Giving While Living -Well: Philanthropic Travel
Got Heart?
World travelers might well be familiar with the company Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), but few would have heard of the man who founded the empire and then one day literally gave it all away. That's exactly what Irish-American Chuck Feeney did in the 1980s. For years he was listed in international business magazines as one of the richest men alive, but few knew that the reclusive entrepreneur, inspired by men like Andrew Carnegie, chose to give his wealth away, including to Australian institutions in Brisbane and Melbourne.
Now, at the age of 76, Mr Feeney has decided to go public with his mission in the hope that others on the rich list will follow his example of giving while living.
Dublin-based author Conor O'Clery gained exclusive access to Mr Feeney over more than a decade. His book, The Billionaire Who Wasn't, is due to be published next month. He says one day Mr Feeney decided to give it all away. "One day in 1984, he signed everything away, and everything at this stage included his share in the duty-free empire, and also a vast empire of businesses that he had built up through the dividends he got from the duty-free business," he said.
Mr O'Clery says so far Mr Feeney has given away $US4 billion ($4.85 billion). "He has still $US4 billion left, and he has determined that he should spend all this in the next 10 years and wind down his philanthropy," he said. "He takes the attitude that it's better to give money now to worthy causes and let future generations of rich people look after future people.
"What he said to me once was, 'If I have $10 now and I give it to somebody, that somebody is going to be able to benefit from that, but if I give them five cents a year for hundreds of years, they don't get the same benefit.'"
Good Causes
Mr O'Clery says Mr Feeney's philanthropy is far greater than that of most other entrepreneurs. "Chuck Feeney's giving is incomparable in American terms, in that he has given all his wealth away and devoted himself to making sure it goes to good causes," he said. "What Chuck Feeney has done is an example to the new rich in countries like Australia, South Africa, Ireland, as to what one can do with the good that one can do with great wealth." He says Mr Feeney is rare because he has given away so much and done so anonymously. "Bill Gates is still a very wealthy man even though he has the biggest foundation in the world now," he said. "Warren Buffet, who has put in something like over $US30 billion into the Bill Gates Foundation, is also still a very wealthy man. But Warren Buffet hasn't done anything really other than write a cheque.
"Chuck Feeney has spent the last 25 years going around the world, finding good causes for his money."
"You won't find a building anywhere in the world with his name on it, because he's insisted on strict anonymity - so strict that if anybody who figures out the money's coming from him, and they aren't told initially, makes that public, funding will stop. "He's a person totally without ego, and that's very rare, and not just among wealthy people but among philanthropists."
Giving in Australia
Mr O'Clery says Mr Feeney's Australian connection came about through his friendship with former tennis great Ken Fletcher. "He likes sporting icons, and when he went to Australia he had just sold his shares and his duty-free empire and had got an injection of $US1.6 billion in cash," he said. "So he was looking around for some way of investing this in some other part of the world. "He had already invested huge amounts in American universities, and in good causes in the United States. He had already transformed Irish universities. He had funded Oxford and Cambridge. He had begun to work in Vietnam. "So he saw an opportunity in Australia when he went with Ken Fletcher to Brisbane, and he got Jim Soorley, the [then] mayor of Brisbane, to set up a meeting with a couple of leading academics, discovered that the universities in Australia also needed funding, that they were struggling because they were relying on government intervention, and there was no culture of philanthropy in Australia that was really making any big difference.
"So he soon got involved in helping universities not just in Queensland but in other parts of Australia, particularly Melbourne. And to date, I understand he's given $350 million to philanthropic causes in Australia, mostly to universities." Mr O'Clery says Mr Feeney gave Australia more than the late Kerry Packer did. "Kerry Packer I think fits into the tradition of people who make a lot of money and don't turn to philanthropy," he said. "Kerry Packer, as far as I know, did not have a philanthropic foundation when he died, and he was Australia's richest man by far.
"Chuck Feeney... would like to say to Australian wealthy people, and to wealthy people in other parts of the world, you should think about philanthropy because it's a lot of fun and you get a lot of pleasure out of it and you feel good. "Chuck Feeney is determined to wind down his foundation and give away the remaining $US4 billion in the next 10 years."
Unusual Billionaire
Mr O'Clery says the billionaire wouldn't strike you as one if you saw him in the street. "If you saw him in the street he'd probably be wearing a worn raincoat, and he'd be picking up bits of rubbish and putting it in rubbish bins. He's not eccentric, but he's got certain rules that he lives by," he said. "He sits at the back of the plane. I've flown with him, and I'd be sitting in seat 33B and he'd be in seat 49C, beside the toilets. "He doesn't have a house, he doesn't have a car, he lives in small apartments that are rented by his philanthropy.
"He's like an Australian bowerbird. He collects articles and magazines all the time, and if he wants to tell you what's on his mind, he will give you a cutting from a newspaper. "He says, 'If ever you see a magazine with a page torn out, it means I've been reading it.'"
