The Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle’s annual list of the year’s biggest donors, traces its roots back to a major philanthropic figure. CNN and United Nations Foundation founder Ted Turner — who has appeared on the list six times — proposed ranking the richest Americans, not by their wealth but by their giving, as a way to spur more philanthropy. The online publication Slatestarted the list in 1996, and in 2000, the Chronicle took over the list, partnering with Slate in the early years.
A look at who gave the most and the trends that have shaped big philanthropy since 2000
Our first list was topped by familiar faces: Bill and Melinda French Gates donated $5 billion to their foundation that year. They were followed by IDG founder Patrick McGovern and his
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The Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle’s annual list of the year’s biggest donors, traces its roots back to a major philanthropic figure. CNN and United Nations Foundation founder Ted Turner — who has appeared on the list six times — proposed ranking the richest Americans, not by their wealth but by their giving, as a way to spur more philanthropy. The online publication Slatestarted the list in 1996, and in 2000, the Chronicle took over the list, partnering with Slate in the early years.
A look at who gave the most and the trends that have shaped big philanthropy since 2000
Our first list was topped by familiar faces: Bill and Melinda French Gates donated $5 billion to their foundation that year. They were followed by IDG founder Patrick McGovern and his wife, Lore, and Eli and Edythe Broad, Los Angeles donors who appeared on the list every year from 2000 to 2013. That first year, Turner landed at No. 13.
Wealth in America has changed over the course of the Philanthropy 50. The number of ultra-high-net-worth Americans — people worth $30 million or more — grew from 53,600 in 2005 to 180,205 in 2024, according to a report from Altrata, a firm that researches global wealth. Their cumulative wealth grew from $4.7 trillion to $21 trillion. The wealthiest billionaires are also getting even richer at an incredible rate, says Maeen Shaban, Altrata’s director of research and data analytics. In 2014, 18 individuals around the world, each worth more than $50 billion, controlled less than 4 percent of all billionaire wealth. By 2023, they controlled 16 percent of global billionaire wealth — $2 trillion, even though the number of people in that rarefied wealth bracket had risen only slightly.
“The wealthy population and their wealth has been increasing at a faster rate than GDP and average markets,” he says. “There is definitely something to say about that inequality, even among the wealthy.”
Judging by the total amount donated each year in our Philanthropy 50 list, the megawealthy are not giving more as their wealth accumulates. In 2001, donors on the Philanthropy 50 gave a total of $22.5 billion, when adjusted for inflation. That was about $3 billion more than they gave in 2019, also adjusted for inflation. The second and third highest years for total giving were 2021 and 2020 — likely because of the pandemic and calls for racial justice. But 2023 fell to the 14th highest, and 2024 was the 10th highest. There is no upward giving trend year over year.
The biggest donors on our list from the past 25 years are exceptionally wealthy individuals who, for the most part, are deeply engaged with philanthropy. Warren Buffett was the top donor, with cumulative gifts totaling $49.4 billion. Bill and Melinda French Gates followed, with the $34 billion they gave together. (Since their divorce, both have appeared on the list individually.) Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk round out the top five. The recipients of the 10 largest gifts on the list have all been foundations — and five of the top 10 gifts went to the Gates Foundation.
Eight of the 10 donors who have given the most money during their years on the Philanthropy 50 have signed the Giving Pledge. Signatories commit to giving more than half of their wealth to charity during their lifetimes or in their wills. The pledge, which was started by Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Melinda French Gates in 2010, has helped catalyze giving among the wealthy and has acted as a touchstone for learning about philanthropy, says Kathleen Enright, CEO of the Council on Foundations.
“The Giving Pledge leverages relationships,” she says. “It pushes younger donors to think earlier in their careers and lives about the philanthropic approach and legacy they want to leave.”
Complex Problems
Donors who made their fortunes in the West Coast tech boom rose in philanthropic prominence during the first decade of the Philanthropy 50. Many of those donors brought a business-knows-best approach to philanthropy and demanded things like board seats and increased involvement in the operation of nonprofits, says Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
But that approach fell out of favor over time. Mark Zuckerberg’s controversial $100 million donation to the Newark Public School system may have caused some donors to rethink that top-down approach to giving, Buchanan says.
“It’s clear that there was resistance to the idea that the solutions to problems that affect people in local communities should be dreamed up by big donors and McKinsey consultants in a conference room,” he says. “There was a similar approach of donors driving the thinking, drawing on experience from the private sector, and I think there was just example after example of that not quite working.”
Some donors began to acknowledge the complexity of the issues they were working to solve. They began to rely less on imposing business lessons and more on understanding the people who are most affected by problems and started listening to their ideas.
Eric and Wendy Schmidt were part of that wave of tech entrepreneurs who entered philanthropy in the 2000s. The former Google CEO and his wife started out by giving about $8 million to 17 grantees, she says. Now the couple have 10 grant-making organizations. The Schmidts have appeared on the Philanthropy 50 list seven times and have given a total of $2.8 billion in the years they appeared on the list.
“When we started philanthropy in 2006, in response to the wealth from Google, I think that was a responsibility that we took very strongly,” Wendy Schmidt says.
The couple view the issues they want to address as a series of systems — the system that moves food from a seed to a meal on the kitchen table, for example — and tries to understand what is working, what isn’t, and where philanthropy can help improve those systems. “I look at us and our wealth as catalytic. We occupy a space that government and industry don’t, and we can take risks with our capital that they can’t do,” she says. “It’s a very important space.”
