Words by Smiley Team
When Chuck Feeney co-founded the US airport shopping chain Duty Free Shoppers in 1960, it led to him amassing a fortune of more than $8bn.
In 1984 he began an extraordinary quest to give it all away, before he died. Feeney, now 90, finally succeeded in September 2020, when he shut down Atlantic Philanthropies, the foundation he used to channel his giving, having given away all of his wealth apart from the $2m saved for his retirement with his wife.
He has since been hailed as an inspiration by fellow billionaires Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, and declared in a recent interview he felt ‘very satisfied’ by the whole process, which he coined Giving while Living.
Feeney did the majority of his giving anonymously, preferring not to announce donations or new projects. But he has made a huge difference to the organisations he funded.
He donated $3.7bn to education, including a gift of almost $1bn to his former university Cornell in New York. He added another $350m to this which Cornell used to build a tech hub on Roosevelt Island in New York City.
Feeney donated a further $700m to health organisations, including a $270m grant to improve public healthcare in Vietnam and a $176m gift to the Global Brain Health Institute, a joint programme between Trinity College Dublin and the University of California.
In a rare interview with Forbes he said: “We learned a lot. We would do some things differently, but I am very satisfied. I feel very good about completing this on my watch.
“My thanks to all who joined us on this journey. And to those wondering about Giving While Living: Try it, you'll like it.”
Fellow billionaire and philanthropist Warren Buffet was hugely inspired by Feeney, and has also promised to try and give away 99 per cent of his wealth.
Buffet has said: “He’s a model for us all. It’s going to take me 12 years after my death to get done what he’s doing within his lifetime.”
Bill Gates started The Giving Pledge with Buffet, an organisation which encourages and supports the ultra wealthy to give away the majority of their wealth while they are still alive.
Gates has also paid tribute to Feeney, saying: “Chuck created a path for other philanthropists to follow. I remember meeting him before starting the Giving Pledge. He told me we should encourage people not to give just 50 per cent, but as much as possible during their lifetime.
“No one is a better example of that than Chuck. Many people talk to me about how he inspired them. It is truly amazing.”
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