Charles Feeney, an Irish-American businessman who in 1982 secretly transferred the entirety of his ownership share in his company, other business holdings, and properties to his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, has died. He was 92 and living in a rented apartment in San Francisco.
Feeney co-founded DFS, a chain of airport duty-free stores in the 1960s, becoming a billionaire along the way. Modest by nature, Feeney gave quietly and went so far as to threaten to cut off support to charities if they revealed his name publicly. He grew to dislike the lifestyle of the ultra-wealthy and promised in 2002 to give his fortune to charity during his lifetime and said the foundation would cease grant making by 2016.
Feeney kept his promise. The foundation concluded its active grant making that year and closed its doors for good in 2020.
When all was said and done, Feeney gave away more than $8 billion to nonprofits through his foundation. He gave to a wide range of causes, including education, children and youths, the elderly, health care, human rights and reconciliation, and scientific research to benefit disadvantaged and vulnerable populations. Most of the money went to nonprofits in Australia, Bermuda, Cuba, Ireland, South Africa, the United States, and Vietnam.
Feeney became more public about his giving in later years and was seen as an important advocate for the concept of “giving while living.”
“I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living — to personally devote oneself to meaningful efforts to improve the human condition,” Feeney wrote in 2011 when he and his wife, Helga, signed the Giving Pledge.
The foundation made a number of investments that were designed to address big, seemingly intractable problems long after it ceased operations. Among those was a $197 million grant to create the Atlantic Fellows programs, a collection of seven interconnected fellowships that aim to develop leaders around the world working in brain health, health equity, and racial, social, and economic equality.
It also awarded $177 million to establish the Global Brain Health Institute, jointly run by the University of California at San Francisco and Trinity College, in Dublin.
Humble Beginnings
Feeney was interested in the practice of philanthropy and gave small grants to organizations like the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a nonprofit that provides data and other information to help foundations and individual donors improve the effectiveness of their giving. Phil Buchanan, the center’s president told the Chronicle that Atlantic Philanthropies gave his group $145,000 in 2001 and a three-year, $900,000 grant in 2002 that he said was “transformational.”
Buchanan says he grew to admire Feeney for his decision to “devote almost all of his resources to philanthropy, to focus his foundation on giving away all its assets while he was alive, and to live what some might consider a modest life but was in fact one rich in meaning as a result of his choices.”
“He doesn’t leave a foundation bearing his name but instead leaves a powerful example of giving while living,” Buchanan says. “I hope he inspires more to put doing good first.”
Feeney came from humble beginnings. He grew up in Elizabeth, N.J. His mother was a nurse, and his father was an insurance underwriter. Feeney took on any job he could find in his youth. He shoveled snow from neighbors’ driveways, sold Christmas cards door-to-door, and worked as a caddie at a local golf course. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a radio operator in Japan during the Korean War and then graduated from Cornell University in 1956.
He and another Cornell alumnus, Robert Warren Miller, started their business by selling liquor to American servicemen in Asia and launched Duty Free Shoppers Group in Hong Kong, later expanding it to other countries where the shops sold luxury goods in airports and elsewhere. Feeney sold his stake in the company to LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 1997, which brought more than $1.6 billion into Atlantic Philanthropies’ coffers, according to reports at the time.
Feeney’s final big gift mirrored his first. He directed Atlantic Philanthropies last grant — $7 million — toward his alma mater’s Cornell Tradition program, a community-service fellowship for university undergraduates. Feeney established the program with a $7 million grant to Cornell in 1982, his foundation’s inaugural grant.
