Gifts Roundup: Big Donations Go to Nonprofits That Fight Crime and Resolve Conflicts

A roundup of notable gifts compiled by the Chronicle:

Boca Raton (Fla.) Regional Hospital

Elaine Wold gave $25 million through her Bay Branch Foundation to back the hospital’s expansion and renovation project.

Wold is the widow of Keith Wold, an ophthalmologist and investor, who died in 2003.

She previously gave the hospital $10 million for a physical-rehabilitation institute and has given money to help modernize the hospital’s emergency department.

Vanderbilt University

Bruce and Bridgitt Evans pledged $20 million primarily for undergraduate programs and to endow the dean’s post in the School of Engineering.

Bruce Evans is a senior adviser at Summit Partners, a global alternative investment firm. He attended Vanderbilt on scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering there in 1981. He currently serves as chairman of the university’s Board of Trust

Bridgitt Evans is a former real-estate investor and co-founder of VIA Art Fund, a national nonprofit supporting the contemporary visual arts. Three of the couple’s four children graduated from Vanderbilt.

Connecticut College

Preston Athey and his wife, Nancy Marshall Athey, gave $10 million to renovate Palmer Auditorium and Castle Court into a new center for performance and creative research.

Preston Athey retired last year from a 39-year career with the global investment firm T. Rowe Price. Nancy Marshall Athey graduated from Connecticut College in 1972.

The institution received an additional $10 million in the form of a grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, founded by the late Sherman Mills Fairchild. He led the Fairchild Corporations, a holding company active from 1920 to 1983.

Stetson University

Hyatt and Cici Brown committed $18 million for a new science building on the DeLand campus and to expand science programs.

Hyatt Brown is chairman of Brown & Brown, an Insurance firm. He formerly served as speaker of the Florida House. The couple both serve on Stetson’s Board of Trustees.

Longtime donors to the university, they have supported scholarships, athletics, the School of Music, and other programs.

University of Chicago Crime Lab

The billionaire financier Ken Griffin donated $10 million to for a new program jointly led by the university and Chicago Police Department aimed at reducing violent crime in the city.

The money will back crime-reduction programs, advance technology and data analytics, expand officer training and support, and create a new fund to support other programs seeking to help make Chicago safer.

Griffin is a hedge-fund manager who founded the investment firm Citadel. He has given extensively to nonprofits in Chicago and elsewhere.

Purdue University

Two families gave a total of $9 million. John and Annette Schnatter donated $8 million through their John H. Schnatter Family Foundation, and Doug and Maria DeVos gave $1 million through their eponymous foundation.

The gifts will go toward hiring an additional six economists. University officials will name the Purdue University Research Center in Economics for John Schnatter.

John Schnatter founded Papa John’s pizza take-out and delivery restaurant chain. Doug DeVos is president of Amway, a company that markets and sells beauty and household products. He graduated from Purdue’s Krannert School of Management.

Hiram College

Dean Scarborough and his wife, Janice Bini, pledged $6 million for a new liberal-arts program.

The couple have earmarked the money to renovate student residence halls, upgrade health and science laboratories and classrooms, enhance wireless connectivity and classroom technologies, and bolster Hiram’s business program.

Scarborough is a former chief executive of Avery Dennison Corporation. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Hiram in 1977 and now serves as chairman of the college’s Board of Trustees.

National Conflict Resolution Center

Jeanne Herberger committed $1 million to kick off the organization’s first campaign to raise money for its endowment.

The group started the drive following a surge in interest in its conflict-resolution and “inclusive communication” programs, which are aimed at curbing today’s heightened incivility and partisan divisiveness.

Herberger is vice president of Herberger Enterprises, a real-estate investment and development company. She is the widow of architect Gary Kierland Herberger, who died last year.

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