The Chronicle’s annual listing of the most important charitable donations from people or their foundations totaled practically $6 billion in 2024, with half of that coming from three contributions of $1 billion or extra every. Two of these three presents went to medical faculties to offer monetary assist. Altogether, 4 of the highest donations on the listing, totaling $2.3 billion, went to assist monetary assist.
Three contributions had been made to donors’ personal foundations, and people presents totaled $2.3 billion as nicely. Three different donations supported medical analysis or therapy, and one present every went to assist civic engagement and humanities and tradition.
The listing has 12 presents, reasonably than 10, due to ties. Six of the donors are multibillionaires, and their mixed internet price is an estimated $365 billion.
Topping the listing is a present from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, whose internet price Forbes estimates at greater than $5 billion. Hastings and his spouse, Patty Quillin, gave 2 million shares of Netflix inventory valued at $1.1 billion in January to their Hastings Fund on the Silicon Valley Neighborhood Basis.
The couple began their fund in 2016 and have primarily supported training organizations, a particular focus for Hastings, who taught highschool math when he was a Peace Corps volunteer within the Eighties and served as president of the California State Board of Schooling within the early 2000s.
Hastings co-founded the video streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It began streaming movies and tv collection in 2007 and later started creating its personal content material. He stepped down as co-CEO final 12 months and at present serves as the corporate’s chairman.
Medical faculty assist
Subsequent on the listing is the $1 billion Michael Bloomberg gave by way of his Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins College to make medical faculty free for many college students and supply extra monetary assist to the college’s nursing and public well being college students.
Bloomberg, whose internet price Forbes pegs at roughly $105 billion, earned a bachelor’s diploma in electrical engineering from the college in 1964. He went on to discovered the Bloomberg financial-news empire and served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013. He has given his alma mater a minimum of $3.5 billion since graduating 60 years in the past.
Ruth Gottesman, a professor emerita of Albert Einstein School of Drugs’s Division of Pediatrics, had the identical objective as Bloomberg. She gave her former employer $1 billion in February to assist free tuition in perpetuity for Albert Einstein School of Drugs college students.
Gottesman had an extended profession on the medical faculty. She joined the school’s Youngsters’s Analysis and Rehabilitation Heart in 1968 and began the middle’s adult-literacy program within the early Nineties. She was later named founding director of the Fisher Landau Heart for the Therapy of Studying Disabilities.
Her late husband, David Gottesman, led the New York funding agency First Manhattan and was an early Berkshire Hathaway investor and a protégé of Warren Buffett’s. He left his spouse his priceless inventory portfolio when he died in 2022 with directions to do no matter she thought finest with it.
Buffett cash
Berkshire’s chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett, follows Gottesman and Bloomberg with a giant present of his personal. The well-known financier gave 1.5 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway inventory valued at $716.1 million in November to the Susan Thompson Buffett Basis, named for his first spouse, who died in 2004.
Buffett, whose internet price is estimated by Forbes at $143 billion, created the grantmaker in 1964 to handle the household’s charitable giving, and it stays a household affair. Two of his three youngsters serve on its board, and it’s led by his former son-in-law. The muse primarily backs ladies’s reproductive well being. It additionally supplies school scholarships for college kids in Nebraska, the household’s residence state.
The donation is a particular contribution that Buffett introduced in November reasonably than one of many annual contributions he makes to the inspiration and a number of other different grant makers, that are funds towards multibillion-dollar pledges he introduced in 2006.
The Chronicle’s annual rankings of the 12 months’s largest donations are based mostly on publicly introduced presents. The tally doesn’t embrace contributions of art work or presents from nameless donors. In March, the Chronicle will unveil its annual rating of the 50 largest donors, a listing based mostly on philanthropists’ whole contributions in 2024 reasonably than particular person presents.
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THE LIST
1. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his spouse Patty Quillin; $1.1 billion to Hastings Fund at Silicon Valley Neighborhood Basis
2. (tie) Michael Bloomberg, founding father of Bloomberg monetary information empire and former mayor of New York, by way of his Bloomberg Philanthropies; $1 billion to Johns Hopkins College for monetary assist
2. (tie) Ruth Gottesman, professor emerita of Albert Einstein School of Drugs Division of Pediatrics; $1 billion to Albert Einstein School of Drugs for monetary assist
4. Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; $716.1 million to Susan Thompson Buffett Basis
5. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his spouse Patty Quillin; $502.4 million to Hastings Fund at Silicon Valley Neighborhood Basis
6. Roy Vagelos, retired chairman of the Merck prescribed drugs firm, and his spouse, Diana; $400 million to Columbia College Vagelos School of Physicians and Surgeons to determine the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Science
7. Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, by way of her Alice L. Walton Basis; $350 million to Mercy Well being to determine a cardiac care middle
8. Jackie and Mike Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s mother and father, by way of their Bezos Household Basis; $185.7 million to Aspen Institute to determine the Heart for Rising Generations
9. (tie) Barbara Britt, the late widow of Glenn Britt, a former Time Warner Cable CEO; $150 million bequest to Dartmouth School for monetary assist
9. (tie) Hyatt Brown, a retired insurance coverage government, and his spouse Cici; $150 million to Museum of Arts and Sciences for a brand new constructing
9. (tie) Emmet Stephenson Jr., a financier, and his daughter Tessa Stephenson Model, an occasion planner; $150 million to Metropolis of Hope for pancreatic most cancers analysis
9. (tie) Byron Trott, chairman of BDT & MSD Companions service provider financial institution, and his spouse Tina, by way of their Trott Household Philanthropies; $150 million to STARS School Community to help college students from small and rural cities graduate from school
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Maria Di Mento is a senior reporter on the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the place you possibly can learn the complete article, together with the listing of donors. This text was offered to The Related Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as a part of a partnership to cowl philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely liable for the content material. For all of AP’s philanthropy protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
