How The Chronicle's Donor List Was Compiled

For the third year, The Chronicle has compiled its list of the nation's biggest donors in

ALSO SEE: America's Most-Generous Donors: A searchable database The Megagift Plunge Wireless Entrepreneur Reaches Out to Symphony With $120-Million Gift Billionaire Casts Wide Net, But Stays Close to Home Shaped by the '60s, Widow Takes Free-Spirited Approach to Giving

cooperation with Slate, an online magazine that began publishing such rankings in 1996.

This is the second year that the ranking of donors includes both paid gifts and pledges. More than a third of the top donors on this year's list would not have been included had The Chronicle counted only outright donations.

Because donors are under no obligation to disclose publicly the amount they provide to charities, the information in The Chronicle's list was compiled from numerous sources. Many of the gift listings were drawn from those that appeared in The Chronicle over the past year. Such gifts usually are reported by the organizations that received them.

In addition, The Chronicle made hundreds of calls to the nation's largest charities, donors who appeared on the survey in previous years, and individuals drawn from Forbes magazine's ranking of the 400 wealthiest people in America.

The Chronicle's list is not a comprehensive summary of all large donations made in 2002. Gifts do not appear if they were made anonymously. And gifts that donors make from their family foundations generally are not counted, to avoid including donations twice -- when the donor gives money to a foundation and when he or she decides on a beneficiary for that money.

A big gift by Leonard A. Lauder to the Whitney Museum of American Art, in New York, also was not counted. Mr. Lauder, chairman of the Estée Lauder Companies, the cosmetics enterprise, donated 61 works of art to the museum in 2002 that are probably worth more than $100-million. He declined to put a value on the pieces, as did the museum. Mr. Lauder's donation was part of a group gift by 15 trustees of the museum who contributed 87 works by some of the biggest names in 20th-century art, including Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol. The gift was valued at $200-million by the museum.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City and founder and former chief executive officer of Bloomberg Communications, does not appear on the list because he has opted to disclose figures on his giving after he has filed his taxes for 2002.

According to Mr. Bloomberg's press secretary, Ed Skyler, "Mayor Bloomberg's commitment to philanthropy has not diminished one iota since becoming mayor and he has committed to giving at the same levels he did when he was a private citizen, if not higher." Mr. Bloomberg gave more than $100-million to charities in both 2001 and 2000.

Another prominent philanthropist who was not included on this year's list is George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, a private investment-management firm. Accurate figures on Mr. Soros's giving, which reaches into the tens of millions of dollars annually, are difficult to ascertain, according to a spokesman, because his donations are scattered throughout the Soros network of foundations. The network supports nonprofit groups in more than 50 countries. In 2002, it spent more than $450-million on programs.

Walton Family

Other major donors, such as members of the Walton family, prefer to maintain privacy about their giving.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Waltons donate the earnings from their combined 38-percent stake in the WalMart Corporation to the Walton Family Charitable Foundation, through which they do most of their giving. But the executive director of the foundation said that the family members declined to provide any details about how much they give. The Wall Street Journal places their annual giving in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2002, the Walton Family Charitable Foundation committed $300-million to the University of Arkansas. It was the largest gift made to a public university.

The Chronicle's list of the biggest donors was compiled by Ziya Serdar Tumgoren. He was assisted by Debra E. Blum, Elizabeth Greene, and Elizabeth Schwinn.