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Method: announced amounts as announced, in the dollars of their year; pledges, planned gifts, combined and collective gifts labeled as such
The threshold is the record's own: every gift this section could document at 1 million dollars or more appears below, followed by the largest documented gift below that line in the categories where the record runs thin. Series totals and the hospital-sale conversions are included because their scale belongs in the ranking, and are labeled so no reader mistakes them for single checks.
| Donor | Recipient | Amount | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | Manchester University — College of Pharmacy, Fort Wayne | $35,000,000 | 2010 |
| Paul and Helen Clarke | Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne (series of gifts) | $20,000,000+ | early 1990s |
| St. Joseph Medical Center sale proceeds | St. Joseph Community Health Foundation (founding endowment — conversion) | about $20,000,000 | 1998 |
| Edward D. and Ione Auer Foundation | Allen County Public Library Foundation (endowment) | $10,000,000 | 2008 |
| Private campaign, collective | Headwaters Park | $10,000,000 | 1993–2000 |
| Howard and Betsy Chapman Charitable Trust | Purdue Fort Wayne — Chapman Scholars Endowment | $8,000,000 | 2026 |
| The Lutheran Foundation | Concordia Lutheran High School | $8,000,000 | 2025 |
| Larry Lee | University of Saint Francis (planned gift) | $6,060,000 | 2026 |
| Larry Lee | IPFW — indoor track and athletics scholarships | $5,000,000 | 2006 |
| Rhinehart family | IPFW — Rhinehart Music Center | $5,000,000 | by 2007 |
| Chuck and Lisa Surack | Taylor University — Horne Academic Center | $5,000,000 | 2024 |
| James Foundation | Trine University Fort Wayne (pledge) | $5,000,000 | 2022 |
| Larry Lee | Indiana Tech — Doug Edgar Indoor Track | $4,000,000 | 2021 |
| Larry Lee | Pearl Arts (estate gift) | $4,000,000 | 2026 |
| Pat and Sue Schaefer Foundation | Indiana Tech — scholarships and faculty support | $3,200,000 | 2026 |
| Larry Lee | Indiana Tech — endowed scholarships (planned gift) | about $3,200,000 | 2026 |
| Auer Family Foundation | Purdue Fort Wayne — music industry building | $3,000,000 | 2023 |
| Chuck and Lisa Surack | Purdue Fort Wayne — music industry building | $3,000,000 | 2023 |
| Surack Family Foundation | Trine University Fort Wayne (pledge) | $3,000,000 | 2022 |
| Steel Dynamics Foundation | Trine University Fort Wayne (pledge) | $3,000,000 | 2022 |
| Don Willis | IPFW — Willis Chair of Entrepreneurship | $3,000,000 | by 2007 |
| Ivy Tech Foundation — Fort Wayne, Bloomington and Valparaiso campuses | $3,000,000 | 2026 | |
| Doermer Family Foundation, PFW Foundation and two anonymous donors | Purdue Fort Wayne — Doermer building purchase (combined) | $2,800,000 | 2019 |
| Larry and Judy Reiners | Trine University Fort Wayne (commitment) | $2,500,000 | 2022 |
| Mark M. Suedhoff estate | University of Saint Francis — endowed scholarships | $2,100,000 | 2022 |
| Carlisle and Georgia Wilbur estate | IPFW — scholarships | $1,700,000 | 1996 |
| Anonymous | University of Saint Francis (planned gift) | $1,500,000 | 2026 |
| Steel Dynamics Foundation | Ivy Tech Fort Wayne — Busse Technology Center | $1,200,000 | 2008 |
| Howard Chapman | IPFW — Distinguished Professor of English endowment | $1,000,000 | 2001 |
| Surack Family Foundation | Purdue Fort Wayne (grant) | $1,000,000 | 2025 |
| June Enoch estate | Fort Wayne Museum of Art — Collection Fund | $1,000,000 | 2019 |
| Rolland Family Foundation | Allen County Public Library — Lincoln research center | $1,000,000 | 2017 |
| Mirro Family Foundation | Parkview Health — Mirro Center for Research and Innovation | $1,000,000 | 2012 |
| Fred Zollner Foundation | Indiana Tech — Zollner Engineering Center | $1,000,000 | 2002 |
| Don Wood Foundation | OrthoWorx (Warsaw) | $1,000,000 | 2024 |
Below the line, the largest documented gifts in the thin categories: the Embassy rescue's anchor, Robert Goldstine's 250,000 dollar challenge gift (1974); the business fortunes' largest documented out-of-town personal gift below the line, Frank Freimann's 500,000 dollars to Notre Dame's Memorial Library; the Surack endowed scholarship at Saint Francis and the Kachmann families' naming gifts, documented without published amounts; and the two founding gifts that started everything at trivial size — William Mossman's 5,000 dollars to the Fort Wayne Foundation in 1922, and Theodore Thieme's 10,000 dollars, ten paintings and a house in 1921. The table's lesson runs both ways: Fort Wayne's largest gifts are real and documented, and its most consequential ones were sometimes its smallest.
Sources:
- The entries above, each of which carries its own sources; this table introduces no figure that does not appear, sourced, in the leg's text.