Two of a Kind

The billionaire financier and his wife are planning a big deal — giving away most of their wealth

While driving through Brooklyn one day in the late 1970s, Sanford I. (Sandy) Weill brooded about the trouble

that financial-services companies like his had finding entry-level workers who lived in New York City.

As he drove, he spotted a large group of idle teenagers.

The scene cemented Mr. Weill’s plan to start the National Academy Foundation here, which runs small academies within high schools that prepare students for college as well as careers in finance, hospitality, and technology.

“I’m the first to admit that my philanthropic involvement began almost as an accident and even then initially for self-serving reasons,” says Mr. Weill in his book, The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy, co-written with Judah S. Kraushaar and published this week by Warner Business Books. Mr. Weill retired as chairman of Citigroup in April.

However, the “accident” turned out to be a happy one, as the education group thrived. The foundation now sponsors more than 590 schools in the United States and abroad, and about 80 percent of graduates attend college. In May, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $5-million to the foundation, and the Weill Family Foundation, in Albany, N.Y., contributed $5.5-million to expand its scope.

$300-Million in Gifts

Mr. Weill’s creation of National Academy ignited a lasting commitment to philanthropy that he shares with his wife of 51 years, Joan H. Weill.

In the last three decades the couple — whose wealth has been estimated by Forbes magazine at $1.5-billion — have contributed more than $300-million to charitable causes and have helped steer the renaissance of several nonprofit groups, including New York’s venerable Carnegie Hall, through their roles as donors and board members.

And far more money is likely to flow to charities in the years to come: Mr. Weill, 73. says he would like to donate much of his wealth to charity and to do so during his lifetime — though he provided no specifics for how it might be disbursed, aside from saying the couple would probably favor groups they have long supported.

In addition to donations they give themselves, the Weills have nudged millions of dollars from the coffers of individuals and corporations for the culture, health, and education causes they hold dear. They hope the money will be used partly by charities to build bridges between cultures, and they devote many hours to helping chart the course themselves.

“They don’t just give money and walk away,” says Sharon Gersten Luckman, executive director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, the New York arts group where Mrs. Weill (pronounced “while”) has served as chairwoman since 2000. “They are really, really involved.”

Mr. Weill built his fortune merger by merger. The son of Polish immigrants, Mr. Weill was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Cornell University, in Ithaca, N.Y., with the intention of joining the Air Force. But a low-level job at a brokerage firm, earning $150 a week, spurred a passion for finance.

Later, Mr. Weill ran a company he formed with several friends that eventually became Shearson Loeb Rhoades; it was acquired by American Express in 1981.

He left American Express four years later to seek a new challenge: turning a flagging, little-known Baltimore company into what would become a giant of the finance world, Citigroup. Now he is entering a new phase of his career: He won’t run the company, but he has signed a contract to work at Citigroup as a consultant for the next 10 years.

While Mr. Weill says he grew up with no philanthropic role models, Mrs. Weill, 72, watched her father, a press agent in California, volunteer his time and talent to form the first Jewish Community Center in the San Fernando Valley.

“We couldn’t afford to give the money, but he came up with these creative fund-raising ideas,” she says.

As a student at Brooklyn College, Mrs. Weill volunteered to work with delinquent teenagers and later found her first niche in the nonprofit world by brainstorming how to expand Citymeals-on-Wheels, a social-services charity, with a group of volunteers in her kitchen. “It’s very rewarding when you can build something,” she says.

Between them, Mr. and Mrs. Weill lead the boards of five charities, mostly in the city that has been the hub of their married life.

While they have separate, specific interests, each is involved in the other’s causes by helping raise money or serving on affiliated boards. When a decision about a big gift arises, Mrs. Weill says, she cooks a chicken and they talk it over.

“Whenever kids ask him, ‘Mr. Weill, what do you attribute your success to?’ His first statement will be, ‘Well, I picked a good partner,’” says John J. Ferrandino, president of the National Academy Foundation, who has known the Weills for a decade.

The institutions that have received the biggest sums from the Weills are the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, in New York, which has received $215- million, and Carnegie Hall, which has received $40-million.

Mr. Weill has served as chairman of the boards of both institutions for more than a decade.

In addition, the pair donated $18.4-million to help build a new home — named for Mrs. Weill and opened last year — for the Alvin Ailey organization.

Mrs. Weill’s name also adorns the library and student center at Paul Smith’s College, in the Adirondacks near the couple’s country home. Mrs. Weill is chairwoman of the college’s board, and the Weills have donated $4.25- million to the institution.

Giving Time and Ideas

While the Weills have contributed smaller amounts to a range of nonprofit groups, they only have become deeply involved with a select few — where they dug their heels in for years, offering their expertise and fund-raising connections to further the charities’ goals.

“My wife’s energy and passion for Alvin Ailey have been at least as important as the money we have given,” says Mr. Weill. “That’s true of all the things we support.”

The couple understands “that applying a lot to single situations turns out to be much more valuable to everybody than spreading themselves too thin,” says Jay Golan, former chief fund raiser for Carnegie Hall and now president of Birthright Israel, a New York charity. Mr. Weill, says Mr. Golan, who worked with him for 16 years, “takes on very few nonprofits, and the ones he does he works like a dog to shepherd and to help.”

Mr. Weill led Carnegie Hall’s financial turnaround — when he became chairman in 1991, the group’s endowment was less than $5-million, and now it is more than $260-million — partly by riffling through his Rolodex of business and personal contacts.

