How Ross Perot Jr. helped a civic club raise $209,000 for Fort Worth kids
A downtown Fort Worth civic club with a history of pranks and high jinks celebrated a more subdued Christmas this year, welcoming national business leader Ross Perot Jr. and raising $209,000 in an hour Dec. 3 at its annual charity holiday party.
The math is astounding: That’s nearly $2,000 donated by each member of the Exchange Club of Fort Worth, celebrating an 89-year-old tradition by helping children through the Fort Worth-based North Texas Community Foundation.
Perot, chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, laid out his own astounding news from his showcase AllianceTexas development, marking its 36th year as what has become a $10 billion-plus annual jackpot that brings 66,000 jobs to Fort Worth and Texas.
No surprise: AllianceTexas is twice the size of Manhattan and about the same acreage as the entire city of San Francisco.
But surprise: “We’re about half done,” Perot told the audience in a banquet room at the downtown Fort Worth Club.
Perot and Mike Berry, president of AllianceTexas parent Hillwood Properties, have supported Fort Worth causes for 40 years.
But it was Perot’s first visit to the Exchange Club charity party, which raises money for local children’s charities including $50,000 for the Goodfellow Fund.
The club dispensed with its usual jokes and pranking of new members, among them U.S. Rep. Craig Goldman, Mayor Mattie Parker, TCU Chancellor Daniel Pullin and energy CEO and Texas Tech football donor John Sellers.
Instead of teasing them about their schools’ football seasons or drawing scissors to snip off neckties, club President Mark Thomas introduced them and thanked them with “have a good rest of the day.”
Club members used to swing a chainsaw, lead marching bands through the meeting or herd a horse or steer through the room to prod members into donating more money.
Instead, they quietly sent in checks or sent online bank transfers to the foundation, which will dole grants to several nonprofits. They include the Goodfellow Fund, which provides school clothes and shoes for children in need.
“We want to support children in need but do it through a lot of little charities, not just one big one,” Thomas said.
Parker called the party “the legacy of a club that emphasizes giving back to the community.”
Perot, 67, told the audience over a beef tenderloin lunch how he came to Fort Worth as a small child to visit his grandmother Lula May and aunt Bette.
According to Star-Telegram archives, Bette Perot was a teacher at what was then Meadowbrook Junior High and later dean at Southwest High School and lived on Robinhood Lane in Handley.
“Every time I visited my grandmother I’d go in the back yard and dig holes,” he said. “So, I’ve literally been digging holes in Fort Worth all my life.”
Perot recounted AllianceTexas’ history for a crowd of executives and business leaders who mostly know it well. He told the story from AllianceTexas’ beginnings under late Mayor Bob Bolen to recent deals landing tenants such as Las Vegas-based MP Materials, Taiwan-based NVIDIA partner Wistron and a giant TV and a video studio complex for producer Taylor Sheridan.
“Magnets, [computer] chips, the studio — it’s all in Fort Worth,” he said.
“The future of North Texas is really to the west.”
He shook off one last question.
When former Star-Telegram publisher Wes Turner asked Perot about running for president, he laughed.
“I thought you were a friend,” he said.
ABOUT GOODFELLOWS
The Goodfellow Fund began as an offshoot of the first newspaper charity drive in the United States, founded by the Chicago Tribune newspaper on Dec. 10, 1909.
A Chicago city attorney wrote a letter challenging his friends to donate the money they would have spent on holiday partying to charity.
Two years later, the Advertising Club of Fort Worth staged the first local Goodfellows campaign.
On the day after Thanksgiving in 1912, Publisher Amon G. Carter (1879-1955) brought the tradition to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, with Editor James M. North as the first Chief Goodfellow.
To find out more, visit goodfellowfundfw.com.
Send donations and correspondence to P.O. Box 149, Fort Worth TX 76101.
Editor’s note: Columnist Bud Kennedy is a member of the Goodfellow Fund’s board.
This story was originally published December 3, 2025 at 5:05 PM.
