Philanthropist’s Quiet Generosity Is Revealed in a $34-Million Bequest

While few people knew about Frances P. Bunnelle’s generosity while she was alive, nearly everyone in

Georgetown County, South Carolina, where she resided for 30 years, learned of her largesse after her death. Ms. Bunnelle, who inherited her wealth from her first husband, bequeathed $34-million to aid the approximately 57,000 residents of Georgetown County, a collection of small towns mainly along the coast.

The gift — the bulk of her estate — endowed a fund at the Community Foundation Serving Coastal South Carolina, in Charleston. Ms. Bunnelle’s bequest was more than three times the size of the community foundation’s previous largest donation.

During her lifetime, Ms. Bunnelle preferred to give quietly to local charities, often asking the organizations she supported to stay mum about her contributions. She never joined the boards of the groups she selected, and rarely even visited to keep an eye on the work being done.

Still, at least one charity, Tara Hall Home for Boys, a residential program for troubled and abused boys, experienced her personal philanthropic touch. In addition to being one of the group’s most generous annual donors, Ms. Bunnelle made sure each of the home’s 24 youngsters had a crisp new $20 bill at Christmastime. “She was a neat lady,” says James E. Dunn, the home’s executive director. “What she did for the community of Georgetown will live on for years and years and years.”

Unlimited Needs

Ms. Bunnelle’s fortune was inherited from her first husband, Charles Peace, who was an owner of the Greenville News-Piedmont. Her second husband, Robert Ellsworth Bunnelle, was editor of the Asheville Paper.

Shortly before her death in 2000 at age 95, Ms. Bunnelle sent a letter to Madeleine McGee, the community foundation’s president, explaining the thinking behind her philanthropy. “I have been involved in charitable giving all my life,” she wrote. “Along the way I have learned that the world’s needs are unlimited. Therefore, in order to have an impact in some lasting and meaningful way, I have tried to focus my efforts on Georgetown County.”

During her lifetime, Ms. Bunnelle rarely supported long-term charity needs or projects. Instead, she would often hear about a problem, such as a local family that needed indoor plumbing or a soup kitchen with broken equipment, and spontaneously write a check, says C. Michael Branham, one of Ms. Bunnelle’s lawyers. Mr. Branham is chairman of the five-person board of the Frances P. Bunnelle Foundation, which is run by the community foundation. Two board members of the community foundation also serve on the Bunnelle fund’s board.

In addition to continuing to make such gifts, the Bunnelle foundation board plans to use her money to make more-lasting improvements in the lives of residents, so that fewer desperate cases will arise. “If Mrs. Bunnelle were to come back in 10 years, would she want to see that we had continued to do what she had done on a much greater scale but that the needs were still there, or would she want to see we had been trying to address the causes of those needs so perhaps there would be less need?” says Ms. McGee. “The program we put together is an attempt to balance those two.”

Grants will include money to improve charities’ leadership and management, as well as for programs that directly help the poor. The foundation also plans to give away $600,000 in December to a nonprofit organization that proposes a major project aimed at “addressing the root causes of poverty, meeting basic human needs, advancing equitable economic growth and environmental conservation, or encouraging positive youth development.”

The foundation will also provide annual support for several years to four longtime favorite charities of Ms. Bunnelle’s: Pawley’s Island-Litchfield Rescue Squad, Saint Frances Humane Society, Tara Hall, and Tidelands Community Hospice. With Ms. Bunnelle’s reluctant consent, the humane society added “Saint Frances” to its name in her honor.

The Bunnelle foundation will strive to operate in a manner consistent with the values of Ms. Bunnelle, who shied away from glittery charity functions, says Ms. McGee. “She was a very quiet, behind-the-scenes kind of person,” she says. “The foundation wants to be behind the scenes supporting others because that was her personality. This is not about putting her name on everything.”

The Bunnelle foundation will give away approximately $1.2-million in 2004, more than twice the amount the Georgetown County United Way expects to raise.

While the county, which sits 70 miles from Charleston, has pockets of wealth, 17 percent of residents live below the poverty line. The money from Ms. Bunnelle is especially welcome now, as one of the largest local employers, Georgetown Steel Mills, closed its doors last year.

“When you are in a large city you have access to many resources, but when you are in a rural community like this, it’s often scarce,” says Amy Brennan, executive director of Service Over Self, an organization that has received money from the Bunnelle fund and that runs programs for teenagers, including pregnancy-prevention efforts. “This gift from Ms. Bunnelle was so incredibly generous and gives everybody here such hope for the future because it’s a perpetual gift.”