The Boston Globe
How a hard-working fruit punch salesman constructed a suburban actual property empire — and why he’s now targeted on giving it away.
Joanna de Peña had quite a bit on her thoughts in Could when a volunteer for the Cummings Basis mentioned he would cease by with a cameraman to shoot a video at her nonprofit in Lawrence.
A state grant was about to expire, and de Peña was fretting concerning the monetary stability of Prime Notch Students, which mentors a whole lot of teenagers yearly. Then, quarter-hour into the go to, the Cummings consultant revealed the true motive he was there: The inspiration was pledging $1 million over 10 years to the nonprofit — ten occasions the dimensions of its earlier donation.
“To be sincere, I’m not a crier, and I broke down,” de Peña recalled. “When he mentioned that, it took me abruptly. After I heard that ‘million {dollars},’ I can lastly convey sustainability to the group.”
She will’t be the one nonprofit govt round right here who’s been moved to tears of pleasure currently. Each spring, the inspiration that actual property developer Invoice Cummings and his spouse launched within the Eighties doles out tens of millions to native charities. And so they don’t plan to cease till they provide away the remainder of their fortune.
“I don’t need to simply cease working, however neither do I need to work to simply accumulate cash,” mentioned the 86-year-old Cummings, who has amassed one of many largest industrial actual property empires in Boston’s suburbs. “What else are you going to do with it? Our children have greater than they want. … It’s the chance to do issues to proceed to make a distinction.”
Some billionaires are a goal of public scorn. However it’s the alternative with Cummings. He has constructed up a reservoir of goodwill by funneling the income from his Woburn-based actual property enterprise, Cummings Properties, into Massachusetts charities. Previously 12 months, the inspiration awarded greater than it had ever granted in any earlier fiscal yr: The presents totaled $102 million, together with the $30 million to community-focused nonprofits, $10 million to Salem State College, and $50 million to start out the Paul Farmer Collaborative in honor of the famed doctor and good friend who died in 2022.
Cummings largely stayed out of the limelight as he constructed his multibillion-dollar empire. That modified in 2011 when he and his spouse, Joyce, grew to become the primary folks in Massachusetts to signal the “Giving Pledge,” launched by Invoice and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage billionaires to provide away at the very least half of their wealth.
In Could of this yr, Cummings regaled a crowd at a UMass graduation dinner with recollections of that point, recalling an early Giving Pledge assembly in Arizona. When Invoice and Joyce Cummings arrived on the resort the place the assembly was being held, of their Funds rental automobile, the entrance desk clerk requested for his or her tail quantity. They’d no concept what he was speaking about.
“We had been maybe the one couple there who didn’t arrive on a personal jet,” Cummings advised the College of Massachusetts Amherst crowd.
The inspiration owns about two-thirds of Cummings Properties’ buildings — all the portfolio spans 11 million-plus sq. toes — and receives all rental income from them (Cummings’s growth agency manages the buildings professional bono). Cummings himself nonetheless owns some buildings for tax and property planning functions; these will go to the inspiration after he dies.
It’s not in his nature to hunt the highlight. However Cummings jumped on the alternative to affix up with the Giving Pledge, and to make use of the eye large presents can garner to encourage others.
“The fundamental idea of the Giving Pledge from the beginning was to get extra prosperous folks to not be afraid to let their philanthropy be seen,” Cummings mentioned.
That concept has confirmed out again and again. Contemplate this: In February 2022, the Cummings Basis introduced a $12.5 million reward to what was then the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Expertise in Boston, the most important reward within the faculty’s historical past. Since that point, what’s now referred to as Franklin Cummings Tech has raised at the very least $15 million extra, president Aisha Francis mentioned, because it plans to construct a brand new house in Nubian Sq. in Roxbury.
“I don’t imagine we’d have raised that cash that rapidly, with out the confidence-building assist from the Cummings Basis,” mentioned Francis, whose college prepares low-income college students for technical and well being care careers.
Cummings’s strategy displays his modest roots. Rising up in Medford, he initially didn’t plan to go to school till a steering counselor persuaded him to use. He tagged together with a good friend to the admissions workplace at close by Tufts College, and, as he places it, talked his approach into the college.
