$100-Million Gift Goes to University of Virginia Leadership School

The University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, has received $100-million from Frank Batten Sr., founder 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 the midst of 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 $1.3-billion toward that goal.

Mr. Batten’s donation will be used to create a school designed to work together with the university’s law, medicine, and history programs, the institution 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; $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 Hollins University, in Roanoke, Va. That year the couple was listed seventh in The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual rankings of the 60 people who give the most money to charity.

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

Mr. Batten’s was the second large gift from a media mogul to a university in as many days; the day before his donation was announced, Columbia University, in New York, announced a $400-million gift from John W. Kluge, founder of Metromedia.