~~~~~
Dublin-based journalist O'Clery presents an archetypal American success story, a rags-to-riches account with a twist. Few people had heard of Charles Francis Feeney in 1988 when Forbes outed him as immensely wealthy. He was, the magazine reported, richer than Mr. Murdoch or The Donald, richer than David Rockefeller.
But O'Clery reveals that Chuck Feeney was personally worth merely a few million -Feeney had managed, through his French wife, to transfer, in strict secrecy, his considerable wealth to offshore charitable foundations. Born during the Depression, Feeney was an Irish-American kid from New Jersey, educated at Cornell on the GI Bill. A natural, bright entrepreneur, he devised ways of selling liquor and gray-market cars duty-free to service men abroad. Business was good, and soon he was selling brandy and other extravagant treats to Japanese tourists in Hawaii; the money continued to pour in as he expanded his market to Hong Kong and beyond. But despite his growing wealth, Feeney reverted to his social conscience and to active philanthropy. This dominant retailer of brand-name goods kept his own name concealed, and the code of omerta applied to all who dealt with his secret foundations. With the line between the donor and the charities often porous, subterfuges shrouded major unsolicited gifts to Feeney's alma mater, to Sinn Fin and to many other beneficiaries around the world (between 1998 and 2006, his Atlantic Philanthropies "provided $220 million for a series of building and scholarship projects and health initiatives in Vietnam.") A decade ago, the cloak and checkbook operation was finally exposed. Feeney, who flies economy class, wears a $15-dollar watch and uses plastic bags for briefcases, was ready to provide a public example for other wealthy people. There was a split with his former partners when the declining business was sold at the top of the market, but Feeney's ex-associates, now immensely rich, do not seem to have adopted his principles. A smart business book detailing some vicissitudes of retailing, wrapped in a vivid biography of an engaging tycoon.
- Kirkus Reviews
Learn More:
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Understanding Philanthropic Travel
Affluent Parents Dedicated to Instilling Philanthropic Values in their Children
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Philanthropic Travelers:
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Cheat Neutral & eco-Travel Carbon Offsetting
Offset your Cheating! Jealousy and heartbreak are a natural part of modern life. And sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it's just not possible to be faithful.
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Carbon offsetting is about paying for the right to carry on emitting carbon. The Carbon offset industry sold £60 million of offsets last year, and is rapidly growing. Carbon offsetting is also a joke.
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What can I do instead?
* Measure your carbon footprint.
* Think about reducing your carbon footprint. There are lots of easy ways to reduce the emissions from various areas of your life. You might want to think about your home, transport and what you eat and consume. There are lots of resources on the internet to help you reduce your emissions.
* Learn about Contraction and Convergence. C&C is a framework for agreeing a global cap on carbon emissions. We believe that to make our individual sacrifices count, we need a global framework that caps the amount of carbon emitted, creates a timeframe for reducing emissions to a safe level, and distributes carbon credits equitably. C&C satisfies all of these, and would make carbon trading fair and effective. Good resources are http://www.climatejustice.org.uk and http://www.gci.org.uk
* Use your influence as a citizen.
* Get together with your friends or family and discuss what you think. How we face up to the new challenges of climate change should be something everyone has an opinion on. Although individual action is needed, we also need ways to make government and businesses take a lead in responsibly dealing with emission reduction.
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Make an appointment with an expert.
Join us on Facebook and get to know us on Twitter
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What goes up…
While Joe Kittinger Jr. was growing up in Tampa, Fla., his dream was to become a pilot, perhaps to become a famous military aviator, but his claim to fame came not from flying, but from falling, almost 20 miles straight down. On the way, he became the first man to exceed the speed of sound -- without a plane.
Kittinger was born in Tampa in July 1928. He entered the Air Force in March 1949 as an aviation cadet. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in March 1950. From 1950 to 1953 he served as a jet pilot in the 86th Fighter Bomber Squadron in Germany and then was assigned to the Air Force Missile Development Center at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. On June 2, 1957, while stationed at the AFMDC, Kittinger made a balloon flight to 96,000 feet in the first flight of the Air Force's "Project Man High."
After being assigned to the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, Kittinger, now a captain, was appointed test director of "Project Excelsior," investigating escape from high altitude. As jet aircraft flew higher and faster, the Air Force became increasingly concerned with the hazards faced by flight crews ejecting from these high performance aircraft. Project Excelsior was established in 1958 to study and solve these high altitude escape problems.
During this project, there were three high altitude jumps accomplished from a balloon-supported gondola; the first from 76,400 feet; the second from 74,700 feet 25 days later; and on Aug. 16, 1960, from 102,800 feet, the highest altitude from which man has ever jumped. It was Kittinger who did the jumping.
