Portrait of a tycoon as driven benefactor - Business - International Herald Tribune

Portrait of a tycoon as driven benefactor - Business - International Herald Tribune: "t takes a singular sense of purpose to turn a lone Michigan pizza joint into a multibillion-dollar global brand. Yet the founder of Domino's Pizza, Thomas Monaghan, certainly had it more than four decades ago, when he bought his first restaurant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, near Detroit - and he has brought that same sense of mission to the task of giving his pizza fortune away.

Since netting about $1 billion from the 1998 sale of Domino's to Bain Capital, Monaghan, 69, has become one of the leading U.S. philanthropists and the biggest benefactor of conservative Roman Catholic institutions.

In the past eight years, his Ave Maria Foundation, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has donated $140 million to promote conservative Catholic education, media and other organizations, including Detroit-area parochial grade schools, a law school and small regional colleges in Michigan and Nicaragua, along with radio stations and a fellowship group for Catholic business leaders."

Tags: NPMegaGivers, NPGiving