Who are the Kellners?
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are likely familiar with the Kellner name, from Kellner Hall in Camp Randall to the Kohl Center’s Kellner Club, and now the new Kellner Family Athletic Center.
However they may not know the face behind it — Ted Kellner, one of Wisconsin athletics biggest donors.
Ted Kellner has been a life-long Badger sports fan. Growing up, he went to Wisconsin football games at Camp Randall with his father — Jack Kellner, an all American track and field athlete and Big Ten Champion for the Badgers in the 1930’s.
Ted Kellner attended the university in the late sixties, where he walked onto UW-Madison’s basketball team and played for three years, and met his wife Mary Kellner while living in Sellery Residence Hall.
In 1969, Ted Kellner graduated with a business administration bachelor with a focus in finance, investment and banking from the School of Business.
Kellner went on to become a founding partner and portfolio manager for Fiduciary Management Inc., an investment management firm. Kellner also founded and serves as the chairman of Milwaukee-based Fiduciary Real Estate Development Inc.
Kellner’s relationship with Wisconsin athletics has lasted through the program's good and ugly. Whether the Badgers have had winning or losing seasons, his financial support and commitment has remained consistent, continuing through different coaches, teams and eras of Wisconsin athletics since 2002.
Kellner was also an early figure in Wisconsin’s transition into the Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) era.
He was among the founding leaders and backers of the Varsity Collective, launching in 2022 — one of Wisconsin's first organized, donor-led efforts to create NIL opportunities for Badger athletes.
The Collective became an early piece of the framework Wisconsin built to navigate a rapidly changing college sports landscape.
With the dramatic expansion of the transfer portal for NCAA football and basketball in recent years, Kellner's investments in the athletic facilities have been particularly important.
Now, Wisconsin is not just competing to recruit high school players, but also competing to retain its own players while targeting high profile transfers from other programs.
The goal of creating new facilities and the “Building Championship” campaign is to make an environment in this transfer portal NIL sports economy that can keep up with the rest of the Big Ten programs. The facility, that many might consider as good as ones you can in the NFL, gives Badger athletes the best student-athlete experience in the country.
The effects of this new environment Kellner has worked to support became apparent through the 2025 transfer portal cycle, where Wisconsin Football Head Coach Luke Fickell recruited 33 transfers to the roster.
Kellner's involvement with Wisconsin goes beyond athletics. His philanthropy also helps support education through the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (WFAA).
Homecoming weekend 2017, Ted and Mary Kellner made a $25 million commitment to the university's All Ways Forward Campaign – an effort to expand their “dedication to teaching, research and outreach,” according to their website — funded by the WFAA, which Kellner served as chair of.
This campaign was a part of a larger $4.2 billion fundraising effort that created thousands of new student scholarships, increased endowment funding for faculty chairs and professorships, funded research and innovation and supported major campus capital projects like the Nicholas Recreation Center and the Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery Building.
Kellner’s pockets have a limit. While other Big Ten schools can rely on billionaire alumni, like the University of Oregon with Phil Knight and Indiana University with Mark Cuban to fund their athletic programs, Wisconsin will have to diversify their sources of income and attract other donors alongside Ted Kellner.
Kellner's approach to philanthropy is best captured by a quote he gave to the Wisconsin alumni association in 2025: “you toss a stone in the water, the ripples keep going. That’s what we hope we’ve done here.”
