Tom Hunter

Brief description of achievement:

Tom Hunter is one of the most influential entrepreneurs and philanthropists in Scotland today. He shares Carnegie's values of extending access to education as being the best way to help people to help themselves.

He is the founder of The Hunter Foundation, a venture philanthropy organisation that invests in enterprise and educational initiatives aimed largely at children.

Hunter also uses the example of Andrew Carnegie to inspire other successful Scots to use some of their money to benefit the community.

Detailed description:

Tom Hunter is a former businessman who, until recently, owned a successful chain of Scottish sports shops, Sports Division. He has led a large number of philanthropic ventures in entrepreneurship and education and in 1999, helped to found the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University with a £5 million endowment, following the sale of his business.

Together with his wife Marion, Tom is the founder of The Hunter Foundation that aims to support the development of a more enterprising and ultimately more entrepreneurial society in Scotland by funding educational projects of national importance such as the Schools Enterprise Programme to offer primary school pupils in Scotland enterprise education. Tom also helps inform government policy via piloting programmes of change in enterprising education and a £2 million grant from The Hunter Foundation matched by the Scottish Executive has now helped to provide a seamless link between Scottish primary schools and secondary enterprise education.

Tom also continues to work with Strathclyde University and has helped to establish a summer academy that will encourage 14 year olds into higher education. In June 2003, he helped to raise more than £400,000 for the Make a Wish Foundation and Save the Children through the Entrepreneurial Exchange Summer Ball that has raised £1.2 million over its 3 years of operation.

He is Chair of the Scottish Entrepreneurial Exchange, Director of the Prince's Scottish Business Youth Trust, Schools Enterprise Scotland and a Trustee of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland.

"If you look at the history of Scotland, there was a huge philanthropic instinct in our business leaders, but it declined after the Second World War. Now the climate is changing again and entrepreneurs like Tom Hunter are pushing cultural change. Tom Hunter has a remarkable drive towards getting people to follow his excellent example by reinvesting wealth in the communities."

Professor C Duncan Rice, Aberdeen University

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