DAME STEPHANIE SHIRLEY built a fortune said to be in the vicinity of 50 million pounds. She is giving it all away – through philanthropy.
The retired British businesswoman, who is now in her 70s, reasons: “Philanthropy is not really a one-way process, because it does seem to me the more I give away the richer my life seems to be.”
She views giving as “a voluntary task”, stating “I choose to give”. The willingness to part with her wealth for philanthropic purposes led former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to select her last year as the UK’s Ambassador for Philanthropy, the first such position to be created worldwide, and she has been travelling the world spreading the gospel of her style of giving ever since.
Shirley addressed the Ninth Commonwealth Women’s Ministers Meeting at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre on Tuesday. Last night, she met local philanthropists and heads of non-profit organisations at a British High Commission reception, and today she lunches with a similar group to share her ideas.
After addressing the Commonwealth Women’s Ministers, Shirley told journalists: “My contribution here has been to inspire the idea that an ambassador for philanthropy has made a difference in England and I think it is an idea that can be taken to other countries.”
She willingly shares her success story, and in an interview with the WEEKEND NATION, she explained, “The main thing I believe that has driven me to philanthropy is the feeling that the life that was saved was worth saving. I don’t really want to fritter the day away on trivial things.
I want to make it worthwhile.”
And she is ever aware that her life was saved as millions of other German lives were lost.
Shirley arrived in Britain in 1939, an unaccompanied five-year-old German refugee sent overseas by her parents to escape the fate of many others who perished during the war.
“One of 10 000 girls and boys, I arrived in London stateless, penniless and without a word of English,” she told the Commonwealth Ministers.
Fostered by a British couple, to whom she remains extremely grateful, she was by her own account “a hardworking child collecting berries and rosehips, picking potatoes and (doing) all the things that children were expected to do during the war”.
The German refugee child grew up to start a business technology group at her dining room table, with a mere six pounds in 1962. For over 25 years she developed the company, now known as Xansa, into a FTSE 250 leading technology group that has pioneered new working practices and changed the position of professional women, especially in the field of hi-tech.
Through her initiative and by dint of hard work, she presided over her business growth to a multibillion-pound enterprise.
“I met the glass ceiling pretty low, and so I started my own company to get through it.”
She maintains that her social aim was for women and their empowerment. “It was a company of women, and I used to measure the progress that I was making in terms of the number of women to whom I was providing gainful professional employment.”
The software company, which was initially called F.I. Group, created work opportunities for women with dependants and employed only women until Britain’s 1975 Sex Discrimination Act outlawed that practice.
Reports are that most of Shirley’s wealth, which she has donated to many charitable causes over the years, was gleaned from the internal sale of the company to staff, as well as from later flotation of the F.I. Group.
Through her own charity, the Shirley Foundation, which ranks among the top 50 grant-giving foundations in the UK, institutions like the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University have been established. Much of her charitable focus, however, has been on autism, in tribute to her autistic son, who died ten years ago. With the support of her husband, a retired physicist, she has put millions into funding work with and for autism, setting up support homes to care for adults with autism, supporting autism-linked charities and funding research to determine the cause of the disability.
Shirley views philanthropy as an act of development as opposed to a handout.
“I was given charity when I was a child, and I remember how awful it was to have to feel grateful for being given something. If you do give in that almost colonial way, then that really is not philanthropy.”
Britain awarded Shirley the OBE for services to industry, and also made her a Dame Commander. She also received the Mountbatten medal, among other accolades, in recognition of her contribution to that country’s development.
How wealthy was she really? She would only respond, “I trailed Her Majesty the Queen at one time in her wealth.” And she reiterates: “The intention is very much to give it all away.”
Though she says she has set aside just enough for her and her husband to continue to enjoy “a good life”, she remarks, “There is a famous quote that says he who dies rich, dies disgraced and I think that is how I feel about spending.”
