More Than an Entrepreneur: How Best Buy Founder Dick Schulze Saves Lives

Along with funding worthy organizations and missions through his foundation, Dick Schulze also works behind the scenes to help individuals who are in trouble.

Founders who build great companies are often revered in the business world.  But along with their accomplishments as entrepreneurs, a number of them work quietly behind the scenes to make an impact in another way: helping to improve people's lives, and even save them. In fact, entrepreneurs are much more generous with their wealth than successful people who've made their fortunes working for others. These entrepreneurs deploy the same ingenuity and influence that helped them build companies towards serving humanity. 

We at EIX and FamilyBusiness.org are aiming to feature more of these philanthropic entrepreneurs. We are starting with the man who has made our sites possible: Best Buy Founder and Former Chairman Richard M. Schulze, whose foundation has supported our work since 2014 and allows us to bring research-based best practices -- for free and without advertisements -- to millions of business owners, entrepreneurship students, professors, and others around the world.

Through his Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, Dick supports not only EIX and FamilyBusiness.org, but also hundreds of other worthy organizations in the fields of education, social services, and health care.  He has funded lunches and computers for school children in underserved areas; improvements to hospitals; disease research; community projects in areas where Best Buy has a presence; and many other initiatives.  However, in private Dick also works behind the scenes to help individuals who are in trouble.

In this interview, EIX Founding Editor Jim Wetherbe talks with fellow Editor Kimberly Eddleston (who is also Senior Editor of FamilyBusiness.org) not only about Dick's passion for helping more entrepreneurs succeed -- the impetus for our two sites -- but also his quiet outreach to individuals who are struggling.  Jim, who has battled colon cancer, also talks movingly about his long friendship with Dick and how his friend made it possible for him to have access to the best cancer therapies at the Mayo Clinic. He calls his relationship with Dick "a high performance friendship extraordinaire."

We hope to feature more philanthropic entrepreneurs like Dick in future editions. Please send suggestions to EIX Managing Editor Cathy Buday at [email protected].