:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/AN24YMF2GZ5USLRPPZRUEP34UQ.jpg)
In an era when the gap between the super-rich and everyone else has expanded to become a chasm, the philanthropy of billionaires, for all the good outcomes it may produce, can leave an unpleasant aftertaste of hubris and self-promotion. That was certainly not the case with Chuck Feeney, who died this week at the age of 92, having successfully given his entire fortune away.
The breadth of his contribution to healthcare and education, in the US, Vietnam, South Africa and Australia as well as in Ireland, was breathtaking. Having built a successful duty-free business in the first half of his adult life, he spent the second half giving it all away. In stark contrast to most of his peers, he tried for as long as possible to keep his own involvement private, only going public when the scale of the activities of Atlantic Philanthropies, the vehicle he established for his donations, became too big to hide.
Feeney’s desire to keep his philanthropy secret was in part strategic, as it allowed him to extract the maximum possible matching funds from other donors and governments. But it also reflected his aversion to ostentation. As his biographer Conor O’Clery notes, he lived in rented apartments, travelled economy class, carried his papers in a plastic bag and wore a $10 watch. In 1997 he took the decision, unprecedented among American philanthropists, to dispose of his entire fortune within a defined time frame. He achieved that goal in 2017.
Chuck Feeney: the Irish-American billionaire who gave his entire fortune away
Ireland was not the only beneficiary of Chuck Feeney’s generosity, but it is a measure of the scale of his work here that he almost certainly gave more money than any other single individual has ever done to this country. It is estimated he was responsible for more than a billion euro in donations to Irish universities north and south of the Border, , along with a range of other social, community and civic society projects. Key protagonists in the peace process acknowledged the value of his support during its most critical phase in the 1990s. For this, and so much more, all Irish people should be grateful for his life and achievements.