Dick DeVos and his wife, Betsy DeVos, gave an estimated $138.7 million between the years 1989 and 2015, according to a report in Crain’s. Much of this money went to leadership programs, the arts, cultural projects, health care initiatives, churches and policy initiatives centered on educational reform. The latter included scholarships for sending students to private schools.
Nearly $140 million seems like a lot of money, but it represents just a fraction of the philanthropic and charitable giving that Dick DeVos has directed to worthy causes over the decades.
Dick DeVos has a lot of wealth to share. He is the son of Richard DeVos, the co-founder of the Amway Corporation. As heir to the Amway fortune, Dick DeVos is a certified billionaire. He also married into money. His wife, the formers Elisabeth Prince, also hails from one of Michigan’s wealthiest families. Her father was the auto parts magnate Edgar Prince.
Together, Dick and Betsy DeVos are worth more than $5 billion. Since the 1980s, it is estimated that they have given away about a quarter of their net worth.
Dick DeVos has been deeply influenced by his wife to support educational causes and reforms. Betsy DeVos is the current U.S. Secretary of Education in the Cabinet of President Donald Trump. However, her interests in education precedes this position by decades. Both Dick and Betsy DeVos are ardent supporters of charter schools.
Dick DeVos personally bankrolled a charter school in Grand Rapids. The West Michigan Aviation Academy was launched in an unused office building at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in 2010. This school is a tuition-free public charter school where high school students can learn to fly airplanes while they work toward their diplomas. It began with 80 enrollees. Today it educates more than 600 Michigan youths from a seven-county region.
Dick DeVos has also been influential in shaping the civic community and urban profile of the city he loves, Grand Rapids. In the 1990s, DeVos stepped in to quash a plan to build a multi-million sports and entertainment complex for the city. The initiative had the support of a who’s who of high-profile movers and shakers in Grand Rapids — but Dick DeVos brought a better long-term development strategy.
Today, all involved are happy they took the advice of DeVos. Under his leadership, Grand Rapids developers moved ahead with building a series of alternative community projects that have reshaped the skyline of the city.
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