Tempe, Ariz.
During his five decades in business, Ira A. Fulton has made a fortune turning small investments into large companies
with explosive profits.
In 1976, he bought Eagleson’s Big & Tall retail stores in Southern California and Arizona and built it from a two-store operation to a 33-store chain. A few years later, he helped transform Fulton Homes, a struggling real-estate company he had started with some of his nephews, into one of Arizona’s biggest home builders.
Now he is turning his investor’s eye to education. In his philanthropy, Mr. Fulton seeks to provide students with opportunities to enrich their education, make them more competitive job applicants, and help them build futures for their families. He is closely involved with the organizations he supports because he wants to ensure that his gifts have the greatest impact.
“I don’t make donations, I invest,”
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| | Ira and Mary Lou Fulton
(No. 9) Total committed in 2005:
$122-million Recipients: Arizona State University Foundation, Brigham Young University, Huntsman Cancer Foundation
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says Mr. Fulton, 74. “When you give away money, that’s like buying you a free lunch.”
Last year Mr. Fulton and his wife, Mary Lou, who live in a suburb of Phoenix, pledged $100-million to Arizona State University, in Tempe, for educational programs and other support.
The Fultons also committed $20-million to create endowments to support three schools at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, as well as upgrade technology and provide other assistance. They also paid $2-million on a $10-million pledge they had made in 2004 to the Huntsman Cancer Foundation, in Salt Lake City. The donations bring to $230-million their lifetime giving to the two universities.
Lifelong Link
Mr. Fulton’s financial commitment to Arizona State stems from a lifelong connection to the university. He grew up a block from the engineering school that now bears his name. As a young boy, he played in a fountain across from the building that houses the university’s foundation — which will also be named after the Fultons — and cut pieces of cork from a nearby tree to use on his fishing pole.
The playful, white-haired Mr. Fulton attended the university on a football scholarship but left before graduating to start his business career at the National Cash Register company. Ms. Fulton, whom he met on the campus, returned in the 1970s to finish her degree in education.
The Fultons began supporting Arizona State in 2003 after learning how its new president, Michael M. Crow, hoped to turn the university from an institution with a lackluster reputation into a force for social and economic development in the state. The ambitious plan appealed to Mr. Fulton, who is particularly concerned about the region’s low-tech economy, which forces many graduates to leave Arizona to seek employment.
Since Mr. Crow’s arrival at Arizona State in 2002, the university has posted some big gains. It added 182 new faculty members in the fall of 2004, and has increased the number of National Merit scholars who enroll from six 10 years ago to 162 in 2004. The university, which enrolls about 60,000 students, projects that it will have 90,000 by 2020.
To pay for his expansion plan, Mr. Crow has succeeded in courting other big donors, like Julie Wrigley, president of Wrigley Investments, who gave $15-million to the university in the fiscal year ending in June 2005. In that year, Arizona State and its fund-raising arm raised $99-million, a 30-percent increase over the previous year and a record for the university. At the same time, government support available for Arizona universities, as for public universities in other states, has dwindled.
“I think we’re the luckiest university in the luckiest state in the United States to have Michael Crow as our president,” says Mr. Fulton.
If he has faith in university administrators and faculty, Mr. Fulton gives them some freedom to direct his money where they see the biggest need. For instance, he allocated $25-million of his most recent donation to create a discretionary fund for Mr. Crow. The rest of the money will be divided between the College of Education and the university’s foundation.
But while he trusts people to spend his money wisely, Mr. Fulton likes to track the return on his investments. According to Mr. Crow, the Fultons help ensure that he is an effective steward of their money.
“They just love to see the results,” he says. “They love to ask, ‘What are the 10 things that you did, and who did you hire, and how are you getting better, and what was the impact,’ and all that good stuff.”
Setting an Example
The Fultons’ involvement with Brigham Young University, like their connection to Arizona State, has its roots in the personal. Although the couple’s granddaughter attended the institution, they were first drawn to it via their faith. Brigham Young was founded by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Fultons are Mormons. A personal appeal in 1999 from representatives of the university’s foundation started their financial support for Brigham Young.
Mr. Fulton visits the university about every six weeks. The Fultons are so well-known on campus that students often yell out, “Thank you, Ira and Mary Lou,” when he drives by, says Art McKinlay, a major-gifts manager at the LDS Foundation.
The couple recently built another home in Provo so they could be closer to Brigham Young and entertain faculty members and potential donors. In one room, they display photographs showing their involvement with the university, so others can see how rewarding it can be to donate.
Encouraging others to give is a priority for the couple. Mr. Fulton, whom university officials and faculty members at both universities he supports describe as a down-to-earth “grandfather” and “next-door neighbor” type, carries pledge cards with him that announce a five-to-one match of all gifts by students to Brigham Young.
Mr. Fulton jokes that he persuades others to donate by example, and then “by twisting their arm, and having a crowbar.”
The Fultons’ personal giving is complemented by gifts by his company, Fulton Homes, which supports educational and youth-development causes.
Each year, the Tempe, Ariz., company donates half its profits to about 50 charities through programs that honor local teachers, buy school supplies, purchase YMCA memberships, and provide scholarships. Every time the Arizona Diamondbacks or Phoenix Suns sports teams hit home runs or score three-point shots, the company donates money. Mr. Fulton’s worth from the company is about $425-million.
