Giving It All Away
Billionaire Chuck Feeney has been giving away his fortune anonymously for years. A very interesting story from Saturday's LA Times, by Margot Roosevelt:
NEW YORK -- One by one, speakers rose to toast the elderly gent with baggy pants and a shy, gaptoothed smile."Of course, he didn't wear a tie tonight," teased one. Another called attention to the honoree's cheap watch and the plastic bag that serves as his briefcase.
The joshing at a Manhattan gathering would have been nothing out of the ordinary except that the man pulling a worn blue blazer over his head in mock modesty was none other than the onetime billionaire, Chuck Feeney.
Never heard of him? No surprise there.
Over the years, the frugal 76-year-old has made a fetish out of anonymity. He declined to name his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, after himself, registering the $8-billion behemoth in Bermuda to avoid U.S. disclosure laws. He lavishes hundreds of millions of dollars on universities and hospitals but won't allow even a small plaque identifying him as a donor.
"We just didn't want to be blowing our horn," he explains in a rare interview at his daughter's Upper East Side apartment.
The party was to celebrate a biography of the elusive tycoon by Irish journalist Conor O'Clery, titled "The Billionaire Who Wasn't: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune," published last fall.
Feeney said he cooperated with the book and submitted to an interview because he is driven by a new public mission: nudging hedge fund heavies and silicon scions into "giving while living."
It is the latest trend in philanthropy and one that he, more than anyone, jump-started several years before billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren E. Buffett followed suit.
Feeney, a founder of the conglomerate Duty Free Shoppers, said he wants to "set an example" to address "that layer up there of people," the ones, as he puts it, who have "a jillion dollars. . . . I mean, honestly, if you ask them, 'Tell me what you're doing with your money this week?' they couldn't spend a fraction of what they're accruing."
Most foundations, set up after the donor's death, dribble out barely more than 5% of their assets each year, the legal minimum.
But Feeney, raised in a blue-collar Irish Catholic family in New Jersey, quietly transferred the bulk of his fortune to his foundation when he was 53. Then, eight years ago, he instructed his board to pay out every last dollar by 2016.
...In the tiny world of stratospheric wealth, Feeney is a man of yin and yang: extravagant charity coupled with personal penny-pinching. "It's the intelligent thing to be frugal," says the erstwhile billionaire, who jokingly refers to himself as "the shabby philanthropist."
When people complain about "the rich" not giving money away, I think about the projects, full of people who are content to just keep getting things "given" to them, and to lottery winners, notorious for being broke again, quickly. The bulk of Americans wish to spend money, not earn or conserve it, and that's the real reason they do not have it.
The best advice I ever saw on late-night TV was this old guy in an infomercial who gave it all away: "You want to make money and keep it, become a millionaire? Then look at what the poor people do and don't do that !
Radwaste at March 9, 2008 8:50 AM
One of the sad paradoxes of charity is that something received with an expectation that it will be provided for "free" (at no cost to the donee) is, in economic terms, of little or no value to the recipient. It costs them nothing, and so it is "worth" little to them.
I guess it comes back to the wisdom that it is better to show someone how to fish, than to give them a fish.
Jay R
at March 9, 2008 2:06 PM
Uh...what? Who are you people??? You think cancer patients want to be taught how to cure their own cancer...or that dying children don't appreciate their "Make a Wish" because it was free? These are examples of charities, you know.
I think it's sad that you think that all people on the receiving end of help are ungrateful - especially if it's food and shelter. You are spoiled and pampered and do not understand the meaning of being damn lucky to be born to the parents you ended up with. Or that the stupid things you did when you were young didn't have serious long-term consequences for you. Get over yourselves.
What bothers me about charities is that not much of the money actually makes it to the people for whom it is meant.
WOW! at March 10, 2008 10:10 AM
WOW, I believe Jay R. is talking about welfare.
Calm down.
What's with "cancer patients being taught to cure their own cancer"?
You sound a wee bit unhinged.
Furthermore, Jay R. and Radwaste could have been dirt-poor immigrants who crawled their way into money and position. Since you know them even less than I do, perhaps keep the assumptions duct taped to yourself rather than letting them fly with abandon.
Amy Alkon
at March 10, 2008 10:16 AM
And no, giving away money to poor people isn't the way to get them out of poverty, but a way to ensure they'll remain there.
Amy Alkon
at March 10, 2008 10:17 AM
Radwaste's comment reminded me that 'If you want to fight poverty, the best thing to do is stay out of poverty yourself.'
I think charities like 'Make a Wish' and the humane society, ASPCA, etc. are doing something worthwhile, and I'm happy to share with organizations like them.
But frankly, I really DON'T have much sympathy for people who keep doing stupid things, and I think a lot of them are simply lazy. A friend of mine ran into one of his old high school classmates recently. This guy is 31 years old and getting disability because he let himself get too obese to work.
I was poor myself once but didn't stay that way, which is true for most poor people - 70% of them according to the last statistic I read about it. It seems popular to think they are somehow oppressed (by who?), but they're actually a pretty upwardly mobile group.
Pirate Jo
at March 10, 2008 2:17 PM
Oooh, "money and position"! Oh, no - now I just have the sort of comfortable technical job for a Federal contractor that Dilbert makes a fortune mocking. But I know people, even at work, who are content to do the mimimum possible for their paycheck. They're just not sitting on the couch at home watching Oprah and voting for the loudest person claiming they're a "victim".
People who scrounge and make their own way, like our resident redhead, impress me a lot more than I do when I use "initiative" as the yardstick of "what it means to be a citizen".
Radwaste at March 12, 2008 2:31 AM
I don't want to bash Bill and Hillary, because they're friends of mine, but I do have a difference of opinion about how to take back the House and the Senate.
Lissette Mcenery at December 21, 2011 10:38 AM
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