(Bloomberg News) Donating a record $350 million to Cornell University last week moved Charles Feeney closer to a life goal: giving away all of his fortune while still alive.
Feeney, 80, plans to shut by 2020 Atlantic Philanthropies, the foundation he began bankrolling in 1984 by gifting his businesses, including shares of the Duty Free Shoppers Group chain he co-founded. The charity has about $2 billion in assets and has donated more than $5.5 billion for health programs, universities and causes worldwide, according to its website.
Cornell has been among the biggest beneficiaries, receiving almost $1 billion, including the gift announced Dec. 16 that will help pay for an engineering campus in New York City. Feeney graduated from Cornell's school of hotel administration in 1956 and has helped pay for buildings, scholarships and research at the main campus in Ithaca, New York, for decades, said Ron Ehrenberg, an economist and former university vice president.
"Cornell has just been very, very fortunate to have him," said Ehrenberg, who received $1.5 million from Feeney to support his work. "It is hard to envision the university without him."
Feeney in February joined the Giving Pledge group that originated with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett. The campaign includes about 70 members who have agreed to donate more than half their wealth.
"I cannot think of a more personally rewarding and appropriate use of wealth than to give while one is living," Feeney said in a letter to Gates and Buffett making his pledge.
Grant Making
Atlantic Philanthropies concentrates its grant-making on aging; children; population health; and reconciliation and human rights. It gave away $285 million in 2010, and $375 million the previous year, according to recent financial statements.
Feeney typically doesn't seek public credit for his donations and his name isn't on any Cornell buildings, Ehrenberg said. Most of his Cornell gifts are to projects recommended by the university's president and provost, he said.
The $350 million gift was critical to Cornell winning New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's contest to lure an engineering school to the city, said Peter Meinig, chairman of Cornell's board of trustees. The mayor -- founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, parent of Bloomberg News -- solicited bids in July for a competition that would offer use of city land on Roosevelt Island, in the East River, and $100 million for infrastructure improvements to build a science and engineering campus.
Major Project