Partnerships and Personal Touch Drive Boston Investor’s Giving

A New York Times financial columnist assesses the philanthropy of former mutual-fund investor Peter Lynch and his wife, Carolyn, in the second of two articles examining different giving strategies.

Mr. Lynch led Fidelity’s Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990. The Boston couple’s Lynch Foundation has quietly given away $80-million since its inception in 1988, focusing on small grants to community groups. They work with other foundations to amplify the impact of their contributions and get personally involved with some recipient charities.

Earlier this month Wealth Matters columnist Paul Sullivan profiled Utah industrialist Jon M. Huntsman Sr., who has made numerous eight- and nine-figure gifts and donated $1.6-billion in total, more than a quarter of it for cancer research. Mr. Sullivan said he wanted to look at how both a billionaire like Mr. Huntsman and multimillionaires like the Lynches practice philanthropy “to divine lessons for the rest of us from people who give away substantial sums of money.”