Craig Hall wants to spread capitalism. Todd Wagner wants to make inspirational movies. Trisha Wilson wants to help AIDS-ravaged South Africa. Dale LeFebvre wants a vaccine for malaria. Don Williams wants the have-nots to have.

Looking back at 2006, the biggest business story may have been not about making money, but about redeploying it for the common good.

The most stunning example, of course, was when America's two richest executives, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, joined forces to create the world's largest philanthropic organization.

But similar activity on a smaller scale is taking place right here in Dallas.

Late last week, 78-year-old oilman Boone Pickens announced his namesake foundation with a $135 million first installment.

"I love to make money," Mr. Pickens says, "but I also love to give it away."

An increasing number of successful business leaders share that feeling and are shifting their focus to leaving a legacy. For them, making another buck is no longer their primary pursuit. They want significance.

Morton Meyerson calls it his mega-tithe.

This trend is the often-unsung flip side to the executive greed that's dominating the news these days.

Here are some of their stories. May they encourage us to strive to do good while doing well in 2007. Merry Christmas.

Lucy Billingsley used to lie on the field at Hockaday, look at the sky and think: "Before I die, I have to have been a contributor to this world."

She had no idea how that would play out. But the only daughter of legendary developer Trammell Crow says the desire to make an impact "burned deeply" then – and still does.

"Why did I get opportunity and responsibility?" she asks rhetorically. "I got it so I could give it again."

Like her father, the 53-year-old Ms. Billingsley has never been one to throw money at problems. Rather, she looks for solutions worthy of her attention.

She found that in microfinance – tiny loans to start tiny businesses to beat global poverty.

Three years ago, Ms. Billingsley formed the Chiapas Project to help impoverished women in Mexico's poorest state. Thus far the organization, which works in conjunction with the Grameen Foundation in Washington, D.C., has made more than 4,000 first-time loans ranging from $50 to $100.

"Microfinance is lending money to a woman who lives and raises her family on less than $1 a day," explains Ms. Billingsley, who, by ironic juxtaposition, is developing the $150 million One Arts Plaza in downtown Dallas. "A $50 loan permits her to launch a business – say, buy a corn grinder to make tortillas or cloth to sell handicrafts. She has to pay it back over six months. The repayment rate averages 98 percent. Then she can double it and get a $100 loan, and then double it again and again."

Then she asks a question directed at herself and me: "How much did dinner for two cost last night?"

One woman in Chiapas has worked her way up to a $1,500 loan that enabled her to plant a 100-tree peach orchard, buy a flour-grinding machine and raise fowl, sheep, turkeys and pigs. She even bought a used car so the man in her life could drive it as a taxi.

"These women not only change themselves, they change their families and their communities," Ms. Billingsley says. "Once this expands and permeates these countries, poverty still exists, but it is redefined. Now it's a concrete floor, running water and education."

Bob Buford is an expert on transitions from success to significance. His expertise comes from experience.

The social entrepreneur made a fortune when he sold his cable television empire on July 28, 1999, at 9:38 a.m. and then reinvested his "multiple millions" into his charitable foundations.

He began laying the groundwork for this transition 26 years earlier. He calls it setting up a parallel career that enables you to gradually shift your driving motive from profit to purpose.

"When I was 34 years old, someone told me that I was so intensely focused on business that I was frightening. And that hit home," says Mr. Buford, who is the author of business best-sellers Halftime and Finishing Well.

After intense soul-searching, Mr. Buford, now 67, came up with a set of purposeful goals for his refocused life, one being: "If I was successful in making a great deal of money, I'd redeploy that money into charitable activities in my lifetime."

He also set a target net worth that he needed to achieve.

"I called it my four-minute mile," he says at his Uptown office. "My company was growing at 28 percent a year compounded. I could see that if it grew by just 10 percent a year, I'd still cross my four-minute mile by my mid-50s.

"Business as an exclusive interest lost its hold on me because I could see that I was going to run through the tape if I was just patient and deliberate."

He was right. By 42, he was rich enough to begin shifting his purposeful life from 20 percent of his time and energy to 80 percent eight years later.

In 1984, he started Leadership Network, which focuses on leadership development for megachurches, including Rick Warren's 112,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

"But my personal passion now is helping people make the transition from success to significance."

He sees it as a growth industry. "This is going to be the big story of the next 10 or 15 years," he says. "No generation has ever been this affluent, and they have an extra 30 years to live."

He's redeployed every penny of his pre-tax "multiple millions" into do-good activities. And he's more fulfilled.

"I wake up every morning happy and thankful. It's a loop that runs through my mind and comes on automatically."

There wasn't a specific moment when Ka Cotter realized it was time to shift gears.

But as vice chairman of Staubach Co., she started to find all the international travel abject drudgery. Too often, her family played second fiddle to work demands. And younger executives at the company were champing at the bit.

