The 23rd annual Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of America’s biggest donors, is based on gifts and pledges of cash, stock, land, and real estate to nonprofit organizations in 2022.
The Chronicle talked to dozens of charities, philanthropists, and their representatives to find out more about large donations that were made publicly last year, as well as the philanthropy of big donors who gave quietly. However, not all philanthropists publicly disclose details about their giving, and they are not legally required to do so.
Gifts made to donors’ family foundations and donor-advised funds were counted; however, disbursements from those grant-making vehicles were not included in our rankings to avoid double-counting.
The Chronicle counts only gifts and pledges that donors make to organizations with charity or foundation status under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Missing Donors
Melinda French Gates and MacKenzie Scott are among the notable absences on the Philanthropy 50 list. While it is possible that they made gifts to their donor-advised funds or foundations that could have earned them a spot on the Philanthropy 50, they and their representatives declined to provide such information to the Chronicle.
While French Gates continues to lead the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with her former husband, Bill Gates (who landed the No. 1 on this Philanthropy 50), she is also focusing her attention on Pivotal Ventures, the limited-liability corporation and investment firm she established in 2015. Through Pivotal, she makes multiyear commitments and develops partnerships with grantees to fight poverty and advance equality for women, girls, and other marginalized groups.
Scott, meanwhile, gave more than $3.8 billion to charities last year, likely through three donor-advised funds housed at the Chicago Community Trust, Fidelity Charitable, and the National Philanthropic Trust, which the online magazine Puck has reported belong to her. But she continues to decline to provide details about how much money she is funneling into those giving vehicles each year.
Also not on the list are Ann and John Doerr, who pledged $1.1 billion through their family foundation to launch the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, an effort to tackle the world’s most urgent climate and sustainability challenges.
Multiyear Gifts
Some gifts from America’s biggest donors don’t appear on the current Philanthropy 50 even if they made a contribution to a nonprofit last year. That’s because the Chronicle’s rankings count multiyear pledges only once, as a lump sum in the year the commitment was made.
Warren Buffett claimed the No. 4 spot on this year’s Philanthropy 50 for money he put into his family foundation and the foundations of his three children in November, but several large sums he gave to those same foundations in June, as well as to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are not counted. That is because Buffett’s June gifts were annual installments toward a set of multibillion dollar pledges he announced 16 years ago that were already counted on the 2006 Philanthropy 50.
Here’s how much Buffett gave to those foundations in June as payments toward his 2006 pledges:
- More than 11 million shares of class “B” Berkshire stock valued at nearly $3.1 billion to the Gates Foundation. To date, he has contributed about $35.7 billion of the roughly $36.1 billion he pledged to the grant maker in 2006.
- Over 1.1 million shares valued at $305.5 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation — named for his first wife, who died in 2004. He has contributed more than $3.3 billion of the approximately $3.6 billion he has pledged to the fund.
- More than 770,000 shares (valued at more than $213.8 million) apiece to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which funds agriculture, clean-water, and anti-poverty programs; the NoVo Foundation, co-founded by Peter Buffett and his wife, Jennifer, which promotes alternative ways of living, such as local agriculture, food co-ops, and worker-owned businesses; and daughter Susan Buffett’s Sherwood Foundation, which backs social-justice work and early-childhood education.
Warren Buffett originally promised about 17,500,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock to each of his three children’s foundations. He doubled the original pledge in 2012 and in November gave the three foundations additional money to recognize his children’s commitment to contributing the bulk of their own wealth to charity. To date, he has given the three foundations nearly $2.1 billion each toward the original pledge.
