For Retired Investor, Catholic-Schools Gift Was a ‘Bargain’ He Couldn’t Refuse

Robert W. Wilson, one of America’s most-generous philanthropists, retired from hands-on investing in 1986,

but his experiences in the stock market still influence his giving.

With any large gift, he typically makes a matching grant. He believes that if a charity can’t raise substantial funds from others it may not be worth supporting.

“If I couldn’t talk anyone else into buying a stock, it probably went down,” he says.

He takes the matches seriously. Richard G. Schneidman, Mr. Wilson’s accountant and the person who will distribute funds from his estate to charity, says that every matching grant includes a provision that allows Mr. Wilson to send in accountants to ensure the matching money is being received.

Seeking a Bargain

Mr. Wilson also likes the charitable equivalent of buying low and selling high.

Last February, he learned in a letter from the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, which raises money to help low-income children attend Roman Catholic schools in New York, that the 107 Catholic schools in inner-city New York had 8,000 vacancies. For a subsidy of only $1,500 per child, the letter said, donors could fill an empty desk. The leverage of such an investment would be amplified, the letter noted, because the cost of educating a student in the Catholic-school system is only $5,500 per year — less than half the per-student cost in New York’s public schools.

“I said, ‘This is a bargain I can’t refuse,’” Mr. Wilson recalls.

Focus on Results

As an atheist, Mr. Wilson has little interest in, but no objection to, the religious teaching that goes on in the schools. He says he has been impressed, however, by how Catholic schools help get students who were failing in the public-school system back on track. In May 2007, Mr. Wilson, who had been giving the Catholic-school system about $10,000 per year, pledged $22.5-million over five years to help 3,000 needy students attend Catholic elementary schools.

Given the Catholic-school system’s declining enrollment and need for philanthropy, Mr. Wilson was surprised to learn that the schools — especially at the elementary level — have not developed robust systems for tracking and soliciting their alumni. He says he may provide additional money to the Archdiocese of New York, and perhaps other dioceses around the country, to help them address this need, though no gift has yet been announced.

“The question is whether the alumni can be mobilized,” Mr. Wilson says. “If they can’t be, the schools are doomed.”

Mr. Wilson made the gift without ever visiting one of the schools. “When I was a security analyst, I remember going to visit manufacturing plants,” Mr. Wilson says. “I’d see some slick plant, and six months later the company would go bankrupt. Other times I’d go through a plant that was ratty, and it would be a great stock.”

Michael Deegan, associate superintendent for urban education at the Archdiocese of New York, says Mr. Wilson is enjoying hearing from those who have benefited from his gift to the Catholic schools. “I think he’s having fun with this,” Mr. Deegan says. “He’s been touched by the cards from parents saying thanks.”

Mr. Wilson concedes the gift to the Catholic schools has generated more local news-media coverage than his other gifts — but the only responses to the gift that he mentions in an interview are the calls he received from single women wanting to meet him: “I said to a friend, ‘Gee, I didn’t realize I was that good-looking.’”