Daniel Rubin: His is a humble but helping hand

Francis H. Rasmus Jr. isn't sure what they want him to speak about next week at Leave-A-Legacy's annual luncheon, but if it's up to him, he'll start with his grandmother.

He was about 6 or 7 when she hired him to mow her lawn in Jenkintown, and then paid him a whopping $10 if he'd bank it all.

She had another rule: Be generous. This was Grandmother's way.

"When I'd stay with her in the summer, she'd say, 'It's about time to send money to Father Flanagan and Boys Town.' "

Some fancy organizations and boldfaced donors are lined up to attend the Leave-A-Legacy luncheon at the Philadelphia Racquet Club. Rasmus is anything but fancy.

"He's the real deal," says Ned Donoghue, director of planned giving for the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Rasmus, 64, retired last year as a medical claims adjuster. A single man who lives in his boyhood rowhouse in Castor Gardens, he never earned more than $45,000 a year.

But he has managed to give away more than $700,000 to 17 charities and fund 10 endowments. And he's just getting started.

"Why wait," he asks, "when the need is there now, and you can have fun watching the good work?"

He sits in his darkened living room - the only light coming from the TV, where CNBC gives the morning business report. He dresses formally for his visitor, and when he is asked a question, he jots down his thoughts on a legal pad, so his answers can be precise.

DVDs - mostly action flicks - are piled on his card table. "I haven't bought anything to display them in," he says.

It's not that he's miserly. He just hasn't had a spare hour. He was going through a charitable-giving mailing from a Catholic charity when I rang his buzzer. He gets about a dozen such mailings a day from nonprofits. Giving, he finds, is a full-time job.

But before you think of Frank Rasmus as an easy mark, know that he has planned the dispensation of his small fortune down to the dime. And it is not easy to put one over on a man who spent his career talking to those who might be goldbricking.

The obvious question is: How does a modest man get to give away that much money? By saving. And by wanting to give.

By the time he graduated from Father Judge, he wound up ineligible for a scholarship to La Salle because he'd already put enough away to pay for tuition.

When he joined Provident Mutual Life Insurance in 1961, his boss told him he'd never get rich there, but he'd do OK if he stuck with it. All employees could use the company's research library. Rasmus moved in.

He devoured publications such as

Value Line

and Standard & Poor's

Outlook

, and over 40 years made some smart stock picks, like buying Johnson & Johnson in the mid-'80s for around $3 a share. (It's worth 20 times that now.)

About a decade ago, his lawyer asked him, "When are you going to start giving it away?" Rasmus began in January 2004, with a $12,000 stock gift to the Smithsonian. In return, he reduced his taxes plus earned a $709 annual annuity.

One of his pleasures is honoring his family, so in his parents' name he has donated to the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Kennedy Center - his father had played guitar in big bands before inspecting valves for Minneapolis-Honeywell.

To remember his grandfather, who'd been groundsman for an Abington estate, Rasmus set up an endowment in botanical research at Morris Arboretum.

And for his Grandmother Mary, who started everything, he set up an endowment through the Archdiocese of Baltimore to feed the poor. She would have liked that.

"Almost anyone can do this," he said, getting ready to drive to the Ocean County Library, where he'd check out an art exhibit and some investment newsletters. "If you have something you love, you can support it."