On September 17, billionaire Paychex founder Tom Golisano surprised 82 nonprofit organizations at a press conference with a $360 million commitment in unrestricted grants. The beneficiaries, all in Upstate New York, work on causes including animals, education and healthcare for developmentally disabled children. It was a gesture, albeit on a regional level, that called to mind some far more well-known paragons of 2020s philanthropy.
“As you might imagine, people reach out to my office almost daily with funding requests… I want to recognize and thank the success of Paychex, and the hard work of the employees — 16,000 strong — for affording me the ability to support my community,” Golisano said at the event.
Golisano is not as well known as many of his downstate counterparts, but the 82-year-old’s story is perhaps more interesting. Born to a humble background in the Rochester, New York, area as the son of a macaroni salesman and a seamstress, Golisano turned a $3,000 bet into the payroll giant that made him a billionaire.
Today, Golisano is worth $6.5 billion, and it’s notable that he just made his biggest philanthropic commitment yet in a part of the country that often doesn’t get the same shine as New York City or Los Angeles.
This isn’t Golisano’s philanthropic debut, however. His track record of giving goes all the way back to the 1980s, when he established the Golisano Foundation, and his lifetime giving totals some $775 million. And as he told IP in a recent interview, there’s a reason that he started giving when he did — and there’s also a reason why he’s now ramping up his giving in the latter stages of his life.
In our conversation, Golisano discussed his realization that he needed to start giving back, the deeply personal forces that animate some of his philanthropy, the value of place-based giving, and why he just made a nine-figure commitment in Upstate New York.
The early days and championing “inclusive health”
Golisano didn’t come from wealth. He grew up in suburban Rochester in a middle-class neighborhood, and worked as a bank teller after high school to help his parents with their finances, and then went to Alfred State Tech, a two-year college.
After graduating, he eventually found work at a payroll processor that provided services for large companies. But soon he noticed a gap in the market and realized he could provide these same services to small companies with 50 employees or fewer. So Golisano took the leap and started his own company, Paychex, in 1971, with just $3,000 and a credit card. The early days were tough, but soon, the company started making money and expanded its orbit beyond western New York. In 1983, the company went public. Today, it employs 16,000 people and has a market value of around $50 billion.
Two years after Paychex went public, Golisano and his wife at the time, Gloria, decided that they wanted to start giving back. Their son, Steven, is developmentally disabled, and Gloria sought to better understand his condition. “She encouraged me and inspired me to start a family foundation. And it goes back to 1985,” Golisano said.
Over the past three decades, Golisano and the Golisano Foundation have emerged as top donors in this space, pledging or donating more than $300 million to support individuals with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities — including through the foundation’s Inclusive Health program area.
According to the CDC, 1 in 6 children in the United States has a developmental disability, and worldwide, an estimated 200 million people around the world have intellectual disabilities, according to the Golisano Foundation.
A main component of the foundation’s work is building institutions and centers that it intends to serve as national models of collaboration for inclusive health. The hope is that in these spaces, people who care for this population, like nurses, can be better trained, including at the Golisano Institute for Developmental Disability Nursing at St. John Fisher University Wegmans School of Nursing in Rochester, created with a $5.8 million gift from Golisano and the Golisano Foundation. University of Rochester, meanwhile, is home to another named institution, the Golisano Intellectual and Developmental Institute.
Golisano thinks that there’s still not enough awareness in the philanthropic community about the range of organizations on the ground working on developmental disabilities. And that lack of awareness serves as a barrier for these organizations to connect with funders. “I think a broader knowledge of that activity would be very beneficial,” he said.
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Special Olympics giving
One of the Golisano Foundation’s biggest grantees in the developmental disabilities space is the Special Olympics. The foundation contributed more than $67 million to launch and expand the Special Olympics Healthy Communities program so that people with intellectual disabilities can access healthcare in their communities all year.
Golisano first met longtime Special Olympics Chair Timothy Shriver, son of founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, many years ago in New York City, where the two found common ground and Shriver pitched Golisano on his new big idea. “And if anyone can get you interested in something, it’s Tim Shriver,” Golisano said with a laugh.
The concept was this: At the start of Special Olympics sporting events, doctors would come and examine children and young people. And if they found something, they could diagnose and even begin a treatment plan, getting ahead of medical issues like glaucoma, tooth decay, balance issues and the many other health problems that disproportionately affect this population.