“All the other CEO’s in New York will tell you, he is an avid fund raiser,” says Charles Moore, executive director of the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy, in New York, where Mr. Weill stepped down as chairman last spring. “They all know Sandy is going to come after them at one point or another, but they also know that when he comes after them he has already done it himself. He doesn’t raise money for things he doesn’t really believe in.”

Mr. Weill’s involvement with Carnegie Hall is a prime example of his hands-on style. As the person who donated the largest sum in Carnegie Hall’s 115-year history, he worked alongside Isaac Stern, the violinist, and others to not only return a crumbling landmark to its former glory but also expand its scope to myriad music-education programs for students and arts administrators in the United States and abroad.

To reach those goals, Mr. Weill agreed to match all gifts raised at a Carnegie Hall gala in honor of his 70th birthday in 2003. The Weills extended the match deadline from the night of the March event to the end of December to increase donations and contributed nearly $30-million to endow the organization’s education programs.

Those programs are increasingly taking a global focus, reflecting an interest of Mr. Weill’s.

“You will see the direction we are going in is about drawing bigger pictures,” says Clive Gillinson, the group’s executive and artistic director, whom Mr. Weill helped recruit and who moved from Britain last year to take the job. “Culture can bridge gaps in a way nothing else can.”

Bringing in Donors

Mr. Weill also brought many new faces to the Carnegie Hall’s board, including his friend Arthur Zankel, a financier.

In 1999 Mr. Zankel and his wife, Judy, contributed $10-million to refurbish a performance space there, and when Mr. Zankel died last year, he left the organization $22-million from his estate.

Mr. Gillinson credits Mr. Weill with soliciting Ronald O. Perelman’s $20-million gift in March for education and artistic programs. Mr. Perelman, the financier who is chairman of Revlon, has been a board member since 1988. “Good organizations with good management can use a lot of money,” says Mr. Weill.

However, at least one organization will not benefit from Mr. Weill’s leadership.

He declined an offer to head the fund-raising effort for the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, in New York. “It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in it,” Mr. Weill says. “I thought the process could turn out to be very political, and I think what I thought turned out to be true.”

Like Mr. Weill’s rags-to-riches experience transforming Carnegie Hall, Mrs. Weill also gravitates to charities at a crossroads, where strong leadership is needed.

“I like to be able to make a difference,” she says. “When I can’t, I lose interest a little bit.”

More than a dozen years ago, Paul Smith’s College, which was struggling to remake itself from a two-year to a four-year institution, caught her eye.

Since Mrs. Weill joined the college’s board in 1992 the Weills have helped upgrade the campus by donating $4.25-million for a new library and student center.

Mrs. Weill’s goals for the college, where most students receive some type of financial aid, includes increasing enrollment, starting a nursing school, and attracting more minority students.

“We didn’t have the capacity nor the technology to meet the 21st-century needs of college students,” says John W. Mills, the college’s president. “She has been very supportive of the initiatives to increase the academic quality of the entire institution.”

And four years ago, Mrs. Weill found an opportunity for the charities she supports to help one another, a common practice in the Weills’ philanthropy.

She enlisted Ailey II, a company for younger dancers at Alvin Ailey, to perform annually at a college fund-raising gala. The dance company benefited by reaching a new audience and receiving a fee, and the most recent event netted Paul Smith more than $40,000, says Mr. Mills.

The Weills also put Mr. Mills in touch with officials at Paul Robeson High School, in Brooklyn, where the National Academy Foundation runs two academies.

Mr. Mills and several college alumni arranged a recruiting trip to Robeson, which serves mostly black students. “She opens doors for me,” says Mr. Mills of Mrs. Weill.

International Goals

Opening doors and expanding the reach of charities they support is a key component of what the Weills hope to accomplish in their philanthropy.

Mr. Weill threw his support behind a plan by Weill Medical College officials to operate a medical school in Qatar. In addition, the medical school has formed a partnership with a Houston hospital and is sending medical-school residents to Tanzania this fall to help train medical students there.

Says Mr. Weill:”We all should be doing things, whether in business or education or music or whatever, that ties this world together and gives people hope, and creates a better quality of life and bridges the difference between religious cultures and cultures of different parts of the world, rather than have it where the fanatics are the ones leading the thought process and blowing everybody up.”

The Weills have recently taken a more international bent in their own philanthropy as well.

Mrs. Weill joined the board of the Touch Foundation, in New York, whose mission involves helping the world’s poorest countries train more health-care professionals.

One of the first programs of the group, which was started a few years ago by a Cornell medical-school graduate and missionary, supports a new medical school in Tanzania.

“I saw with my own eyes the terrible conditions there, especially for women and children,” says Mrs. Weill, who visited several years ago. “It was hard for me to come back and not want to do something about it.”

The couple have donated $750,000 to the foundation, and, when Mr. Weill retired, the Citigroup Board of Directors contributed $5-million in his honor.

Looking to the Future

Even with more time now to devote to philanthropy, the Weills have no plans to change their informal style of grant making over chicken dinners anytime soon.

The Weill Family Foundation does not have any employees or outside philanthropic advisers.

While Mr. Weill jokingly hails the foundation’s “little overhead,” Mrs. Weill says she would eventually like to see its grant making become more structured and include greater involvement from their two grown children and four grandchildren. “We set an example and hopefully they are watching,” says Mrs. Weill of the next generation.

Future gifts will most likely flow to charities the couple has long supported, says Mr. Weill. “I’m not looking for any new ideas right at the minute,” he says.

“My wife says shrouds don’t have pockets,” says Mr. Weill. “Our goal is not to build a big foundation. Our goal is to invest our money in things we think can make a difference that we can contribute our energies to.”