The 63-year-old recalls the conclusion she made a year ago: "I've been at the table for a long time, but I don't want to stay at the party. The new talent is in place. I've got my stock. I'm on the board. I've got the relationship. Let them do their thing while I do something else."

At that point, she didn't know what "something else" was.

Ms. Cotter, who's retired but will keep her title and stay on the payroll until she turns 65, spent six months with a career coach.

"It helped me define what it was I really enjoyed doing and what I truly value." She melded those findings into a repackaged life.

As chairwoman of the YWCA's board, Ms. Cotter is immersed in helping working-poor women in Dallas.

"In our fundraising campaign this year, we tell Angel's story," Ms. Cotter says. "Here's a woman who'd never owned a home. She came into our financial empowerment program. She went through our courses, signed up for our savings program and our individual development account, which matches her savings.

"After a little more than two years, she was out of debt and qualified to buy her first home.

"We have 30 more moms doing that now."

Making money is still important to Ms. Cotter – but not for the same reasons.

She's working with a local venture capital firm that has put her on the board of a midsize (under $100 million) court reporting firm that needs her service, sales and marketing expertise.

"They pay me for my time and give me the chance to invest in that company. I have the chance to have some pretty nice hits from that," Ms. Cotter says. "That gives me the chance to make more money to invest back into the community."

At the same time, she's mentoring companies, which is another way of paying it forward to a free enterprise system that made her rich.

In 1995, Laura Estrada gave up a successful 20-year broadcast career to get into the financial printing business.

It wasn't that she loved printing presses or that she thought she'd make a lot of money at it – even though her one-woman legal, financial and corporate printing company has done well.

The reward she wanted was time for her personal passions: supporting women's initiatives and nurturing the arts.

"With sales, you can pretty much write your ticket timewise," says Ms. Estrada. "You can be at the pool all afternoon if you sell a million-dollar deal that morning. Don't think this is silly, but I realized this back when I was a Girl Scout selling cookies."

Ms. Estrada, 54, was reared in a middle-class family in Brownsville, Texas, with two older brothers. "Our lives were very much into education and culture."

Her moment of clarity came at Texas Woman's University in the early 1970s when Gloria Steinem spoke on campus. "Her message resonated clearly with me: 'Equality for everyone.' But it wasn't happening for women.

"It became crystal clear to me that I would become an agent of change. From that moment on, I've been working for women's causes."

In 2003, she took up another cause dear to her heart as chairwoman of Dallas' Cultural Affairs Commission.

"I am a walking billboard for Dallas, Texas," she says with a laugh.

"I woke up this morning and looked out my window and there are cars, vans and trucks. And guess why. They're filming a TV show on my street," says Ms. Estrada, who lives in Kessler Park.

"Hey, that's thousands of dollars coming into our community. After I hang up, I'm walking out there to tell them thank you."

Craig Hall plans to bequeath his entire fortune – currently worth more than $1 billion – to charity.

Having made financial arrangements for his wife, Kathryn, and his four children, Mr. Hall intends to "recycle" his impressive wealth through the Craig and Kathryn Hall Foundation and ones set up for each of his kids when he dies.

Until then, he's making money so he can give more money away.

Current beneficiaries typically fall into two categories: causes that teach people about capitalism and public art projects. One feeds the stomach; the other feeds the soul. Both are vital to a healthy society, Mr. Hall contends.

On a local front, he brought the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship to North Texas. He's shown above with some of this year's participants. "It's an established organization with a proven model to help low-income kids learn not only about business, but about self-respect." That's important to him.

The 56-year-old, named a recipient of the Horatio Alger Award last week, was born with epilepsy and had learning disabilities as a child. But from an early age, he excelled at commerce. "Business was a meritocracy for me. I could work harder, knock on one more door to sell Cutco Knives [at age 14] and be rewarded. No one should ever take this for granted."

Increasingly, he's taking a world view. His "ah-ha moment" came while touring war-torn Burundi in 1996.

"These were terrible, terrible circumstances," says Mr. Hall. "We went to a camp with 40,000 people, probably 95 percent under the age of 12, and all of them covered with flies. That showed me the world is very unequal and that I needed to do more on an international basis."

The Halls, who spent four years in Austria ending in 2001 while Kathryn was U.S. ambassador, have endowed a Fulbright Professor for Entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe.

"After World War II, we decided it was in our best interests to rebuild a bombed-out Germany," says Mr. Hall. "Now, in the post Cold War era, we have bombed-out minds that we need to address.

"There's a petty corruption that goes with communism. What there isn't is a view of ethics; responsibility; a level playing field; opportunity; hope; a rule of law; and a free press. That's what we need to export to other parts of the world.

"Not only does it help people improve their lives, it's also important for our security in a global world.

