The 25th annual Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle’s list of America’s biggest donors, is based on gifts and pledges of cash and stock to nonprofit organizations in 2024.
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
MacKenzie Scott is among the notable absences on the Philanthropy 50 list. While it is possible that she made gifts to her donor-advised funds that could have earned her a spot on the Philanthropy 50, she and her representatives declined to provide such information to the Chronicle. Scott gave $2 billion to 199 charities last year through her Yield Giving fund, but she continues to decline to provide details about how much money she is funneling into the grant maker.
Scott wrote in an essay that about 75 percent of the grants she awarded through the fund last year went to nonprofits that are working to boost economic security and opportunities for people who are struggling. The remainder went to human-rights and conservation groups. She also wrote that she is in the beginning stages of investing some of her wealth in for-profit companies and funds that are working to solve societal challenges in housing, health, and other areas.
- Several other philanthropists who gave some of the biggest donations last year did not make it onto the Philanthropy 50 list because they gave through their foundations. Among them were Alice Walton, an heiress to the Walmart fortune, who gave $350 million through her Alice L. Walton Foundation to Mercy Health, an Arkansas healthy system, to establish a cardiac care center and Jackie and Mike Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s parents, who gave $185.7 million through their Bezos Family Foundation to the Aspen Institute to establish the Center for Rising Generations.
- Also not on the list is Elon Musk, the Tesla automotive company CEO who is currently leading the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal government. Late last year, Musk gave 268,000 shares of Tesla stock valued at about $112 million at the time to unnamed charities, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. A representative for Musk declined to provide the names of the nonprofits to which he transferred the stock. Musk primarily gives through his foundation to nonprofit entities he controls, including a donor-advised fund and a STEM-focused elementary and preschool he is establishing in Texas.
Multiyear Gifts
Some of America’s biggest donors don’t appear on the current Philanthropy 50 even if they donated 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 Gates Foundation, are not counted. That is because Buffett’s June gifts were annual installments toward multibillion-dollar pledges he announced 19 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, which he has now exceeded:
- Nearly 10 million shares of class “B” Berkshire stock valued at more than $4 billion to the Gates Foundation. To date, he has contributed $43.3 billion. That is $7.2 billion more than the roughly $36.1 billion he pledged to the grant maker in 2006.
- More than 993,000 shares valued at nearly $378 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation — his family foundation that is named for his first wife, who died in 2004. He has contributed $4.1 billion, or about $500 million more than the approximately $3.6 billion he originally pledged to the fund.
More than 695,000 shares (valued at $264.4 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 supports social-justice work and early-childhood education.
In 2006, Warren Buffett promised Berkshire Hathaway stock then valued at nearly $1.3 billion to each of his three children’s foundations and then doubled the original pledge in 2012. To date, he has given the three foundations nearly $2.6 billion each toward the pledge.
