History
The American businessman Charles "Chuck" Feeney established The Atlantic Philanthropies in Bermuda in 1982. Born in 1931 to an Irish-American family from New Jersey, following service with the USAF (1948–1952), Feeney went on to study hotel management at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. (In later life, Feeney anonymously donated $600 million to his alma mater.)
Feeney made his fortune in the duty-free business, co-founding Duty Free Shoppers (DFS). Based at ports and airports, DFS rode the post-World War II boom in tourism to became the largest retailer of luxury goods in the world, selling cigarettes, alcohol, perfumes and other luxury items.Feeney himself is noted for his personal modesty and frugal lifestyle. By the time Forbes magazine listed Feeney as the world's 23rd richest man in 1988, he had already managed to secretly donate his entire fortune. Incorporated in Bermuda, his Atlantic Philanthropies foundation had donated up to $4 billion to charitable causes and he was personally worth no more than $5 million at that time. Feeney was the biggest charitable donor in American history up to that point, all the while maintaining his anonymity.
Feeney is the subject of a 2007 biography, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune by Conor O'Clery, . Feeney is also the subject of an hour-long TV documentary on Irish television broadcast in May 2009 called Secret Billionaire: The Chuck Feeney Story. (New Decade, 2009) in which he discusses his rise from modest beginnings to billionaire businessman and the strategy for giving his fortune away while still alive.
In 2011, Feeney signed "The Giving Pledge," a campaign to encourage the wealthiest people in the United States to make a commitment to give most of their money to philanthropic causes.
Read more about this topic: Atlantic Philanthropies
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