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He prefers charities that benefit the needy over institutions like museums and universities. "I give Harvard $1,000 a year just so classmates will speak to me," he jokes. "They don't need my dough." Over the years, he figures, he has contributed to as many as 130 charities, but lately he has focused on five: Boston's Partners in Health, which delivers medical care to the poor around the world; Bread for the World, a Washington-based group that presses lawmakers on agendas such as spending more on food stamps and raising the minimum wage; Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, based in Montgomery, which funds the appeals of death-row inmates; Odwin Learning Center, a Boston nonprofit that helps local adults get into college; and Sojourner House, another Boston group, which provides local emergency shelter. White, 81, a devout Catholic who goes to church every day, also funds the after-school programs and summer camp run by Boston's St. Francis de Sales-St. Philip parish. He gives only to charities that help people regardless of their faith.
White doesn't view his efforts as heroic or even noteworthy. "People overemphasize what I'm doing," he says. "I get tremendous pleasure out of giving." On being named America's best philanthropist, White says, "I think you've got the wrong guy."
We disagree. White is personally involved in every charity he favors. "He'll call once a month to see how we're doing and what we need," says Anastasia Lopopolo, executive director of Sojourner House. Mary Tacelli, executive director of Odwin Learning Center, recalls White's first donation of $5,000. "He apologized for the small amount," she says. "I was flabbergasted."
Had White not shed his wealth, he would be worth more than $100 million today. Instead, he chose to give away systematically 897,000 shares of the 900,000 he once owned in his construction company, and he's now worth about $8 million. Some of his shares went to his seven children and six stepchildren. But most have gone to charity, and White isn't done yet. Over the next two years, he will further reduce his net worth to about $2.5 million; then, he says, he will stop and live off the interest.
"He's not just giving scraps from the table," says the Rev. David Beckmann, who runs Bread for the World. "This is sacrificial giving."
White calls it "a crock" to hold that everything you give will come back to you. Yet clearly some of it does. Take that $200 train ticket he bought his Army pal. A year later, White got a surprise check in the mail from his friend, repaying the debt plus $20 interest. "I sent him back the $20," White says. "I was just doing what I love, helping people with my money."
--Reported by Julie Rawe