David Rubenstein, '73, Practices Patriotic Philanthropy

Billionaire investor David Rubenstein counts among the reasons for his success an intact family, scholarships to the best schools, a lot of good role models, and the fact that he wasn’t a great lawyer. “It required more attention to detail and more confidence than I had,” he says, reflecting on the path that led him to found The Carlyle Group, a global asset management firm that has made him “more money than I can consume intelligently or than my children should ever have, so I decided to give it away,” he says. “A large part of my philanthropy goes back to the country.”

He calls it patriotic philanthropy, and he defines it as giving money to projects that government would be doing if it had the resources. Last month, he announced a $10 million gift to restore the home of James Madison, the nation’s fourth president. In July, he gave $12.3 million to refurbish the Virginia home of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate General. He also picked up half the $15 million tab to rebuild the Washington Monument after a 2011 earthquake, and his copy of the Emancipation Proclamation is on loan to the White House.

At an event in early October arranged by The Atlantic at their Watergate headquarters in Washington, Rubenstein explained how he decided “honestly, on the spur of the moment” to buy the Magna Carta, which Texas billionaire Ross Perot had put up for sale. Rubenstein said he thought the only copy of the 1297 document in existence in the United States shouldn’t leave the country, so he bought it for $21.3 million. He jokes about going through airport security with the then 800-year-old document, which is now on loan to the National Archives.