Person Facts About Philanthropy

A young programmer offered a homeless man the choice between $100 cash or coding lessons. Leo Grand chose the lessons, and now his first mobile app is available to download for $.99.

Self-made millionaire Harris Rosen adopted a Florida neighborhood called Tangelo Park, cut the crime rate in half, and increased the high school graduation rate from 25% to 100% by giving everyone free daycare and all high school graduates scholarships.

Hockey player Jarome Iginla donates $2,000 to the children’s charity Kidsport for every goal he scores. Since 2000 it has added up to more than $700,000.

Paul Newman bottled salad dressing as a joke with his neighbour A.E. Hotchner. They sold the first batch to one local store. The original plan was a 50/50 split between profits and charity. They ended up giving every penny away. Newman's Own has now donated over $600 million.

Dave Chappelle spent nearly $13 million to save and rebuild a landmark in his hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio. He bought the 1872 Union Schoolhouse - the first integrated school in the village - and turned it into a 19,000 sq ft home for public radio station WYSO. The station moved in and never looked back. "If you have the opportunity like I did, to invest in your community," he said, "then it's one of the greatest investments I've ever made."

Ronald Read worked as a gas station attendant and then a janitor in Brattleboro, Vermont. He held his coat together with safety pins. Someone once offered to pay for his meal, assuming he couldn't afford it. He died at 92 with nearly $8 million - from decades of quietly buying stocks. He left $4.8 million to the local hospital.

MacKenzie Scott received $35.6 billion in Amazon stock when she divorced Jeff Bezos in 2019. By December 2025, she had quietly given away $26.3 billion of it to 2,700+ nonprofits - no application process, no naming rights, no ceremonies. In 2025 alone, she gave more than Bezos has given in a lifetime.

Chuck Feeney co-founded Duty Free Shoppers and became a billionaire. Then he secretly gave it all away. He wore a $10 Casio watch. Flew economy. He gave away $8 billion. None of the 1,000 buildings his money built bear his name. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both credit him as their inspiration. He died at 92.

Tony Hawk kept getting emails from kids who had been ticketed or even arrested just for skateboarding in the street. So he started funding places where they could skate legally instead. His foundation, now called The Skatepark Project, has helped build nearly 700 free skateparks in all 50 states. That free skatepark in your town? He probably helped pay for it.

Joe Burrow's 2019 Heisman speech stunned everyone. He choked up talking about hungry kids back home in Athens, Ohio. Six years later, his foundation helped build the fix. The Joe Burrow Foundation partnered with Hocking College to launch the 740 Rescue Kitchen. Now it feeds families across ten counties in southeast Ohio.

Dolly Parton's father was the smartest man she ever knew. He never learned to read or write. In 1995 she started mailing a free book every month to every child in her Tennessee county. Kids began calling her the Book Lady. Today it sends more than 3 million free books a month and has mailed over 300 million. Dolly died on August 25, 2026, at 80. The books are still going out.

Darryl "DMC" McDaniels of Run-DMC did not learn he was adopted until he was 35. He had spent his first months in foster care before being adopted. After learning the truth, DMC co-founded Camp Felix in 2006, a summer camp built just for foster kids. Twenty years later, it still gives kids canoe trips and campfires they might not otherwise get.

Geoffrey Holt was the quiet caretaker of a mobile home park in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. He rode a lawnmower around town, owned no TV, and had almost no furniture. When he died at 82 in 2023, his will revealed he had secretly amassed $3.8 million through decades of shrewd investing - and left every cent to his town of 4,200 people.

Sylvia Bloom worked as a legal secretary on Wall Street for 67 years. Every time her boss bought a stock, she quietly bought the same one. Nobody - not her husband, not the lawyers she worked for - knew. When she died at 96, her estate was worth $9 million. She left $8.2 million for college scholarships.

Leonard Gigowski spent 50 years cutting meat at a Milwaukee grocery store. He drove the same car for 15 years. He never married. He never took a vacation. He clipped coupons. His friends figured he was just scraping by. He was quietly buying stock in the company he worked for and holding it for fifty years. When he died at 90, the lawyers opened his estate. $13 million went to his old Catholic high school. Nobody knew he was rich.

Grace Groner bought 3 shares of Abbott Laboratories stock for $180 in 1935. She was a secretary. She held those shares for 75 years, reinvesting every dividend, while living in a one-bedroom cottage and buying clothes from rummage sales. When she died at 100, those shares were worth $7 million. She left every cent to her old college.

At his 2019 Morehouse College commencement address, billionaire Robert F. Smith announced his family would pay off the student loan debt of the entire graduating class. The gift covered all 396 seniors and ultimately totalled $34 million - including Parent PLUS loans. He told them: 'I know my class will pay this forward.'

Jelly Roll was locked up in Nashville's juvenile detention center as a teenager. He got through it with only a radio and headphones. Years later, he headlined a show at Bridgestone Arena. He used the proceeds to build a real recording studio inside that same facility. He called the launch Redemption Songs. Kids locked up there now write and record in the room that once held him.

Jalen Hurts kept hearing the same story. Philadelphia schools were sending kids home early because classrooms were too hot. So the Eagles quarterback paid to install air conditioning in ten schools himself. More than 300 units later, over 5,000 students and staff have cool classrooms. Now every touchdown he scores pays for more.