When the billionaires Lynn and Foster Friess invited roughly 200 friends to Jackson Hole, Wyo. this summer to celebrate the couple’s 70th birthdays, they asked the guests to identify their favorite charity that helps others and vowed to give $70,000 to the most worthy nominee. The Friesses picked up all expenses for the four-day bash, which culminated with a dinner party at the Four Seasons hotel. As the hotel’s waiters distributed envelopes on silver platters, Mr. Friess asked the winner to stand up and shout and for the other guests to remain seated.
“Within seconds, everybody was standing up and yelling, “I won! I won!” says Molly F. Greene III, a cofounder of Water Missions International, a Christian-based charity that helps provide safe drinking water in developing countries.
Mr. and Mrs. Friess had surprised their guests by writing $70,000 checks to each of the nominated charities—a show of generosity that cost the couple $7.7-million.
“People were in tears,” Ms. Greene says. “For some charities, that’s a two-year operating budget.”
Inspiring Additional Gifts
The Friesses have supported Water Missions International since 2004, and Ms. Greene’s husband and son, who also work at the charity, have gone hunting with Mr. Friess. Water Missions International came away with $210,000 from the event—two $70,000 gifts from the Friesses and another $70,000 gift from someone who was inspired by a video of the charity’s work that was shown during the dinner.
Joan Clark, an intensive-care nurse at Howard County General Hospital, in Columbia, Md., who is related to the Friesses by marriage, chose the hospital’s Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center as her charity. “I didn’t think we stood a chance to win,” says Ms. Clark, a two-time breast-cancer survivor who used the cancer resource center during her treatments. “In typical Foster form, he dragged it out as long as he could.”
Mr. Friess, who made his fortune as an investor, says the gift was a way to “thank all our friends for the influence they’ve had in our lives and the success they have helped create.”
But several friends say the donations fit in with Mr. Friess’s overall approach to philanthropy, in which he favors matching gifts. “People at his birthday party might be inspired to do the same thing at their next birthday party,” says David Wills, president of the National Christian Foundation. “Foster is an exponential giver—and may his tribe increase.”
Traveling Arts Show
Patty Andringa, a longtime friend of the Friesses, listed the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington as her favored charity. The $70,000 gift is helping to cover the costs of retrofitting a bus with hands-on visual-arts exhibits, Mr. Andringa says. The bus will be staffed by volunteers from a local art museum and will travel to the 18 Boys & Girls Clubs in the Washington area.
“In a time of tight budgets, without this gift, we never could have gone forward with this plan,” says Ms. Andringa, who has volunteered at the charity for more than 30 years.
Nonprofits in the Friess’s hometown of Jackson were among the biggest winners on the night. Eight local charities received a total of $630,000.
Amid the chaos after the envelopes were opened, someone at Ms. Greene’s table turned to her and said: “The Lord really knew what he was doing when he gave Foster and Lynn all the money, because they really love to give it away.”