"Besides, it's the right thing to do."

The Sunday after 9-11, the Rev. Jesse Jackson gave Dale LeFebvre a tutorial about the purpose of life.

The Rev. Jackson challenged his then-30-year-old financial adviser to quit chasing "that sack of nickels" and become "a man of both means and consequence."

"What the reverend meant was, 'You're working for money, but what is its real value?' " says Mr. LeFebvre (pronounced La-fehv). "We'd just left the Pentagon, and I wasn't really thinking about what he said. But 'means and consequence' and 'sack of nickels' stuck with me."

Mr. LeFebvre grew up poor in Beaumont, got a degree in electrical engineering on a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, then earned an MBA and a law degree from Harvard. The 35-year-old, who serves on the board of the National Urban League, has been in the private equity business in Dallas since 1999.

His current mission: using venture capital techniques to fund traditionally nonprofit health and civil rights issues. One such venture, 35711 Project Sugar, is trying to develop a carbohydrate-based vaccine for malaria.

But it took three years and one of life's smaller moments to finally push him into action.

Mr. LeFebvre was in Detroit for an Urban League board meeting. It was midnight and he needed to eat, but his hotel didn't have room service.

He took a cab to a Chinese joint – the kind that also serves fried chicken wings – where he found a woman in a wheelchair and her young granddaughter arguing with the owner.

"The wings come six for a dollar or 12 for two dollars. They want eight wings because that's all the money they have," he recalls. "I reach into my pocket to give the woman enough for 12, and all I have is $50 bills.

"I look at the counter, and all I see are nickels emptied out from a Crown Royal purple velvet bag. My mind immediately went back to when Jesse said 'sack of nickels,' and I think: 'This is the background that I'm from. But I'm so far removed from it that I'm mad about staying at a hotel without room service.'

"That's when I became more focused on the malaria project." Because of his efforts, he got to meet Nelson Mandela shortly after Hurricane Katrina (pictured above).

"Passion, creation and relationships," Mr. LeFebvre says. "When you're focused on purposeful things, you run into other people focused on purposeful things, and they enrich your life.

"That's certainly what's happening to me."

"Of course I'm not competitive," Morton Meyerson says with a devilish smile. "I'm just a passive leaf to be blown into the stream to flow along in harmony with nature."

Oddly enough, these days, he is.

Eight years ago, the man whose name is on Dallas' symphony hall experienced what he calls "a tsunami tectonic plate shift" in his life. He got a divorce, his son died and he retired as chief executive of Perot Systems, ending 35 years in corporate America.

"I decided to reassess my priorities in life," says Mr. Meyerson, who went to Israel and studied 2,600-year-old sacred texts about responsibilities to family and community.

When he returned, he spent the next year planning and then distributing inheritances to nearly 100 family members, including his two daughters and five grandkids.

"There were no strings attached. But I basically said, 'This is it,' " Mr. Meyerson says at his home, a converted DP&L power substation. " 'From this point on, everything I make will go to my foundation.' "

Mr. Meyerson, 68, looks for existing organizations that help people way down on society's pecking order. "My trust turns on finding wonderful projects run by wonderful people."

Efforts supported by the Morton H. Meyerson Family Tzedakah Fund are often micro in scope.

For example, the fund gave money to the East Dallas Community Garden, which provides a place for elderly Asian immigrants, most of them from war-torn Cambodia and Laos, to grow vegetables.

"Tithing in a Jewish sense is you're supposed to give 10 percent of your income or a maximum of 20 percent," Mr. Meyerson says. "The theory behind that is so that you don't become destitute yourself. Because of my assets, I can give 100 percent or 200 percent. Mine's a maxi-tithe."

His daughters and eldest granddaughter work with him on the foundation. And just as he did in business, Mr. Meyerson is preparing for his succession.

"I've talked with them at length about it, saying, 'You may want to take the foundation in a different direction. You'll need to go with your instincts.' "

Sounds a lot like the advice he got from his former boss Ross Perot: "Just follow your nose."

Todd Wagner would have been deeply disappointed if Akeelah and the Bee had bombed at the box office. But he wouldn't have had second thoughts about having made it.

The star of the movie is a young black girl who becomes a somewhat unlikely spelling bee champ with the help of a black college professor. Mr. Wagner knew the big boys of Hollywood had branded the family-friendly movie as a money disaster waiting to happen.

"But I thought, 'This is a great story. I want to tell it.' So we did it," says the 46-year-old billionaire, who's in the film production business with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Fortunately, Akeelah turned out to be a movie of means as well as meaning.

"It's absolutely doing good and doing well at the same time," says Mr. Wagner, who calls himself a social entrepreneur. "I'm a huge believer in doing both. That model has more sustainability than just going to people and saying, 'Hey, give me some money for my foundation or cause.' "

The Chosin Few, in early stages of production, will tell of the battle of Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War.

