Tom Golisano, 79, made his fortune in founding Paychex, a payroll and human resources service that contracts with hundreds of thousands of businesses around the world. The company, which went public in the early 1980s and operates in 18 countries, brings in around $4.1 billion in revenue a year. Still chairman of the board, Golisano is worth an estimated $4.2 billion.
In 1985, Golisano founded the B. Thomas Golisano Foundation. Its aim was and still is to support organizations which provide opportunities to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Most of the over $300 million that Golisano has donated in his life has been toward those ends.
In 2012, Golisano donated $12 million to the Special Olympics to help launch the Healthy Communities initiative, which again was targeted at those with intellectual disabilities. In 2015, he expanded it with another donation, this one $25 million. This gift helped expand Healthy Communities to over 100 locations around the world and was the largest single-donor gift ever given to the Special Olympics.
Six years later, Tom Golisano has broken his own record. A $30 million donation will help Healthy Communities expand again. There is, after all, no end to the need for health care access for all, especially the very vulnerable.
“By investing in our Healthy Communities, Mr. Golisano will allow us to expand to hundreds of new domestic and global regions. This new gift comes at a critical time for our global community, as we have seen during this pandemic just how little this population has been prioritized,” said Dr. Alicia Bazzano, the Special Olympics’ Chief Health Officer in a statement.
The Healthy Communities initiative currently operates in six U.S. states and eight countries – Kazakhstan, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Romania, South Africa, and Thailand. The initiative works to train health providers in the needs of patients with intellectual disabilities, to conduct health screenings, and to provide health advocacy for those who need it.
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