- Self-described "avant-garde philanthropist."

- Listed in 3 places: the Top 20, under "Businesmen" (which does not describe him at all), and the Second List.

- His "business" was Stewart R. Mott and Associates which doesn't seem to have done anything except back political candidates and activist projects.

- Heir to father's fortune from selling the family's wheel-and-axle business to General Motors for stock in 1913.

- NY Times obituary mentions the Enemies List with the note "nothing but big money for radic-lib candidates" (meaning radical-liberal candidates).

- some sources say his $400,000 contribution to McGovern got him on the Enemies List, but that cannot be true. The Top 20 list was dated June 24, 1971, before Mott had supported McGovern. The McGovern donation presumably got him onto the Second List, however.

- First philanthropy was starting a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Flint, Michigan about 1964. (Overpopulation was a trendy progressive cause in the 1960s. He later also supported abortion rights, but in the 1960s, Planned Parenthood was mostly known for reproductive education, contraception, and "Love Carefully" buttons.)

- Causes expanded from peace and population control to included government reform, civil rights and civil liberties.

- famously drove around in a battered VW Beetle, partly to poke a "finger in the eye of General Motors."

- noted for being usually anti-incumbent.

- first tried to encourage Republican NY Governor Nelson Rockefeller to run for president in 1968 before backing Eugene McCarthy with about $210,000.

- The 1972 Nixon campaign's "Attack Book" prepared by Pat Buchanan (Watergate testimony p. 4245) noted "This fellow Mott, who bankrolls McGovern, is, I understand a screaming fairy who makes $800,000 a year and pays no taxes—we are trying to interest MONDAY [Magazine] in doing a take-out on him in the near future."

- was vehemently anti-Muskie before actually supporting a candidate in 1972. His mean-spirited ads against Muskie got him a visit to the Watergate Hearings.

- fought campaign finance laws that would limit his support of candidates.

- backed independent John Anderson in 1980.

- once taught a course in city gardening at the New School for Social Research in New York.

- The different family foundations can be confusing. His father set up the "Charles Stewart Mott Foundation" and Stewart set up the "Stewart R. Mott Foundation." The son's foundation support's activist projects rather than research-oriented activities, and its projects are national in scope rather than local or regional (according to the Grantseekers Guide).