ReZoom

When the rich and powerful remember the rest of us in their wills, the world can be changed for the better.

 

All of us will leave a legacy behind. We have created families, built communities, and enriched the people and places we've known with our skills and passions. Every one of our lives makes waves that reach other people – probably more people than we realize.

But a lucky few of us have the power and wealth to reach a lot more people in life and beyond. And of those few, an even smaller number have a vision of a better world that they can will to happen, by leaving their money to ideas rather than to individuals. These notable Americans are among the many who left a will to remember.

Benjamin Franklin A Renaissance man, Benjamin Franklin's legacy includes many inventions that remain in use today – not to mention more than a few ideas that helped shape a nation. Always forward-thinking, he bequeathed about $4,000 each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia, requesting that the money be held in trust for 200 years. By 1990, Boston had $5 million, which was used to fund a trade school, the Franklin Institute of Boston. Philly, meanwhile, had about $2 million, which was used for various civic and educational programs.

J. D. Rockefeller Standard Oil tycoon John Davison Rockefeller started a family tradition of philanthropy that continues to this day. He gave away about $550 million, founding Spelman College for African-American women and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and endowing many other entities. He also gave a dime to every child he met (though during the Great Depression, he switched to nickels).

Upon his death, J.D. Rockefeller's fortune transferred to family trusts, where the tradition of philanthropy continued. His only surviving grandson, banker David Rockefeller, born in 1915, is planning a bequest of $250 million to fund the David Rockefeller Global Development Fund. Its goals are to fight poverty, develop trade, and improve relations between Muslim and Western nations.

William Kent In 1907, tree-hugging congressman Kent and his wife Elizabeth Thatcher Kent donated 295 acres of old-growth redwood forest to the U.S. government in a savvy ploy to save the woods and the mountain above them. In doing so, he created the John Muir Woods National Monument, the first national monument created from land donated by an individual. Since then, many national parks and monuments have been created or increased in size by land bequests from people who wish to see natural places live on.

 

Sophia Smith. This penny-pinching spinster left her family fortune to endow the nation's first women's college, Smith College – perhaps as a slight to his father, who was adamantly opposed to educating women.

Howard Hughes The eccentric aviator and entrepreneur was so reluctant to pay taxes that he lived in hotels, relocating every few weeks rather than establishing a permanent home address (and home state, which would be able to tax him). He established the Howard Hughes Medical Institute partly as a tribute to his parents, who died young, and partly as a tax shelter.

 

Bill Gates The Microsoft billionaire kept his money to himself for many years, apparently giving slow and careful thought to his philanthropic legacy. In 2000 he unveiled the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which strives to reduce global poverty, improve health care in developing nations, and increase opportunities for education in the United States. In 2006, billionaire Warren Buffet expanded the foundation with a donation worth more than $30 billion dollars.

Joan Kroc The widow of McDonald's founder Ray Kroc devoted her life to a wide variety of philanthropic causes, but one of the most unusual gifts she made, six years before her death, was an anonymous $15 million donation to the citizens of Grand Forks, North Dakota, and East Grand Forks, Minnesota, after a flood devastated the cities in 1997. She died in 2006, leaving multi-million dollar bequests to public radio and peace organizations.

Clara Weitzenhoffer In 2000, the University of Oklahoma became owner of one of the world's finest impressionistic art collections overnight, when oil baroness Clara Weitzenhoffer willed $50 million worth of paintings and works on paper (by such luminaries as Degas, Renoir and Van Gogh) to the school.

 

Ruth Lilly The arts world was stunned when philanthropist Ruth Lilly (sole living heiress to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical fortune) left stock worth $200 million to the Poetry Foundation – publisher of the tiny literary magazine Poetry – in 2002.

Ted Turner The broadcasting mogul hopes to leave the world a better place with a legacy, already in motion, of large donations to organizations funding the United Nations' work in developing countries with $100 million a year; he also is funding efforts to reduce nuclear proliferation with a $250 million-a-year effort.

Here at ReZoom, we're exploring ways to leave behind a positive legacy. Click here to see the rest of our stories. Get inspired. It's never too late to create a legacy. More