The record
Buildings and gifts that serve people directly: a carousel that restarted a zoo renovation, a Scout center serving sixteen counties, a park pavilion, a village gymnasium, and rooms inside a children’s hospital. As everywhere on this site, each entry states exactly what the Foundation and its founder did.
Henry Vilas Zoo, Madison
The children’s zoo needed more than its own fundraising could provide. The founder built the Carousel Building at no cost to the zoo, funded entirely by donations he raised, and the project became the catalyst for the full renovation of the children’s zoo.
Built at no cost to the zoo, funded entirely by donations the founder raised.
Madison
The founder, an Eagle Scout, was president of the Glacier’s Edge Council and merged two councils to rescue one. He donated the land in his industrial park, raised all the funds for the building, designed and built it, with every component donated by contractors, and hired the council’s new scout executive. The center now serves thousands of Scouts across sixteen counties, at a much higher level of service than the old service center.
Land donated by the founder; 100% of the building’s cost raised, with every component donated by contractors.
Tenney Park, Madison
The old Tenney Park shelter was derelict. The founder spent $35,000 of his own money on a design, won over the neighborhood and then the city, and the pavilion was built on the original foundation. It is named for his father, John Wall, whose gift completed it. It is the county’s largest park shelter, with a bridal suite, a trading post, original artwork and a gas fireplace. The building set the rest of the park in motion: the city went on to invest millions more to rebuild the road system, the paths and the tennis courts, and to add new bike paths.
“If you make it nice, people are not going to trash it. It’s never been tagged, ever.”
The founder funded the design, won approval, and his father’s gift completed the building.
Maple Bluff
Maple Bluff needed a new village center and new police and fire stations, and its 75-year-old village building was failing. The founder argued for treating all of it as one comprehensive project, and was selected to serve on the three-person committee that designed and built it. He advocated for a half-gymnasium for the village’s children and a training room for its police and firefighters. Over significant opposition he proposed that 100% of the gymnasium’s cost be carried by donors rather than the village, then helped raise it. No taxpayer dollars were used for the gymnasium. The gymnasium is a huge success, used all the time by neighborhood groups and children of the village.
The founder served on the replacement committee and raised 100% of the cost of the half-gymnasium privately.
Madison
The founder’s family is the seventh-largest donor to the hospital, which serves thousands of sick children every year. Their gifts funded furnished classrooms so that children in long stays keep up with school, a welcome center, and waiting areas. The reason is personal. At age seven the founder had open-heart surgery to correct a narrowing of the aorta - one of the first children in the country to have the operation - and spent three and a half months in a room with five adults, because there was no children’s hospital. So he helped fund one before it was built.
The family is among the hospital’s largest donors; the Foundation did not build the hospital.
The Madison Central Library, given through Demco, the family’s library-supply business. The family made this gift together; the founder did the projects above on his own.
