For billionaire businessman and philanthropist Tom Golisano, the closing months of 2024 were filled with reminders about the sometimes-fleeting nature of health and the importance of high-quality health care.
Within a period of six weeks, his 96-year-old sister had a hip replacement — and ended up as active as ever. His great-granddaughter underwent a successful heart transplant, and he himself needed to have a pacemaker installed.
Golisano shared these personal reflections on his and his family’s recent health events at a late-November announcement in Naples where he surprised 41 Southwest Florida nonprofits with unrestricted gifts totaling $85 million, including $15 million to health care systems. The gifts came just a couple of months after Golisano gave 82 major gifts totaling $360 million to organizations in upstate New York, including $52 million to the Golisano Foundation, increasing its assets to $120 million.
Those combined gifts brought Golisano’s philanthropy for 2024 to half a billion dollars and his lifelong philanthropy to $860 million, according to figures provided by the Golisano Foundation.
The gifts bestowed in Naples spanned five categories: Health care, education, intellectual and developmental disabilities, other critical community needs and animal welfare, with pledges ranging from $150,000 to $10 million over four to five years.
As The Naples Press reported at the time, Golisano told the nonprofit leaders assembled at the November event at arts venue Artis—Naples that he understood how difficult it is to raise money, and that he had been “impressed with the dedication and innovation” of the organizations he has built relationships with across Southwest Florida.
“I’ve said it many times, and lately more than ever: The only wealth you get to keep is that which you give away. And since I applied for immortality and was denied, I’m here today to give some away,” he told the crowd, to laughter and loud applause, adding that the amount would total $85 million.
The largest awards, $10 million each, went to Golisano Children’s Hospital and Ave Maria University in the fields of health care and education. Naples Comprehensive Health received $5 million (following another recent gift of $5 million from the Golisano Foundation).
Other organizations receiving $5 million each included Easterseals Southwest Florida, Family Initiative, Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida, LARC Inc. and STARability. Golisano Children’s Museum of Naples received $4 million, and Guadalupe Center, American Red Cross Southwest Florida, Meals of Hope and Youth Haven received $3 million each.
In a wide-ranging late December interview at the Naples home he shares with his wife, retired tennis champion Monica Seles, Golisano talked about what motivated the surprise gifts in Naples in November; what led him to start Paychex, a payroll and human resources company; what he’s doing to help change business education — and how he wants to be remembered.
Surprising the nonprofits
Golisano said the surprise nature of the $85 million bequests in November was “part of the fun,” with the nonprofit leaders invited to an event without knowing the purpose.
“The fun of it all, of course, was we sent them an invitation and wouldn’t tell them why they were being invited,” he said. “And of course we got numerous calls: ‘Why am I being invited to this thing?’ And Erica [Dayton], our [Golisano] Foundation director, merely told them, ‘You’d better be there; you’ll be happy you are.’ So, yes, that part of it was fun.
“But giving out the grant envelopes and having the people come up and shake my hand, and some of them gave me hugs and kisses, and there was a bunch of tears on a bunch of people’s faces — it was so rewarding for myself personally and for my family to see this happening. So it was a great event and we gladly surprised them all. We don’t know if we can do that again, if ever, but it was a lot of fun.”
Golisano said he got “tons of letters and emails and cards” from nonprofits after the event thanking him for the “transformative” gifts to their organizations. But he was also in for a surprise of his own: He said that in both Rochester and Naples he never got a letter or a card or a text message from a local or regional politician.
“We spend our time thinking about direct services to people, whether it be medical or health or autism and so on,” he said about the selected nonprofits. “And we don’t try to lump them into one category. There are so many great organizations in our communities, and I don’t think they’re appreciated enough. So, this was another way for us to be able to show some appreciation for these organizations … I’m just sorry a politician didn’t recognize this as something beneficial to their community; it’s just surprising.”
Giving credit to Paychex and its people
At the November event in Naples announcing the $85 million in gifts, Golisano said that none of the philanthropy he has been involved in would ever have happened “except for one thing, and that was a company called Paychex,” and he thanked the almost 17,000 employees nationwide “because they really make it possible.”
Golisano, who served as CEO of Paychex for more than 30 years and continues to serve on the board, started the company — which provides payroll and human resources services for small- and medium-sized companies — when he was 30 years old, with $3,000 and a credit card.
At press time, the company had a market cap of $50.29 billion, according to Forbes.
In his first book, Built, Not Born, he wrote that the $3,000 he used for the Paychex seed money was what he netted from selling a business publication he had started called Bidders Guide.
During the December interview with The Naples Press, Golisano said the idea for Paychex came to him when he was working for another payroll processing company, and he noticed that there was an opportunity to serve smaller companies that needed payroll services.