The program initially ran in the United States and a few European countries, but now operates worldwide. “I think it [is] one of the almost perfect contributions that we’ve made to an organization. It’s just done so much good for so many people and we’re very proud of it,” Golisano said.
Golisano became a major underwriter of the Clinton Global Initiative in the aughts after getting a call from an associate of Bill Clinton, he says. “I’m very happy about my association there, even though politically, we’re a little bit apart. But that’s OK. But I think the Clinton Global Initiative did a lot of positive things for people around the world.”
A new, $360 million commitment
So why did Golisano decide to take his giving to the next level in Upstate New York? The Golisano Foundation already had a long-running list of trusted grantees that it has worked with through the decades in Upstate New York and southwestern Florida. Golisano calls both of these places home, and had provisions in his will for more money to flow to these organizations in the form of a bequest. But more recently, he started to change his thoughts about that.
“I applied for immortality and didn’t get it,” Golisano said, with another laugh. “So I decided that rather than waiting for me to kick the bucket, I would advance the money to them ahead of time. Why make them wait?”
Golisano then called for a press conference, inviting 82 grantees to attend, none of them aware of the $360 million windfall that was about to come. “Obviously, they were quite surprised. I think half of them were crying as they crossed the stage to get their envelope. But it was quite an event and I was quite happy I did it this way,” he said.
Of the $360 million, $201 million flowed to Rochester organizations, along with another $66.5 million to Buffalo nonprofits and $40 million to ones in Syracuse. Golisano gifted the remaining $52 million to the Golisano Foundation, effectively doubling its assets, which will be about $120 million by year’s end. Golisano has also ramped up giving at the foundation to around $5 million annually, up from around $3 million prior to the infusion.
Organizations run the gamut from nonprofits that serve the community ($25 million) like Veterans Outreach Center and the Child Advocacy Center of Greater Rochester; education groups ($85 million), including Alfred State College and Niagara University; and animal welfare organizations ($24 million), including Better Together Pet Rescue Center and Rochester Emergency Veterinary Services.
Golisano’s huge commitment to animal welfare organizations is thanks to his wife, former world No. 1 women’s tennis player Monica Seles, a passionate animal advocate. “She is a real big dog and cat advocate and she has done a lot in her lifetime in supporting those animals, and of course, she saw it as an opportunity for the foundation also to get into that arena. I’m glad we did,” Golisano said.
Place-based giving and looking ahead
Golisano’s name is emblazoned on a number of institutions in Upstate New York. While that kind of thing doesn’t necessarily stand out as much in, say, Chicago or New York City, that isn’t the case in western New York, known more for its biting winter wind chill than billionaire philanthropy.
Golisano has positive things to say about place-based giving. “I think by sort of specializing in one geographic area we have probably added to the effectiveness of that area more so than if it was all spread around,” he said. (Readers interested in his deep roots in the region may want to check out his book, “The Italian Kid Did It: How I Turned $3K into $44B and Achieved the American Dream,” which touches on everything from his three-time New York gubernatorial bid to owning the Buffalo Sabres and making sure they stayed in western New York.)
He also mentioned his longtime relationship with local PBS station WXXI. In 2014, the Golisano Foundation and WXXI joined forces to launch Move to Include, which aims to inform and transform attitudes and behavior about intellectual, physical and developmental disabilities. “[The differently abled] do have skills and they do have talents and capabilities. But sometimes, it takes some work to get it out of them, or to create a situation where they can utilize them,” Golisano said.
Golisano stepped down as CEO of Paychex 20 years ago, and as chairman of the board nearly three years ago. This gives him more time to engage in philanthropy. With a long giving record, he says he’s learned that it’s sometimes harder to give away money than it is to make it (as many others in his position often maintain). Comparing donating money to the acquisition of a company, he says that donors really have to do their due diligence and make sure the organization is worth investment for the long haul.
Remember what Golisano said about immortality? Toward the end of our conversation, he hinted at what might come next once he passes on, including an even larger corpus for the foundation and broadening his giving to other geographic areas. “I have a feeling we’re going to be spreading out quite significantly,” he said.
There may very well be significant family involvement ahead. Golisano mentioned that his nephew has been involved with the foundation for a number of years and would probably have an even larger role later on. He also has six grandchildren and thinks a couple of them will be candidates for board trusteeship.
The foundation currently has nine trustees and a handful of staff, but when that bequest to his foundation does come, Golisano envisions both a larger staff and board. In fact, that plan is already being set into motion. “There’s no question it’s going to be an expanded responsibility. And we have to be equipped to handle it.”
