Billionaire Charles Feeney as a young man
ATLANTICPHILANTHROPIES.ORG
The Atlantic Philanthropies, founded by Irish-American billionaire William J. Kennedy, announced on its website that its philanthropic founder had died in San Francisco.
Few people know that the majority of Mr. Feeney's fortune comes from co-founding Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), a chain of duty-free stores at airports, in 1960 with a classmate from his time as a student at Cornell University (New York State).
In 1996, Mr. Feeney sold his stake in DFS to the French LVMH Group, which now owns the majority stake in the famous chain. DFS has more than 850 stores across five continents.
Billionaire Feeney is also the founder of the "Giving While You Live" movement, which he believes can make a big difference by donating assets while you are alive, rather than waiting until you die to set up a charitable foundation.
Mr Feeney established Atlantic Philanthropies in 1982, and it took just two years to transfer all of his business assets to the foundation. In 2020, the foundation closed after announcing that it had successfully donated all of its assets to charity.
Mr. Feeney has a connection with Vietnam.
In total, Atlantic Philanthropy has given away $8 billion across five continents, most of it anonymously. The money goes to supporteducation , health care, and more.
In the case of Vietnam, the organization from 1998 to 2006 donated a total of $220 million USD to Vietnam for charitable activities such as education, health , and library projects.
In the book "Letter to the Rich Vietnamese" by author Nguyen Xuan Xanh, Mr. Feeney once confided: "Vietnam to him is like a lamp, and he is like a termite. Termites keep flying into the lamp. He operates very quietly, only aiming for efficiency."
Feeney spent the last three decades of his life living extremely frugally: he didn’t own a house or a car, and rented a place. And he died having seen his contributions benefit communities in need.
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