Couple Embraces Eclectic Mix of Global Causes for $1.2-Billion Fund

On their annual road trip from their Boston-area home to Florida in February, Bill and Joyce Cummings took a break here to talk about the Cummings Foundation, their $1.2-billion philanthropy, which supports causes in Massachusetts and Rwanda.

They liked the attractive atmosphere and fine meal at a hotel restaurant. But they confided that they would have been equally happy at a diner.

“It’s just us. It’s who we are,” says Mrs. Cummings. “My friends still know me as the woman who goes to Stop & Shop with the coupons.”

Their frugality leaves more millions in the coffers of the Cummings Foundation, where they long ago decided to stow most of the wealth they earned from their commercial real-estate company.

After keeping a low profile for decades, the Cummingses have recently attracted more attention by signing the Giving Pledge, a commitment by billionaires to give away more than half their wealth, and stepping up the work of their 28-year-old foundation.

On the horizon: the foundation’s most ambitious grant to date, a $50-million commitment to help build a medical- training center for Africans.

The couple intends to add staff to the foundation soon, which now has only an executive director and volunteers.

Needy Causes

Until now, the foundation has supported disparate projects: social-service charities in Boston, a veterinary school, health care in Rwanda, scholarships, and a program to educate students about the roots of genocide.

A common thread is their desire to give to needy causes, as Mrs. Cummings puts it, rather than to adhere to a rigid philanthropic agenda and then search for charities to fulfill it.

“We let the needs come to us,” she says.

For example, the Cummings Foundation has long financed two nonprofit assisted-living facilities in Massachusetts. The ventures formed as the Cummingses’ own parents aged and they saw a need locally for the services.

Nine years ago, the couple’s foundation made a $50-million commitment to another undersupported cause, what is now the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University.

Helping Small Nonprofits

In its support of Boston charities, the Cummings fund has focused on grant making that not only aids individual organizations but strengthens the overall power of nonprofits in the region.

In 2012, the fund started a grant-making affiliate, OneWorld Boston, that has awarded $16-million to local nonprofit groups.

Arts and cultural organizations don’t get any money from OneWorld, and neither do local affiliates of national charities. The Cummingses feel these groups usually have enough.

“They don’t need our money. The little guy needs our money,” says Mrs. Cummings. “We want our $100,000 to go someplace where it really makes a difference.”

Beverly Bootstraps, a social-service charity, used a portion of its award to purchase a refrigerated van for food deliveries, says Sue Gabriel, the group’s executive director. While she is grateful for the van, Ms. Gabriel says OneWorld Boston’s greater contribution is helping so many organizations simultaneously.

For example, when the foundation gives an award not only to her organization but also to groups that provide other services, like preventing domestic violence, the whole community benefits. “The domino effect of it is huge: The stronger we each are, the stronger we are together,” she says.

Flying Coach

Both of the Cummingses credit their families with laying the groundwork for their desire to help others—as well as their avoidance of extravagance.

The son of a house painter, Mr. Cummings, 77, grew up in Medford, Mass., and attended Tufts University as a commuter student. While his parents often worried about paying the milk bill, they invested him with a strong work ethic and a sense of responsibility for others.

“My father said, ‘When you grow up, don’t ever forget to do good things that don’t have to do with you,’” says Mr. Cummings.

Raised in Alabama, Mrs. Cummings, 73, was better off financially, but her family shared the same philosophy. Her mother helped others in her church and supported the March of Dimes.

“There was an attitude of you give, you help other people,” says Mrs. Cummings, 73.

The couple married in 1966, and 20 years later felt they had enough wealth for themselves and their heirs. At that point, they started the foundation, which has grown to $1.2-billion as Cummings Properties has increased its earnings.

The work of the foundation appeals to their four children, so much so that more than a decade ago, they gave the foundation money they’d received from their parents, which totaled eight figures.

Two of the younger Cummingses serve on the fund’s board, and their parents expect that one day the next generation will assume leadership. Who holds the reins may change, but the foundation’s giving priorities will not, say the Cummingses.

