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Tough times. Tender Hearts
Some of Virginia’s wealthiest are also the most generous

Virginia Business
June 2003

The Virginia 100 List

These aren’t the easiest of times, even for the rich. This year’s list of 100 of Virginia’s wealthiest and most influential people shows many net worths dropping. The reasons? Name one. An economy that just won’t pick up steam. Deflationary pressures. Uncertainty about war and terrorism. A capricious stock market. Budget crisises in state governments. Pink slips.

So, in times like these when money’s short, giving becomes even more important. It doesn’t matter if it’s a public college that needs investment that its state capital is no longer providing or if the local food bank is getting a little light on canned goods, needs are growing. That’s why we at Virginia Business decided to pay tribute to those individuals who are very fortunate and, fortunately, have the heart to share it with others.

Indeed, when the wealthy want to give they can do so in a big way. Take Charlottesville’s Carl Smith, a University of Virginia alumni who has amassed a $500 million fortune in the energy business. Just six years ago he gave the school $25 million for a football stadium expansion. In March he and his wife, Hunter, pledged $22 million toward a proposed $47 million performing arts center.

Or one of Virginia’s most prominent media barons, Frank Batten Sr., 76, who decided he’d give away some of his money now instead of leaving it in his will. He announced in March more than $170 million in donations to seven schools and educational institutions, including $32 million to Old Dominion University in Norfolk and $11 million to Virginia Wesleyan College. In 1999 Batten, worth an estimated $900 million, gave U.Va.’s Darden School of Business $60 million.

Batten’s gift is by far the biggest of late. But there are others among Virginia’s wealthiest with a philanthropic bent. William H. Goodwin Jr. has donated at least $40 million to Virginia Commonwealth University and the Massey Cancer Center in Richmond. Besides this, Goodwin and his wife, Alice T. Goodwin, have pledged $88.5 million to six cancer centers around the country, including such big names as Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and Memorial-Sloan Kettering Center in New York. In Virginia, they’ve pledged $25 million to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center and $6 million to the Cancer Center at the University of Virginia Health System.

The Robins family of Richmond is renowned for its philanthropy. Over the years, the family’s generosity has transformed the University of Richmond from a relatively small unknown university into one of the highest-ranked private schools in the country. Matriarch Lora Robins has given more than $10 million to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, with the family’s latest support helping to create The Robins Library, which houses books, videos and other resource materials.

Virginia’s been kind of lucky. Nationwide, there’s been a sharp drop in the number of major donations. According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, gifts of $1 million or more from individual donors fell 33 percent the first quarter of this year compared to a year ago. Gifts from corporate donors or foundations also fell by a third. Researchers blame it on three years of stock market declines and the still-shaky economy.

Not all donations come from individual givers. Virginia has 23 community-based foundations that depend in large part on the generosity of wealthy donors and businesses. The Community Foundation Serving Richmond and Central Virginia has about $400 million in assets, making it the 25th-largest foundation of its kind in the country and the biggest in the southeast. It gives away millions of dollars every year and is involved in Smith’s contribution to U.Va. Companies can take the lead, too. Richmond-based Ukrop’s Super Markets gives away 10 percent of its pre-tax profits.

As always Virginia Business compiled the “Virginia 100” by interviewing listees and checking public records, making what we hope are intelligent estimates. An “A” confidence rating means we regard our net worth estimates as accurate, a “B” means ballpark and “C” is conjecture.

— The Editors

Return to Virginia Business - June 2003