It is not very difficult to dislike the various billionaires of our world, as they effectively can afford to own nearly anything and typically live outlandish lifestyles. However not all billionaires are selfish, greedy, or corporate dictators, as many often like to pretend. While it may be easy to hate on most billionaires, it’s nearly impossible to dislike Chuck Feeney. This former billionaire has given nearly all of his fortune away to charity, established a massive philanthropy group, and has recently just pledged another $177 million dollars to fight dementia. This is Chuck Feeney, and he wants to give away all of his money for the greater good.
Born in 1931 during the years of the Great Depression, Chuck Feeney was your typical Irish-American from New Jersey. He grew up in a working-class family, and had a fairly average childhood. Fenney would join the United States Air Force during the Korean War as a radio operator. While he was in the armed services, he started his own business where he would sell duty-free alcohol to other members of the military. It seemed like an innocent venture at the time, but it would become the inspiration for his next business. After his time in the military, he returned home to earn a degree from Cornell University.
Following his time in the Air Force and college, Chuck Feeney would team up with Robert Miller to create Duty Free Shoppers in Hong Kong in 1960. Essentially their business revolved around the selling of high-end and luxury goods in areas that were free of various taxes, namely import taxes. The whole “duty-free” industry was quite young at this point, and Feeney and Miller were able to grow Duty Free Shoppers at an almost exponential rate, spreading on a global scale. It was through Duty Free Shoppers that Feeney made his nearly $7.5 billion dollar fortune, and the two eventually sold the company in 1996 to Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy for the price of $1.63 billion.
During the 1980’s, Feeney was one of the richest men in the entire world. However instead of sitting on his great fortune or spending it on luxuries, Feeney wanted to give back. In 1982 he set up The Atlantic Philanthropies, a massive private charity foundation, one of the largest in the world. He pledged the vast majority of his fortune to the organization, and even transferred all of his shares in Duty Free Shoppers to The Atlantic Philanthropies. The Atlantic Philanthropies would work to help solve social, health, and political issues in the United States, Ireland, Vietnam, South Africa, Australia, and Bermuda. The organization would help fight for peace in South Africa and Ireland/North Ireland, provide education for Vietnamese children, help with cancer and AIDS research, and a variety of other things. Feeney would give away nearly all of his fortune to this group, which has spent most of it over the years. He could have ended there, but it wasn’t enough.
Now the 84-year-old philanthropist has donated another $177 million dollars to the University of San Francisco, California and Trinity College in Dublin to create and set up the Global Brain Health Institute. Researchers from those universities will then work at the institute to help fight, and potentially end, dementia.
The plan is that these two universities will begin to train and employ some 600 researchers, scientists, leaders, and others to form the Global Brain Health Institute over the next 15 years. It seems like a very bold and idealistic move, but we know Chuck Feeney is a man that gets things done. Dementia is affecting more and more people every year, as the average human lifespan last longer, so this issue is of the utmost importance.
Chuck Feeney is not your average billionaire, or technically, former billionaire. He was a man that amassed a great fortune and wanted to use his wealth to help solve many of the worlds problems. So far The Atlantic Philanthropies has been a huge success, and they have spent well over $6 billion so far for their charitable efforts around the world. This new donation from Feeney will surely be put to good use, and he is certainly an example many of us could hope to live by.
Photo from atlanticphilanthropies.org
