Planting seeds
One of America’s most generous couples makes gifts close to home

by Richard Foster
for Virginia Business
June 2007

For William H. “ Bill” Goodwin Jr. and his wife, Alice, the most effective use of charitable giving is to create something that didn’t exist before. Whether it’s underwriting the construction of a new church or donating $47.5 million to help establish a school of engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University, the impact of the Goodwins’ charity is far-reaching in Virginia.

“We were the largest metropolitan area in the whole United States that did not have an engineering school,” Bill Goodwin notes about Richmond. “So we thought it might be nice to try to have one from an economic development point of view, as well as an educational point of view. I think it will make a difference in the city of Richmond 10 years, 20 years from now,” says the 66-year-old businessman who has an engineering degree from Virginia Tech.

During the past two decades, the Goodwins have pledged and donated nearly $75 million to VCU, ( Alice’s alma mater) including $25 million for the VCU Massey Cancer Center. Last year, the school named the center’s new 80,000-square-foot research building after them.

Yet, having their name on a building is not what motivates the pair. They shun the spotlight, seldom giving interviews about their charity or Bill’s business ventures, which over the years have included investments in a luxury hotels, island resorts and recently MAXjet Airlines, a low-cost business carrier offering nonstop service from New York to London. “We’re private people, and we don’t like to get a lot of publicity,” he says. “We don’t like to brag about what we do.”

In November, BusinessWeek ranked the Goodwins No. 41 on its 2006 list of the nation’s 50 Most Generous Philanthropists. The magazine estimates that they’ve given or pledged more than $208 million since 2002. Bill declines to comment on the report or the couple’s net worth.

What isn’t disputable is his business acuity. After buying the struggling bowling operations of AMF in 1986, he restored the company as an industry leader and sold it 10 years later for $1.37 billion. His generous streak was apparent then with Goodwin sharing $50 million of the sale proceeds with employees worldwide — an amount, he says in hindsight, that he wishes he had doubled.

Today, he’s chairman of Richmond-based CCA Industries, a diversified holding company, and he heads the Riverstone Group, a family-owned company that owns such luxury properties as Richmond’s five-star Jefferson Hotel.

The Goodwins focus their philanthropy in three major areas: education, religion and cancer treatment. Like many others, they have seen the devastation of cancer firsthand. “Bill and I both have had family members who have had cancer a number of years ago … [and] it seems today that hardly a day goes by that we don’t have a good friend or a friend of a friend who isn’t coming down with the condition,” says Alice.

For the Goodwins, charity sta rts at home. “A lot of people ask us why we don’t do more in foreign countries,” says Bill, “… [but] Alice and I have lived all of our lives in Virginia … and we tend to think we ought to be supporting Virginia.”

To maximize results, they concentrate giving to a select number of instit utions. Bill has been good to his alma maters, donating money to Virginia Tech for the renovation of a championship-level golf course, and giving $25 million to the Darden School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia where he received a master’s degree in business administration.

In addition to money, the Goodwins give time. For instance, Alice, who has a degree in medical technology from VCU, serves on the advisory center of the Massey Cancer Center. VCU President Eugene Trani says the Goodwins are “true humanitarians who unselfishly contribute to public service, science, art and medicine, not only financially, but also in hard work and true leadership.”

The couple’s religious charity is usually in the form of building churches, mostly in Virginia. Again, says Bill, “it’s a seed idea, trying to start something that might not have gotten started without it.”