While most people are in favor of charitable giving, not everybody likes charitable givers. While some donors are seen as saintly figures, donating their hard earned cash for the benefit of the less fortunate, others are seen as social climbers trying to attain respectability by using money generated by less socially beneficial business practices. Consider the story of Darshan Dhaliwal, the gas station king of the Midwest, a man with both supporters and detractors: 
The University of Wisconsin-Parkside has received a $4.5 million contribution from Milwaukee businessman Darshan Dhaliwal. The donation, the largest private gift in the university’s 38-year history, … will help fund expansion of the university’s Communication Arts Building … The expanded facility will be named Dhaliwal Hall. Dhaliwal Hall will be the first new academic building on campus since … 1979. [Link]
Dhaliwal is a very wealthy man by all accounts, although it’s hard to know exactly how many gas stations his company owns, especially since he wont provide a figure. In 2000, a he confirmed that he owned at least 400 in 8 states, the “NRI of the month award” over the summer said that he owns “nearly 1,000 gas stations” across the country. This statement, from over a decade ago, claims that “Dhaliwal Enterprises… employs 5,000 people and posts annual profits that exceed $50 million.” In the end, it’s impossible to tell for sure with a private company. What we know is that he’s a very big fish, who operates gas stations in somewhere around twelve states between the coasts.
He has also been a controversial figure in Milwaukee. In 2000, he was accused by some community activists of not doing enough to prevent drug paraphernalia at his stations, sometimes by managers or clerks [see photos]:
There’s the crack pipes actually sitting in the Chore Boy box, on an empty register drawer, next to the ephedrine. Some of the clerks are embarrassed about having to sell this stuff. This is how the manager wants it done. [Link]… neighborhood leaders asked on numerous occasions to meet with Dhaliwal about their concerns with graffiti, loitering, drug dealing and other problems at the Citgo station. [Link]
Dhaliwal disagreed, saying he was responsive and that he was also being singled out. In a 2000 article, he said:
… he sent a letter to each of the lessees at his 22 Milwaukee gas stations, asking them to stop selling roses with glass tubes, small scales, cigarette papers and Blunt cigars - all items that were known to be purchased for drug use.
The real problem, Dhaliwal says, is not that he won’t cooperate, but rather that the neighborhood groups are asking too much of him. He can’t understand why neighbors are singling him out as an owner, and not asking other area gas stations to comply. [Link]
The story has further wrinkles. His opponents accused him of buying political support with large and sometimes improper political donations:
An analysis by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign of donations given between 1993 and October 2002 showed that Dhaliwal donated $7,000 to former Gov. Tommy G. Thompson and thousands more to more than 35 legislators, said the report. Three years ago, Dhaliwal was accused by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign of violating a state law prohibiting any individual from giving more than $10,000 a year to politicians. The group said Dhaliwal had contributed $11,800, but Dhaliwal said $5,500 of this had actually been donated by his wife, Debra Dhaliwal. [Link]
While supporters responded that opposition to Dhaliwal was motivated by prejudice:
… the Indian ancestry of people at the Citgo station comes up in meetings. Even the cartoon shows Dhaliwal inside Butler’s office wearing a turban, while one of the characters on the outside is wearing a yarmulke and another is wearing a clerical collar. A “small faction” of people, Butler says, are bitter than another minority group controls so many businesses in a predominantly black part of Milwaukee. [Link]
I wasn’t able to find later coverage of this issue, so it’s hard to see how it was resolved. Because these are harsh accusations, I do want to stress that even his severest critics did not single him out as directly involved in anything related to drugs, but instead blamed him for not doing enough to stop activity by his managers and clerks. I love the way they put it:
Mr. Dhalwali is a very smart man with a phenominaly lucky family. He was cool enough to help put a statue of Mathatma Ghandi in Milwaukee. We should be assured that he has enough control over his personal empire that when he tells several hundred store mangers to behave responsibly, they will comply. [Link]
Because anybody who helps to put up a statue of (sic) “Mathatma Ghandi” must automatically be cool 
Y’all can make up your own minds about the man, I’m neither trying to build him up nor tear him down. My point is simply that many major donors are people whose rise to wealth was also criticized, and that philanthropy is very much like sausage making …
In case you’re curious, here’s more more of his back story from an article in 2000. The reporter sells his story as straight up “American dream”:
At 21, Dhaliwal met a Peace Corps volunteer who spoke of American customs that seemed unbelievably refreshing: moving out of the house at 18, dating who you like, going out to parties. Dhaliwal was hooked… In 1974, Dhaliwal met Debra, a third-generation Wisconsinite from Little Chute. With roots in Holland, Debra was like no one he could have met or married in India. They fell in love and married two years later…In 1977, Dhaliwal leased a gas station at N. 35th St. and W. Garfield Ave. for $300 a month. He taught himself to change oil and do other simple mechanical procedures, then began manning the station by himself. He would work on a car, run out to pump gas, run back to work on the car, and on and on, back and forth, for hours. It was also during this time that he and his wife had their first child, a son, Jespal. During his 16- or 17-hour workdays, Dhaliwal sometimes would hold “Jessie” in one hand and pump gas with the other.
“I enjoyed hard work,” he says. “I learned one thing - that hard work always pays.”
In 1979, Dhaliwal had saved $30,000, enough to buy his first gas station … Dhaliwal sold the station the same year and bought two others. The next year he bought a half-dozen more. For the next six years, he bought two gas stations a year, and in 1986, he bought 50 stations spread across Illinois, Indiana and Michigan from Chevron. [Link]
A modern day desi Horatio Alger!
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