April 12, 2007

$100-Million Donated to University of Virginia

By Anne W. Howard

The University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, has received $100-million from Frank Batten Sr. '45, founder and retired chairman of Landmark Communications, to create the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Mr. Batten, 79, is a 1950 graduate of the institution.

With this commitment, the university, which is in a campaign to raise $3-billion by the end of 2011 — more than any other public institution has raised in a single drive — has garnered $1.2-billion.

Mr. Batten's donation will be used to create a school designed to work closely with its programs to educate students in law, medicine, and history, the university said.

"There's an urgent need to develop a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders who can bring about transformational change," Mr. Batten said in a statement released by the university. "It is critical to get younger people excited about the responsibilities and opportunities of public service in all its manifestations. The earlier in their careers that exceptional students begin to think of themselves as future public leaders who can promote a better society, the greater the likelihood they will become such leaders."

Mr. Batten has made several other large gifts to support higher education, including $60-million in 1999 to the University of Virginia to create the Batten Institute, which promotes business entrepreneurship.

In 2003, Mr. Batten and his wife, Jane, went on a $142-million philanthropic spree, awarding $32-million each to Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Va., and to Harvard Business School, in Boston, Mass.; $20.8-million to the Culver Academies, in Culver, Ind.; $20-million to the Norfolk Foundation; $11.3-million to the College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Va.; $11.2-million each to the Tidewater Scholarship Foundation, in Hampton Roads, Va., and Virginia Wesleyan College, in Norfolk; and $2.2-million to Virginia Wesleyan College, in Norfolk. The couple were listed as the seventh most-generous donors that year in The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual rankings of the 60 donors who give the most to charity.

Landmark Communications, based in Norfolk, Va., owns the Weather Channel and several other cable and news channels and newspapers. Forbes magazine listed Mr. Batten's fortune last year at $1.4-billion.

Mr. Batten's gift marks the second large gift from a media mogul to a university in as many days; on Wednesday, Columbia University, in New York, announced a $400-million gift from John W. Kluge, founder and chairman of Metromedia.