“They had their goals set in a specific market — larger employers, 50 employees and above — and I realized nobody cared about the smaller companies,” he said. “And you drive down any street in America, and most of the companies are small: 98% of them have less than 100 employees: nobody was going after that marketplace.
“So, being sort of an entrepreneur, as a sales manager, I think I decided I could become an entrepreneur with this market niche that nobody was tackling. And if there’s anything you need to have in business, it’s industry knowledge. Industry knowledge is everything. I was fortunate enough, having worked for a payroll processor, I could identify a market niche that, uh, nobody was interested in.”
Golisano said the people who ran the company he worked for decided it wasn’t a good idea to go after smaller companies.
“And that was the luck of my life,” he said with a laugh. “As a matter of fact, I went to them twice with the idea, you know, and I was willing to be just a part of it working for that company. And they turned the idea down twice. So that’s when I made my decision. I was prepared to go out there and get it done.”
He said that as risky as becoming an entrepreneur can be, there are some advantages to being an owner rather than an employee, especially when it comes to what you can leave behind.
“You can’t sell a job, but you can sell a company,” he said. “You can’t pass it [a job] on to an heir. You can’t give your job to a son or a daughter or a niece or a nephew. So, what’s riskier? I think not being an entrepreneur for some people is riskier.”
For those who do consider taking the risk of starting a business, he said he would remind them of the risks inherent in working for someone else. He recounted how he would talk to Paychex franchisees and partners about the risks of entrepreneurship.
“When I was talking to them about becoming an entrepreneur and leaving their somewhat comfortable job, risk was always in the back of their mind and probably their wife’s or husband’s mind,” he recalled.
“So, I went through the vocabulary of saying ‘Well, what happens if you do a good job and your boss does a lousy job and it affects your career? Or you and your boss do a good job, but the division does terrible, or your division does great, and the rest of the company does terrible?’ All these things are going to affect or potentially affect your livelihood. That’s what I call risk.”
Asked what kind of business he would start if he were 30 years old today, his response came quickly.
“Oh, I think I’d go into the payroll business,” he said, laughing. “I know I can make a success of it. It’s a huge market.
“I would do it all again. Maybe some of the ways I did it would be different, and that’s true. But for the most part, the idea of doing it, absolutely. I mean, whoever thought this little payroll processing company could grow to 16,000 employees, you know, with a $50 billion market cap?”
Reinventing business education
When it comes to educating future entrepreneurs, Golisano envisions a better way than how higher education currently handles it — which is why he started last year the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship in Rochester.
The Institute is endowed by the Golisano Foundation and offers students a two-year program with what the website, golisanoinstitute.org, calls a “hyper-focused curriculum” at a cost to students of $8,900 per year, with a goal of graduating with no debt.
“I think we have a fairly significant problem in this country when it relates to college education or higher education,” Golisano said. “It’s expensive. It’s time-consuming, because it gives you so much time off; the state mandates that to me, are totally unnecessary. Our calendar is based on an agrarian society, farming, when the kids had to go back for the summer to work on the farms. So, the school year, both public and private, is totally expanded, and it costs too much.”
Golisano said the Institute, which currently has 100 students, has only one curriculum, business — “but it’s very comprehensive.
“There are classes Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and Wednesday is ‘speaker from experience’ day,” he said. “We have a speaker every Wednesday, speakers with entrepreneurial backgrounds … But here’s the key thing: In two years, because of our calendar, a student at our institute would get 140% of the curriculum that you would get in a four-year business major.”
“The only wealth you keep …”
In Golisano’s long lifetime — he is now 83 — his reach has gone far beyond business and philanthropy.
In the political arena, he ran for governor of New York three times as an Independent and has been a fierce advocate for tax reform. In sports, he bought and sold the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and the Buffalo Bandits lacrosse team. He continues to invest in companies he believes in, and the Golisano Institute for Business and Entrepreneurship obviously is something he is passionate about.
But asked about his legacy — and how he wants to be remembered — he keeps it simple, reflecting what he told the audience of grateful Southwest Florida nonprofit leaders in November about how the only wealth you keep is what you give away.
And with a current net worth that Forbes estimates at $6.5 billion, giving it away is what Golisano wants to do.
“I have a huge problem,” he said. “What do I do with it? So, I’m trying to give it away to people who need it, that can use it. It’s an issue. I certainly don’t want to give it to the U.S. government.”
As for that legacy question: How does he hope he’s remembered?
“I hope I left it [the world] better than when I came,” he said, smiling. “I hope the world’s better off because I was here rather than being a nuisance.”
This story was published in The Naples Press on Jan. 10.
