The charitable tycoon who has pledged £1 billion to charity over his lifetimeThere is, in the opening chapter of Jane Austen'
s Sense and Sensibility, a masterly – and damning – insight into the nature of human generosity. At his father's deathbed, John Dashwood assures him that he will look after his mother and sisters and resolves to give his sisters £1,000 a piece. He could, he tells himself, "spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience". But his wife isn't happy about his generosity. And really, neither is he. Perhaps he should make it just £500. Indeed, perhaps £100 would do. In fact, how about nothing at all? Which is what he gives.
Sometimes, resolutions to be generous shrivel into something less. But when Sir Tom Hunter, founder of Sports Division and owner of West Coast Capital, established a charitable foundation because it was "tax efficient", it grew into something more. This year, Hunter pledged to donate a billion pounds to charity in the course of his lifetime. Explaining his growing sense of commitment to others, he said: "I got begging letters and cheques went out but the emptiness grew. Was I making a difference? Had I been conned? I was 37 and needed a challenge. I found it in philanthropy."
We assume wealth makes generosity easy. But it is often noted, particularly by celebrities travelling to Africa with charities, that the less people have, the more willing they are to share. Their lives are not centred on material things. They have no fear of loss. The rich, on the other hand, are often corrupted by their accumulation of wealth: it simply makes them want to amass more. And the truth is that wealth is comparative. Most of us who have the money to buy a Sunday newspaper are vastly wealthy compared with many in Africa – that doesn't make us pledge half our salary every month.
Hunter has shown it is possible to grow a bank balance and keep a soul. "With great wealth," he always says, "comes great responsibility." Hunter says Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie is a hero of his. But just as human nature is not always materially generous, neither is it always generous-spirited about the motives of others. Cynics ask if ego is involved. Do philanthropists simply desire future generations to see their names on publicly donated buildings? Even if that were true, it seems a small foible compared to the greed of the wealthy who do nothing. Perhaps those who live most generously deserve to be remembered longest.
Hunter is a talented businessman. He grew the Sports Division chain from nothing and sold it to JJB in 1998 for £252 million. But his business acumen is not what takes him into our top ten Scots of the Year.
If Hunter is remembered in future generations, it won't be for his sportswear but for his humanitarianism. His foundation looks inwards in Scotland to invest in education in the most deprived areas. It looks outwards to the rest of the world to fight poverty in developing countries.
Hunter came from the mining village of New Cumnock and has known unemployment. He has known what it's like to struggle, to sleep in the back of a van among boxes of training shoes. He is a great Scot of 2007 because he has demonstrated not only the drive to improve his lot, but also the grace to remember where he came from, and the people he left behind.
Catherine Deveney