In freefall for four and a half minutes, Kittinger fell at speeds up to 714 mph, exceeding the speed of sound. He experienced temperatures as low as -94 degrees Fahrenheit. Kittinger opened his parachute at 18,000 feet and landed safely in the New Mexico desert after a 13 minute 45 second descent. Project Excelsior successfully proved the new parachute system, the Beaupre Multi-Stage Parachute, would solve the problem of high altitude escape by crewmen. In December 1962, under Project Star Gazer, Kittiger piloted a balloon into the upper atmosphere accompanied by U.S. Navy civilian astronomer to use a high powered telescope to view regions of deep space. They stay aloft for 18.5 hours above the skies of southwestern New Mexico.
Kittinger also volunteered for three combat tours in Vietnam and served as commander of the famous 555th "Triple Nickel" Tactical Fighter Squadron flying F-4s. After shooting down a MiG-21 in aerial combat, he himself was shot down on May 11, 1972 and spent 11 months as a prisoner of war. Kittinger subsequently continued his career and retired as a colonel in 1978.
After retiring, Kittinger remained active in ballooning. In 1984, at age 56, he traveled more than 3,500 miles at altitudes between 10,000 and 17,000 feet, crash-landing in northern Italy, setting a record for the longest solo balloon flight, both in time and distance.
He has received numerous awards for solo transatlantic balloon flights, and he is the author of several articles about his 1960 leap for various publications, including the "The Long, Lonely Leap." Kittinger is also the subject of a new Naval Institute book, "The Pre-Astronauts."
Learn More:
Travel Philanthropy has Arrived: WealthBulletin.com
Understanding Philanthropic Travel
Travel Connoisseur Magazine on Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel Worldwide
Fast Company Magazine on Philanthropic Travel
PersonalLifemedia.com on Philanthropic Travel
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Philanthropic Traveler funded High School opens near Victoria Falls, Zambia
The Fable of Stone Soup
My First Philanthropic Travel Experience
Affluent Parents Dedicated to Instilling Philanthropic Values in their Children
Giving while Living: The Deeper News About the New Philanthropy
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on the Strategic Steps Out of Poverty
Are We Talking about Philanthropy Yet? No, We Are Not
Daily Om
Philanthropic Travelers:
Visionary Philanthropic Traveler Marc Gold 100 Friends Project
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Your Joy: Altruistic Travel
Our lives are rich with potential sources of happiness, but sometimes we become victims of negative thinking because we believe that focusing on all that has gone wrong will provide us with the motivation we need to face the challenges of survival. When we choose to focus on what makes us happy, however, a shift occurs in the fabric of our existence. Finding something to be happy about every single day can help this shift take place. The vantage points from which we view the world are brought into balance, and we can see that being alive truly is a gift to be savored. There is always something we can be happy about—it is simply up to us to identify it.
On one day, we may find happiness in a momentous, life-changing event such as a marriage or the birth of a child. On another day, the happiness we experience may be a product of our appreciation of a particularly well-brewed cup of a tea or the way the sun shines on a leaf. If we discover that we literally cannot call to mind a single joyful element of existence, we should examine the cause of the blockage standing between us and experiencing happiness. Keeping a happiness journal is a wonderful way to catalog the happiness unfolding all around us so that joy has myriad opportunities to manifest itself in our lives. Writing about the emotions we experience while contemplating joy may give us insight into the factors compelling us to resist it.
Happiness may not always come easily into your life. You have likely been conditioned to believe that the proper response to unmet expectations is one of sadness, anger, guilt, or fear. To make joy a fixture in your existence, you must first accept that it is within your power to choose happiness over unhappiness every single day. Then, each time you discover some new source of happiness, the notion that the world is a happy place will find its way more deeply into your heart. On this day, find one thing to be happy about and let it fill your heart.
Learn More:
Travel Philanthropy has Arrived: WealthBulletin.com
Understanding Philanthropic Travel
Travel Connoisseur Magazine on Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel Worldwide
Fast Company Magazine on Philanthropic Travel
PersonalLifemedia.com on Philanthropic Travel
DIY Foreign Policy: Philanthropic Travel
Philanthropic Traveler funded High School opens near Victoria Falls, Zambia
The Fable of Stone Soup
My First Philanthropic Travel Experience
Affluent Parents Dedicated to Instilling Philanthropic Values in their Children
Giving while Living: The Deeper News About the New Philanthropy
Dr. Jeffrey Sachs on the Strategic Steps Out of Poverty
Are We Talking about Philanthropy Yet? No, We Are Not
Daily Om
Philanthropic Travelers:
Visionary Philanthropic Traveler Marc Gold 100 Friends Project
Visionary Philanthropic Traveler Chellie Kew
Rachael Paulson Philanthropic Traveler
Milton & Fred Ochieng: Philanthropic Travelers
Jane Kaye- Bailey: Philanthropic Traveler
Richard Branson: Philanthropic Traveler
Angelina Jolie: Philanthropic Traveler
Oprah Winfrey: Philanthropic Traveler
Palm Beach Life Magazine: Philanthropic Travelers
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