Giving on a Grand Scale: a Ranking of the 60 Biggest Donors of 2000

By STEPHEN G. GREENE and LAURA HRUBY

Bill and Melinda Gates’s donation of $5-billion to their foundation last year

not only put them at the top of The Chronicle‘s list of the most generous donors of 2000. Their gift also was more than twice as much as the combined total given by the 59 other people who made the list.

The Chronicle compiled its list of the nation’s top donors in cooperation with Slate, an online magazine that began publishing such rankings in 1996 in response to a suggestion from Ted Turner, the broadcasting entrepreneur, who said he hoped the publication of a prestigious list of donors would spark a wave of giving among the very wealthy.

While the Gateses were the biggest givers in 2000, the size of their donation was rivaled by a $5-billion pledge made last year by Gordon Moore, chairman emeritus of the Intel Corporation, and his wife, Betty, to create a charitable foundation. Because The Chronicle‘s list of big givers in 2000 does not include pledges but counts only assets actually transferred to a charitable organization last year, the Moores’ pledge was not included in the list.

No. 2 on the list after the Gateses are Eli and Edythe Broad, who divided $137.5-million in gifts among several institutions in Southern California, including two family foundations, a future art center at the University of California at Los Angeles, and a future biological-science center at the California Institute of Technology. Mr. Broad is chairman of SunAmerica, a financial-services company in Los Angeles. In third place is Jon M. Huntsman, founder of a chemical company in Salt Lake City, who gave $125-million to the Huntsman Cancer Institute, which he established at the University of Utah in 1995.

Ranking fourth on the list was Elmer Rasmuson, who died last year at age 91. He donated or bequeathed $113.4-million to charity. Mr. Rasmuson, who was the retired chairman of the National Bank of Alaska and a former mayor of Anchorage, donated $50.4-million to help expand the Anchorage Museum building, which has been renamed Rasmuson Center, and $39-million to the Rasmuson Foundation, in Anchorage. He also bequeathed $19-million to the University of Alaska and $5-million to Alaska Pacific University, in Anchorage.

Rounding out the top five was Dora Donner Ide, who died in 1998 at age 82. She left a bequest totaling $111-million that she split among 29 institutions, including many in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lived. Her gift, the fourth highest on the list, includes $8-million to public-broadcasting station KQED, the largest gift in its history.

Besides Mrs. Ide, 10 other donors left bequests that were large enough to be on the list.

The smallest gift on the list was $15-million from Gladys E. Langroise. She gave money from her estate to a donor-advised fund at the Idaho Community Foundation.

Turner’s Idea

When Ted Turner first suggested the idea of a ranking, he may have figured that he would land prominently on the list. He has indeed, but he reached only No. 14, even though he pledged in 1997 to provide up to $1-billion to create and finance the U.N. Foundation to support the work of the United Nations in developing countries. Mr. Turner said he would make the gift in installments that would probably average $100-million a year, but Mr. Turner’s gifts of cash and stock to the U.N. Foundation in 2000 totaled just $50.6-million.

His ranking could jump this year, in part because a spokesman said he will pay another large installment on his pledge this month.

What’s more, Mr. Turner announced this month that he will commit $250-million over the next five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear arms and other weapons of mass destruction. He and Sam Nunn, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, will co-chair the Nuclear Threat Initiative. That organization will seek to safeguard the handling and storage of nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, for example, while also focusing on raising public awareness of the threats posed by terrorists with access to nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.

Two Donors Under 40

Many of the largest gifts went to donors’ foundations or alma maters, often to endow professorships or to build institutions that will bear the names of the givers. Other gifts were earmarked for research institutes, museums, performing arts centers, or other scientific or cultural institutions.

Most but not all of the recipients are U.S. charities. Alberto Vilar, who founded a technology-investment company, made gifts ranging from $5-million to $14-million to the Salzburg Festival, in Austria; Musikverein, a concert hall in Vienna; the Royal Opera House, in London; and the Kirov Opera, in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Two of the donors were under age 40. Both made their fortunes in technology, as did a dozen others on the list. Christopher Klaus, 26, was studying at the Georgia Institute of Technology when he quit school to form a business that provides computer security and software. He gave $15-million to Georgia Tech for an advanced computer-technology center.

Jeff Skoll, 35, is vice president of eBay, an online auction site. He gave eBay stock worth $39-million to a supporting organization at the Community Foundation Silicon Valley that he created in 1999 with a gift of $33-million in stock.

Art Gifts

Not all the gifts on The Chronicle list were in the form of cash, stock, or other liquid assets. Clara Rosenthal Weitzenhoffer, for example, left artworks valued at $50-million to the University of Oklahoma. The collection includes paintings or drawings by Mary Cassatt, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet, and Vincent van Gogh, as well as decorative-arts objects.

Information from several sources was used to compile The Chronicle‘s list. Many of the gifts 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, reporters contacted many of the institutions that ranked high on last year’s Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle‘s annual list of nonprofit organizations that receive the most in private support. They also sought information from wealthy Americans whose names appear on the Forbes 400.

Anonymous Gifts Excluded

The Chronicle list is not a comprehensive summary of all large donations made in 2000. For example, gifts do not appear if they were made anonymously. Thus, the donors who made a pair of $31.8-million gifts to Stanford University and the University of Mississippi are not included.

In other cases, neither donors nor the recipient institutions would disclose how much of a multiple-year gift was paid last year.

Donna and Philip Berber, for example, who sold CyBerCorp.com last March, said they would use some of the proceeds of the sale to commit $100-million to A Glimmer of Hope, a foundation they created. But because they would not reveal how much of that sum was paid in 2000, their gift did not make the list.

The Chronicle took over the compilation of the list started by Slate after the original researcher, Ann Castle, died last year. Ms. Castle was director of development research at Hamilton College, in Clinton, N.Y. While Ms. Castle updated the list quarterly, The Chronicle and Slate plan to issue the rankings once a year.