBoer were on hand in a campus ceremony Sept. 15 to announce the gift, which will provide scholarships for undeserved students, fund a sustainability institute and put both electric vehicles and charging stations throughout campus. “Lithia’s mission is ‘growth powered by people,’” DeBoer said. “We thought about that same concept at SOU and said, ‘Let’s make sure we get the people behind the sustainability effort, and then let’s tie it into the diversity and fund it three different ways.’” Those ways — academics, sustainability and diversity — were a departure from the golf tournament for which DeBoer had long donned his Raiders ballcap. “Our dollars were going into athletics and almost outgrowing the size of the athletics program,” DeBoer said. But the way the Lithia Motors head honcho sees it, his company was never that far from the educational realm. That’s because of its initiative called GreenCars, and its website, greencars.com, which gets about 500,000 visitors a month. “Our responsibility as an automotive retailer is to help educate the world on sustainable transportation,” DeBoer said. He remembers talking to SOU officials, including Bailey and Mike McKelvey, the university’s director of development. “We felt like it was the time to expand that into things other than just athletics,” DeBoer said. Now, as SOU administrators work to prepare professors for research projects within the Institute for Applied Sustainability and taking in applications for the new scholarship program, Lithia Motors will be focused on providing internships to students. “The important part, for us, is on the first component — the students — to provide the internship, which is important during the summer or the school year,” DeBoer said. Lithia Motors has set aside about a dozen employees to work with those students. The goal of those internships isn’t necessarily to churn out new Lithia Motors employees, according to DeBoer. “Our ultimate goal is to get other businesses to look at SOU as a sustainable university that they can get involved with and, hopefully, we can have those students populate those businesses, as well, with a voice that’s more of a ‘green team’ type of voice,” he said. “I think that’s pretty important.” DeBoer said he hopes that students at the sustainability institute will learn about how alternative transportation works, including the life of a battery and its impact on the world when it’s used in a car. “Obviously there are behavioral shifts that need to happen in the world, for people to be educated that we can all make a difference — even if it’s more expensive to do it,” DeBoer said. He is proud to say the company plans to add an electric vehicle fleet at SOU, much like the one for another important Ashland institution — Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Specifics of the gift agreement aside, the Lithia Motors president and CEO isn’t fazed by the fact his company provided the largest gift yet to SOU. Instead, DeBoer points to the legacy his family built with the university via the golf tournament and is thankful for the Ashland institution. “It’s neat to be able to have a university … that has the same green heartbeat we do to make the world a better place,” DeBoer said. Reach reporter Kevin Opsahl at 541-776-4476 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @KevJourno