Chuck Feeney co-founded Duty Free Shoppers in 1960 and became a billionaire. Then he did something almost nobody does. He set up the Atlantic Philanthropies in 1982 and two years later transferred all his business assets into it, and for years he gave the money away in secret. Forbes called him the James Bond of philanthropy. Over four decades he gave away more than $8 billion to education, health, and other causes, including nearly $1 billion to Cornell, the school he attended on the G.I. Bill. He lived simply, and in 2012 he estimated he’d set aside about $2 million for his and his wife’s retirement. In 2020 the foundation closed its doors because it had given everything away. He died in 2023 at 92. He liked to say, “It’s much more fun to give while you are alive than to give when you are dead.”
