By William H. Honan, New York Times
December 1, 1998

Vanderbilt University announced Monday that it had received stock currently valued at more than $300 million, which may be the largest private gift ever made to an American college or university.

The gift was made by Martha Ingram, chairwoman of Ingram Industries Inc., a privately held wholesale distribution company based in Nashville, Tenn.

Mrs. Ingram set the gift in motion by contributing 20 million shares of Ingram Micro Inc., a computer distribution company spun off by Ingram Industries two years ago, to the Ingram Charitable Fund, a family charity established in 1990.

The fund's charter specifies that it must dedicate 40 percent of its income and assets to Vanderbilt. So at $42.50 a share, Monday's closing price for Ingram Micro, the gift would be worth $340 million to the university.

Whether that is a record is a matter of conjecture. In 1994, Sir Harold Acton donated a 57-acre Italian estate, an art collection and other valuable assets to New York University. The value of that gift was estimated at as much as $500 million, but because so much of it was relatively illiquid, the estimates were regarded as tenuous.

Beyond doubt, though, the gift to Vanderbilt is one of the largest ever, outstripping the $295 million to Emory University in 1996 and the $240 million to the University of California at San Francisco earlier this year.

Vanderbilt University, founded in 1873 by a $1 million gift from the railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, is a private research university in Nashville with about 10,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students in 10 schools and colleges, a medical center and a wide range of research institutes.

The largest previous gift to Vanderbilt was $41 million, from Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, a grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, in 1970.

In an interview Monday, the university's chancellor, Joe Wyatt, said that there were no formal restrictions on the Ingram gift but that he could not specify what uses would be made of it until he had had further discussion with Mrs. Ingram and members of her family.

The Ingram family has had a half-century's association with Vanderbilt. Mrs. Ingram's husband, Bronson Ingram, whom she succeeded as head of Ingram Industries, was a trustee of the university, and three of their four children graduated from it. In addition, Ingram's father, Orrin Henry Ingram, was a trustee from 1952 to 1963.

Wyatt said that while he was surprised by the enormous size of the gift, he had been aware that a major contribution was being planned by the Ingram family. Wyatt said he had frequently discussed the prospect with Bronson Ingram, who was president of the trustees from 1991 until his death in 1995.

"Bronson was one of those who talked to me in 1982 about coming down here to this job," said Wyatt, who at the time was vice president for administration at Harvard University. "I worked on this with him, and he understood very well that in the long run resources have everything to do with what can be accomplished."

While some educational institutions, like Harvard University, stockpile gifts in their endowments, a handful, like New York University, have spent much of the bounty of their successful fund-raising campaigns to hire top-flight faculty, build cutting-edge facilities and bolster financial-aid packages to attract superior students.

Wyatt said he was well aware of the distinction and would expect that with the guidance of the Ingram family he would put "a significant" share of the gift into the university's endowment ($1.5 billion before the gift, putting Vanderbilt among the 20 wealthiest institutions) and devote another amount to "capital programs such as laboratories and facilities to enhance our education and research programs."

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