Center Aimed at Combating Family Violence Lands $20 Million: Gifts Roundup

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Leslie and Abigail Wexner gave $20 million through their Wexner Family Charitable Fund to back the hospital’s Center for Family Safety and Healing, which works to address all aspects of family violence, including child abuse and neglect, teen dating abuse, domestic violence, and elder abuse.

Leslie Wexner founded L Brands, which includes Victoria’s Secret, PINK, Bath & Body Works, White Barn Candle Co., La Senza, and the recently shuttered department store Henri Bendel.

Abigail Wexner founded the Columbus Coalition Against Family Violence and serves as chairman of the Center for Family Safety and Healing. She is a longtime advocate for changing how communities respond to family violence.

Vanderbilt Law School

Mark and Susan Dalton pledged nearly $12.8 million to support the Law and Business Program, which prepares students to enter legal practice with a solid understanding of business law, corporate management, accounting, and finance.

Mark Dalton is co-chairman of Tudor Investment Corporation. He earned a law degree from Vanderbilt in 1975 and served on its Board of Trust from 2002 to 2017. Two of the Daltons’ three sons graduated from Vanderbilt.

Lehigh University

Kenneth and Vickie French gave $5 million to endow the Kenneth R. French and Vickie A. French Endowed Scholarship Fund, which will provide five students a year with scholarships for all four years of their undergraduate study. Preference will be given to first-generation college students who are underrepresented in the undergraduate student body

Kenneth French earned a mechanical engineering degree from Lehigh in 1975 and started his career as a machine designer for Eastman Kodak. He later went to graduate school and became an economist. He currently serves as the Roth Family Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Delta State University

Fred and Joan Pittman gave $4 million through their charitable educational trust to support scholarships for students with financial need.

Fred Pittman is a retired physician and Cleveland native who attended Hill Demonstration School, a primary school at Delta State. He said in

a news release that he could not have attended any of his alma maters — Phillips Exeter Academy, Yale University, or the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University — without the many scholarships he received.

Morehouse College

Financier Robert Smith donated $1.5 million to endow and create the Robert Frederick Smith Scholars Program, and to pay for the design and creation of a park that will give students a new outdoor study area.

Smith founded the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, which oversees an investment portfolio of more than 50 software companies. He has ramped up his charitable giving in recent years and appeared in the Chronicle’s annual Philanthropy 50 report of the most generous donors in 2016.

To learn about other big donations, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated throughout the week.