"These unbelievably brave soldiers –15,000 Marines and 2,500 Army soldiers – were surrounded by more than 100,000 Chinese troops in a surprise attack, and they fought their way out," says Mr. Wagner. "I love telling stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things."

The money motive lost its impact for Mr. Wagner when he and Mr. Cuban sold Broadcast.com for billions.

"If I were to double my net worth, what would that really accomplish? Nothing," he says. "I'm not doing it for money anymore. That would be silly. I'd be better off sitting on the beach drinking piña coladas every day."

So why does he still work so hard?

"I want to win," Mr. Wagner says. "That's what drives me. But I also know that now, when I win, I can help employees, my philanthropic causes and impact other lives in the process.

"There's also the having fun part of it. With Akeelah, I put myself right up there as a regional spelling bee judge with a line in the movie [pictured above].

"It's OK to roll it all into one big ball and say, 'I'm going to have fun and enjoy what I do. I'm going to make money and give back.' All of those things can be part of one package."

Don Williams is Dallas' social conscience.

In the last 12 years, the 65-year-old has led five major community task forces, including his current assignment to fix the Dallas Independent School District.

The former chief executive of Trammell Crow Co. started the Foundation for Community Empowerment in 1995. Its mission is to help Dallas' forgotten low-income neighborhoods better themselves.

"I'm a real oddball in Dallas: a Democrat in the business community," he says with a laugh.

He's also an establishment guy who often sounds anti-establishment.

An example: "The North Dallas voyeurism of taking a turkey to 'po' folk' at Thanksgiving and then going to a cocktail party at the Dallas Country Club to talk about it is profoundly offensive to the poor."

Yet I've never heard anyone speak disparagingly about the guy.

"When it comes to altruism, I'll put Don Williams up to anyone," says social entrepreneur Todd Wagner.

Mr. Williams grew up in a lower-middle-class family in the multicultural community of Roswell, N.M.

"I don't know if this qualifies as an epiphany, but I remember it as clearly as the day it happened," Mr. Williams says.

His All-Star Little League team stopped at a roadside diner on its way to the playoffs. The sixth-grade rainbow coalition of Anglos, Hispanics and blacks was thrilled to be eating out. Nearly everybody ordered chicken-fried steak.

But as the owner was about to serve the meals, he told the coach that the black boys had to eat in the kitchen.

A heated argument ensued, and the hungry group got back on the bus. "We found a restaurant where the whole team could eat," Mr. Williams says.

"From an early age, I was sensitive to discrimination against ethnic minorities and to women's issues. That has shaped my whole life and career."

Early in his nonprofit life, he made "every mistake conceivable of a well-intentioned white boy going into the 'hood. I got off on the wrong foot, with the wrong ideas and the wrong people – which is a bad mix."

That's because he tried to tackle it like a business problem, from the outside in.

"The long-term sustainable answer is community empowerment.

"Every community has the most remarkable, heroic people who know the problems and are already doing good work, but they lack resources. We identify those people and help them do their thing.

"You ask me deep in my heart what motivates me. That's what it is."

Ask Trisha Wilson which gives her more joy – designing interiors of the world's most stunning projects or helping the world's most stunningly poor – and she'll confess that she only does the first to finance the latter.

She funnels money earned from such Wilson & Associate projects as Atlantis in the Bahamas and the Venetian in Las Vegas into the Wilson Foundation, which provides education and medical help to AIDS-ravaged villages near Ms. Wilson's second home in South Africa.

"I've always been big on community involvement. We help North Dallas High School. But I never really took it on in a big way until I went to Africa and went into one of the shacks."

There she found a 2-year-old who looked like a newborn. "I'll never forget that sight as long as I live. He already had club fingers – his fingers were square. It was heart-wrenching."

That was five years ago.

Since then, her foundation has created a private school, after-school care and medical facilities. She's shown above with children from a youth program in Vaalwater, South Africa.

"We're doing a holistic treatment of the entire community," Ms. Wilson says.

Help comes in all sorts of forms.

"My tap-dancing teacher locally, Buster Cooper, who's 84 years old, arranged for the donation of hundreds of costumes. We sent them over, and the teenagers are learning ballroom dancing in them."

Her new motto: "Make no small plans."

Topping her wish list is a 24-hour safe house where AIDS orphans could live. Village healers tell men that one way to cure AIDS is to have sex with virgins, so schoolgirls are routinely raped while going to and from the after-school program.

Ms. Wilson, 59, recently hired an executive director for the foundation, which was a bittersweet move.

"Before, I made every decision at every meeting," Ms. Wilson says. "But to make a bigger difference to more people, I had to delegate responsibility to other people. It was a sacrifice because it's so rewarding."