“I like to say quite often, ‘I’ve never seen a Brinks truck at a funeral procession, have you?’” he says. “People are always leaving it to their kids, or trusts, or to foundations, but I found out it would be more fun to give our money away while we’re still alive so we can see what happens with it.”
‘Don’t Poor-Boy Me’
At Brigham Young, the Fultons’ money is pumping up the institution’s information technology, aiding life-saving research, and helping to turn the university into a hotbed of animation that is drawing interest from Hollywood studios.
The Fultons helped to upgrade psychology-department facilities, which made possible research on hyperbaric treatment that was used recently to treat Randal McCloy Jr., the sole survivor of last month’s Sago Mine accident in West Virginia, according to Erin Bigler, a psychology professor.
The couple also bought the university six supercomputers, which can perform calculations about 1,500 times faster than an ordinary home computer. Most universities that have such computers reserve them for professors and graduate students, because their research projects are generally supported by government grants that pay for the computers. Brigham Young’s computers — all named Mary Lou, after Ms. Fulton — are available free to undergraduates as long as they have faculty support for their research.
The supercomputers have provided the Fultons with countless opportunities to see the impact of their gifts on students’ lives.
The extra computing power has helped the university create a program in animation that has become one of the more prestigious in the United States. Over the last three years, the program has won five College Television Awards, known as the “student Emmy.” Representatives from Pixar and other studios visit the campus to recruit undergraduates, says R. Brent Adams, a professor of industrial design and animation.
When Mr. Fulton is on campus, he fills his day with meetings with teachers and students, who often present projects they have worked on using the supercomputers. After they finish a project, students often want to know when the Fultons will be in town so they can exhibit their work, says Mr. Adams.
David Long, an engineering professor at the university, has used the supercomputers to do research with students on weather conditions. He and some of his students helped to discover an iceberg, and regularly provide data to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Mr. Long is one of several professors who meets individually with the Fultons to discuss research needs. He says that one of Mr. Fulton’s top priorities is learning how many students will be helped by technology upgrades or other support he might provide.
One of Mr. Fulton’s favorite expressions to use in these meetings, according to administrators and faculty members, is “Don’t poor-boy me.” He sometimes has to be insistent with faculty members to get true estimates of their needs.
“Mr. Fulton is a businessman,” says David Anthony, associate dean of Engineering and Technology. “If they try to skimp or shortcut, he’s smart enough to know that they won’t be able to produce what they need to produce....He wants us, Arizona State, and everyone else to be able to accomplish what our dreams really are.”
Among the Fultons’ other donations are scholarships to students from developing countries to study at Brigham Young University’s Hawaii campus. They have also helped to expand the Utah institution’s foreign-language offerings.
The Fultons’ emphasis on accountability is welcomed by faculty members, Mr. Adams says, adding that the couple is flexible enough to understand if projects don’t work out according to plan. For instance, Brigham Young University faculty members originally thought that virtual reality would be a bigger field than animation, but animation took off.
“It didn’t matter to the Fultons one bit as long as the students were still doing good work and benefiting,” he says. “They didn’t care about the particulars.”
‘Those Two Are Partners’
After 51 years of marriage, the Fultons say they have no disagreements over how to spend their donations.
“Those two are partners,” says Mr. McKinlay of Brigham Young. “They do almost everything together.”
Ms. Fulton says that sometimes, on sleepless nights, the couple stay up until 4 a.m. talking about students they have met. “There is story after story after story,” she says. “It just makes us so happy.”
Ms. Fulton first met her husband when she was a shy freshman and he a raucous football player. Friends tried to set them up, but Ms. Fulton at first demurred: “I just thought he was a little loud and obnoxious and good looking, and I just didn’t want anything to do with him.”
Friends — or fate — persisted, and Ms. Fulton was won over. Mr. Fulton credits his wife for straightening him out in his early years and keeping him in line today. She still sometimes bemoans his mischief, such as his habit of “mudwhomping,” or driving his white SUV through the mud, and going too long between haircuts.
He, in turn, calls her his “sweetheart,” plants rose gardens for her, and now makes donations to universities in her name.
The couple has three children. One of their sons, Douglas, who is president of Fulton Homes Sales Corporation, has caught the couple’s enthusiasm for philanthropy. After Hurricane Katrina, he flew a company helicopter to the Gulf Coast region to transport medical personnel and supplies. He wore a flak jacket and flew with two sharpshooters because people were shooting at the helicopter, say the Fultons.
“It was crazy down there, but it was a good experience for him,” says Mr. Fulton. “It’s called serving mankind.”
Despite the involvement of his son, daughter, and son-in-law in Fulton Homes, Mr. Fulton says he has no plans to retire. “I’m on vacation every day of my life,” he says. (Ms. Fulton says, “It would kill him if he retired.”)
Mr. Fulton says he sees every day as an opportunity to correct the mistakes of the previous day, to move forward, and to produce results. “I’m my No. 1 competitor,” he says. “I look in the mirror and look at that guy and say, ‘What are you going to do today? Are you going to move or sit around? Are you going to be a sourpuss, or are you going to move forward and make things happen?’”
Outperforming himself has certainly played out in his philanthropy as well, as Mr. Fulton continues to add to the size of his contributions to Arizona State and Brigham Young. And, he says, both universities can probably count on big donations from him in the future — perhaps even larger gifts than they have already received.