An Accidental Philanthropist

This is the story of how a chance encounter led to romance, marriage, and a partnership covering a half century of creative philanthropy by Michael and Winsome Dunn McIntosh. In the 1970s, they began using an unexpected inheritance to expand the protection of America’s natural resources through life-giving early support to the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club’s legal arm. On numerous occasions they demonstrated how a small foundation can have an outsized impact in the United States and abroad where a dynamic non-profit they founded, London-based ClientEarth, carries forward legal protections for the environment around the world. At 80 years of age, Winsome continues to promote the role of women in philanthropy and their place in the management of non-profit organizations.

Author Biography

Winsome Dunn McIntosh grew up in a military family that moved regularly across the United States and on to Europe. She was a 1966 honor graduate in business administration at the University of Florida at a time when a woman couldn’t get a credit card without a man’s endorsement. She found work as a stewardess at Pan Am before leaving to raise three sons while collaborating with her husband in creative philanthropic ventures. In the 1990s, she began her own trail-blazing career in non-profits. Now a widow, she remains a working philanthropist living in Washington, D.C., and on the Florida Gulf Coast near her sister, Bonny, a psychic who can bend spoons with her telekinetic powers.

Howard E. Covington Jr. has published more than two dozen works of history and biography, most of them about institutions and people in North Carolina where he makes his home. Early in his career he was a newspaper reporter and editor whose series of articles for the Charlotte Observer received the Pulitzer Public Service Award in 1981.