After graduating in 1958, Cummings obtained his begin promoting Vicks VapoRub and Gorton’s frozen fish as a touring salesman within the Sixties. He then made a fortuitous determination: He purchased a floundering fruit punch enterprise, Previous Medford, for $4,000. By way of persistence and salesmanship, he turned it round by usually cajoling senior officers at faculties and universities throughout Higher Boston (together with Tufts) to put in his juice machines. Finally, he was promoting Previous Medford throughout 20-plus states.
By the point he offered the enterprise in 1970 for $1 million, he had the foresight to develop a small workplace constructing subsequent door to Previous Medford’s plant in Woburn. Nearly in a single day, he went from promoting fruit punch to growing workplace parks.
Within the early Seventies, he began growing Cummings Park in Woburn. He targeted on that metropolis as Cummings Properties grew within the ensuing years, finally increasing into close by communities. After the suburban workplace market crashed within the early Nineteen Nineties, Cummings went on a buying spree to make the most of depressed costs. Most notably, Cummings Properties purchased the outdated US Shoe Equipment complicated close to downtown Beverly for $500,000 from Black & Decker. The “Shoe” web site, reborn because the Cummings Heart, stays the largest property within the portfolio, at 2 million sq. toes.
It was across the time of the “Shoe” buy when Tom Alperin, co-founder of Nationwide Improvement in Newton, obtained to know Cummings. The builders grew to become enterprise companions and, finally, good buddies. Alperin and his spouse are actually among the many dozens of volunteers who assist the Cummings Basis choose grant recipients every year.
Alperin mentioned Cummings had a eager eye for suburban areas the place he constructed versatile, low-frills buildings. However right here’s the largest secret to Cummings’s monetary success: Not like most builders, who routinely borrow to finance their tasks, Cummings made almost all his actual property offers with money. No lenders to green-light main selections, or share within the income.
“Throughout all that, he by no means used debt,” Alperin mentioned. “That’s fairly exceptional. I don’t know of every other actual property developer who hasn’t used any leverage.”
One other game-changing donation final yr went to meals startup incubator CommonWealth Kitchen: $1 million over 10 years. Cummings himself confirmed up on a Zoom name with some volunteers to shock govt director Jen Faigel.
The nonprofit additionally acquired a $1 million grant from the inspiration requiring different donors to match it. And the inspiration’s blessing, Faigel mentioned, importantly counted as a seal of approval that made the incubator extra interesting to different potential donors. As on the Ben Franklin institute, as soon as the Cummings grants to CommonWealth Kitchen grew to become recognized, different donors stepped up. The timing was good for the nonprofit, which was scraping collectively cash to purchase its personal constructing in Dorchester to make sure it might proceed to assist meals entrepreneurs from Boston’s neighborhoods.
“I used to be so extremely humbled by that have, and shocked for certain,” Faigel recalled. “I’m nonetheless struggling to seek out the phrases of how appreciative I’m of their confidence in what we’re doing.”
The competitors for Cummings’s cash may be fierce. Some nonprofits apply yr after yr. Throughout this cycle, 630 Higher Boston nonprofits requested for funds. The inspiration, working with the assistance of about 90 volunteers, picked 150 grantees.
“There’s no person that’s delegating the kind of duty we’re to the group,” Cummings mentioned of his volunteer corps. “[It’s] what we name the ‘democratization of philanthropy.’”
Among the many newest spherical’s winners: Future Cooks, a nonprofit in Roxbury that teaches private abilities to youngsters via cooking lessons. A few decade in the past, the nonprofit acquired $100,000 from the inspiration. Now, it’s getting $400,000 over 10 years.
“For all we all know, the subsequent Invoice Cummings will come out of Roxbury, out of our program,” Future Cooks founder Toni Elka mentioned. “He’s investing within the actual factor that allowed him to construct his wealth.”
Cummings hardly ever will get concerned anymore in deal-making, spending his workplace time as a substitute mentoring colleagues, and inspiring staffers to choose his mind. A lot of his focus is on the inspiration’s charitable work. However he additionally nonetheless relishes strolling development websites, and loves taking the wheel of the agency’s 1970 Walter Snow Fighter throughout a winter storm.
“I like to put my boots on and work out the place that new entry highway ought to go,” Cummings mentioned. “The entire concept of traipsing round within the mud is completely OK with me.”