Trip to Israel

So far, Tufts University has benefited the most from the family’s philanthropy, receiving several smaller gifts in addition to the $50-million for its veterinary school.

Mr. Cummings, a former university trustee, says Tufts is also indirectly responsible for a new operating foundation, the Institute for World Justice.

The Cumming Foundation distributed $645,000 last year to support the institute’s mission to prevent genocides through education and to help rebuild Rwanda, where 800,000 people died in the ethnic conflicts between Hutus and Tutsis in 1994.

The institute, and the interest in aiding Rwanda, grew from a 2009 visit to Israel the Cummingses took as part of a Tufts educational trip.

Mr. Cummings, a Roman Catholic, and Mrs. Cummings, a Methodist, were so moved by their meeting in Israel with a survivor of the Nazi campaign that they helped create the Cummings/Hillel Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education at the university, with a $1-million gift.

As part of the education program, students—and the Cummingses—have traveled to Rwanda to see how it has struggled to rebuild itself from the ravages of its civil war, sparking the couple’s interest in that nation and its people. Recently, the foundation gave $300,000 to Partners in Health, an international development charity, to complete a cancer-treatment center in Rwanda.

Change of Plans

The new plan to commit millions to medical education in Rwanda resulted from a fizzled effort to expand Tufts’s genocide-education program to other universities.

The Cummingses had hoped to find another institution to organize a broader effort and had promised to give $50-million if another group would match it. But they never got a firm commitment.

“I think of myself as a pretty good salesman, but if I couldn’t sell this thing, there must be something wrong with it,” says Mr. Cummings.

Instead, the couple shifted gears and plans to commit the $50-million to Partners in Health to build a facility in Rwanda to train Africans to be doctors, nurses, veterinarians, and other medical professionals. To receive the money, the group must raise an equal amount for the project.

Hometown Donations

While the Cummingses have developed a deep affinity for Rwanda, the Boston area remains a top priority. That’s where they built their business and raised their family and where the 370 employees of Cummings Properties live and work.

Mr. Cummings, who spends 70 percent of his time on the foundation, says he and his wife hope to hire some help for Joel Swets, its executive director and only paid staff member.

Senior employees of Cummings Properties now volunteer at the foundation, doing public-relations tasks and helping to vet grant applications.

Cummings Properties also does its share for local groups. Three years ago the company started a program that allows employees to give $1,000 apiece of company money to local charities twice a year. Employees decide whom to give the money to and are encouraged to deliver the checks themselves.

The Cummingses say they hope the opportunity sparks dinner-table discussions among workers’ families of how the money can be put to the greatest good. In January, $253,000 was distributed. The program will be repeated in November.

“This was a way to get buy-in from staff,” says Mr. Cummings. “They are not just making money for Joyce and Bill, they can give it away.”

Into the Spotlight

Encouraging philanthropy is one of the reasons the formerly private couple stepped into the spotlight with the Giving Pledge.

After the Boston Globe published an article about the Cummingses’ commitment to give away 90 percent of the family fortune, Mr. Cummings says, several wealthy people approached him for advice about starting a foundation.

“We are not looking for publicity for publicity’s sake. We were afraid of it before,” he says. “But our experience has not been unpleasant in any way.”

Mr. Cummings hosted a dinner in Boston at which Bill Gates, one of the pledge’s founders, came and spoke. Subsequently, another family decided to join the pledge. Mr. Cummings would not say who, but Beth and Seth Klarman, who made their fortune with the Baupost Group, a Boston hedge fund, signed the Pledge in July.

Spending time with fellow Giving Pledge signers has changed Mr. Cummings’s opinion of his billionaire peers.

“I had a pretty jaded view of the superrich myself. I didn’t want to be any part of it,” he says.

But getting to know members of the pledge and learning about the causes they support has softened his opinion.

“Nine out of 10 of them I would love to have move in next door,” he says. “They are just the kind of people who you’d like to talk with over the backyard fence.”