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.

Jeff Daniels grew up in Chelsea, Michigan. His grandfather once ran a car and bus garage there in the early 1900s. In 1989 the Dumb and Dumber star bought that garage and rebuilt it into a theatre that still seats 168. Then he handed the whole building to the nonprofit company he founded there. He still runs it, and he still writes and directs plays on that stage.

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."

Bruce Willis's 8-year-old daughter Tallulah was selling Girl Scout cookies in Idaho in 2002 when she had an idea: send them to the troops. Willis bought 12,000 boxes. More than 8,000 pounds reached the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in the Arabian Sea, and the captain handed the very first box to a sailor who had been a Girl Scout herself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sandra Bullock adopted Warren Easton, a New Orleans high school that Hurricane Katrina shut for a full year. She provided band uniforms, athletic equipment and scholarship funds, and helped fund an auditorium renovation and an on-campus medical and dental clinic. In May 2014 she showed up at graduation by surprise and gave the speech to 200 seniors. About 1,150 students go there today.

Denis Leary spent decades playing the angriest man in comedy. Six Worcester firefighters died in a 1999 warehouse fire, including his cousin Jerry Lucey. Leary didn't just grieve. He bought Boston a fireboat, sent rescue boats to New Orleans after Katrina, and helped fund the FDNY's first high-rise training simulator. More than 25 years later, he's still equipping firehouses nationwide.

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.'