The Chronicle’s annual record of the largest charitable donations from people or their foundations totaled almost $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 supply monetary help. Altogether, 4 of the highest donations on the record, totaling $2.3 billion, went to help monetary help.
Three contributions have been made to donors’ personal foundations, and people presents totaled $2.3 billion as properly. Three different donations supported medical analysis or therapy, and one reward every went to help civic engagement and humanities and tradition.
The record has 12 presents, reasonably than 10, due to ties. Six of the donors are multibillionaires, and their mixed internet value is an estimated $365 billion.
Topping the record is a present from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, whose internet value 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 Community Foundation.
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 Nineteen Eighties and served as president of the California State Board of Education 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 yr and presently serves as the corporate’s chairman.
Medical faculty help
Next on the record is the $1 billion Michael Bloomberg gave by way of his Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins University to make medical faculty free for many college students and supply extra monetary help to the college’s nursing and public well being college students.
Bloomberg, whose internet value 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 at the very least $3.5 billion since graduating 60 years in the past.
Ruth Gottesman, a professor emerita of Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, had the identical aim as Bloomberg. She gave her former employer $1 billion in February to help free tuition in perpetuity for Albert Einstein College of Medicine college students.
Gottesman had an extended profession on the medical faculty. She joined the school’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center in 1968 and began the middle’s adult-literacy program within the early Nineteen Nineties. She was later named founding director of the Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning 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 helpful 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 an enormous reward 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 Foundation, named for his first spouse, who died in 2004.
Buffett, whose internet value 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 kids serve on its board, and it’s led by his former son-in-law. The basis primarily backs ladies’s reproductive well being. It additionally gives faculty scholarships for college kids in Nebraska, the household’s house state.
The donation is a particular contribution that Buffett introduced in November reasonably than one of many annual contributions he makes to the muse 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 yr’s largest donations are primarily based on publicly introduced presents. The tally doesn’t embrace contributions of paintings or presents from nameless donors. In March, the Chronicle will unveil its annual rating of the 50 largest donors, an inventory primarily based 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 Community Foundation
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 University for monetary help
2. (tie) Ruth Gottesman, professor emerita of Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics; $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for monetary help
4. Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; $716.1 million to Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
5. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his spouse Patty Quillin; $502.4 million to Hastings Fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation
6. Roy Vagelos, retired chairman of the Merck prescribed drugs firm, and his spouse, Diana; $400 million to Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons to ascertain the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science
7. Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, by way of her Alice L. Walton Foundation; $350 million to Mercy Health to ascertain a cardiac care heart
8. Jackie and Mike Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s dad and mom, by way of their Bezos Family Foundation; $185.7 million to Aspen Institute to ascertain the Center for Rising Generations
9. (tie) Barbara Britt, the late widow of Glenn Britt, a former Time Warner Cable CEO; $150 million bequest to Dartmouth College for monetary help
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 Brand, an occasion planner; $150 million to City of Hope for pancreatic most cancers analysis
9. (tie) Byron Trott, chairman of BDT & MSD Partners service provider financial institution, and his spouse Tina, by way of their Trott Family Philanthropies; $150 million to STARS College Network to help college students from small and rural cities graduate from faculty
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Maria Di Mento is a senior reporter on the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the place you may learn the total article, together with the record of donors. This article was supplied to The Associated 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 answerable for the content material. For all of AP’s philanthropy protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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