Wendy Schmidt says that unlike other tech donors who tried to graft their business acumen onto social problems, they have always sought to listen to those who are most affected by problems. She says when they started their foundation, they used the work of Paul Farmer, who founded Partners in Health to provide health care to impoverished people, as a guiding principle. He lived with the people he treated and advocated that philanthropists break bread with those they serve. She also says her training as a journalist is important to her approach to giving.
“I’m good at listening to people. I don’t want to think I know more than they do because I don’t,” she says. “Our gift is we have wealth. Their gift is they have information, and we should have an exchange.”
Over the last two decades, philanthropy has been moving to trust-based models that focus on the people who are most affected by problems and trusting them to find solutions, says Nick Tedesco, CEO of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.
“We are moving from a donor-centered model of giving to a community-centered approach,” Tedesco says. “However, the pace of change is missing the urgency it needs.”
The culmination of that trend so far has been the prolific giving of MacKenzie Scott. Since 2019, she has given away $19 billion to more than 2,450 nonprofits. Scott does not appear on the Philanthropy 50 because she doesn’t reveal how much she contributes to her donor-advised funds. Other philanthropists have experimented with ceding grant-making decisions to others. Last year, Melinda French Gates gave $20 million each through her Pivotal Ventures LLC to 12 leaders to distribute as they see fit.
New Giving Vehicles
There was a time when foundations were a given for most high-profile philanthropists, but that’s changing. The range of giving vehicles they use has expanded.
Some philanthropists have been looking for ways to give that don’t have as many restrictions and requirements as a foundation. Marc Benioff, co-founder of Salesforce, and his wife, Lynne, have appeared on our list 10 times since 2010 and have given away more than $1 billion over those years, but they’ve never had a foundation. Benioff says that sometimes they give through a donor-advised fund, and sometimes they give cash or stock.
“It’s given me a lot of freedom. My wife and I don’t want a lot of bureaucracy in how we’re giving. There’s no board of directors, no CEO to discuss this with,” he says. “We just make that decision.”
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, physician Priscilla Chan, started their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited-liability company, in 2015. At the time, pundits criticized its lack of transparency — LLCs don’t have to disclose where their money goes, unlike private foundations or nonprofits. But that approach has since taken hold with many donors. The LLC structure allows donors to have multiple kinds of giving entities under one umbrella so they can advocate for policies, support political causes, invest in for-profit entities, and give to charities, often through a donor-advised fund or a separate nonprofit. That same year, Melinda French Gates started Pivotal Ventures to pursue her mission of empowering women and girls in the United States. Hedge-fund founder John Arnold and his wife, Laura, a former corporate lawyer, who have appeared on the list 14 times, founded Arnold Ventures, a prominent LLC focused on policy change, in 2019.
Growing Focus on Climate
Climate change was not a common term at the start of the Philanthropy 50 — Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth wouldn’t be released until 2006.
Over time, however, climate change has attracted some of the biggest names in business and philanthropy. In 2021, Bezos committed $10 billion to fight climate change over 10 years. Former New York City mayor and financial-news company founder Michael Bloomberg has long focused on climate change and environmental issues. He’s committed $650 million through Bloomberg Philanthropies to help cities reduce emissions, for example. One of his most successful initiatives, Beyond Coal, was launched in 2011.
The goal was to close one-third of the nation’s coal plants by 2030. It reached the goal five years ahead of time. He says he learned important lessons about the shared interest in healthy communities that can rally support for green initiatives.
“People from both parties want to breathe clean air, they want to pay less for electricity, and they want to avoid catastrophic extreme weather,” Bloomberg wrote in an email to the Chronicle. “Beyond Coal underlined a lesson we saw in New York’s City Hall: It’s possible to take on controversial issues and win.”
While philanthropy plays an important role in the switch to renewable energy, climate change is complex and increasingly interwoven into many issues donors care about. It affects health, housing, food supply, immigration, disaster recovery, politics, biodiversity, and wilderness.
The Schmidts, longtime climate funders, understand that climate change affects many issues they support and that working to curb it creates opportunities for positive change.
That change is “good for the earth, it’s good for people, it’s good for human health. It’s good for human rights,” Wendy Schmidt says. “All these issues absolutely intersect, and it’s really hard to peel them apart.”
Separate Camps
Philanthropy hasn’t been immune to the polarization that has spread throughout American society over the past two decades. People on the left and the right in philanthropy have stopped talking to each other, Buchanan says. The chasm has become more pronounced, he says, since the right became more radicalized during the first Trump administration.
Illustration: Sean McCabe for The Chronicle. Images: AP; iStock; Shutterstock
Ted Turner, MacKenzie Scott, the pandemic, and calls for racial justice helped shape the last 25 years of philanthropy.
“It’s worrisome if we can’t talk to each other and figure out whether, despite our disagreements, there are places where we agree and can work together,” Buchanan says.
The growing divides among philanthropists of differing ideologies can have consequences, says Joanne Florino, the Adam Meyerson distinguished fellow in philanthropic excellence at the Philanthropy Roundtable, an organization that serves conservative grant makers and donors. “The polarization that is so heavily — even obsessively — focused on the national news coming out of D.C. will result in far less attention paid to the good we could be doing for our neighbors and our communities every day,” she says.
But some big donors say they are well positioned to achieve important goals even in that environment. Arnold Ventures works on an array of public-policy issues and seeks to find consensus on hard issues like pharmaceutical pricing and surprise medical billing. It has also carved out an important role providing nonpartisan expertise.
“You have to find ways of creating bipartisan solutions and giving a little and taking a little,” says Laura Arnold. “I would define success as our ability to become a resource for nonideological input to legislators, governors, the executive branch at the federal level. I do think we’ve accomplished this.”
Benioff says that he and his wife have accomplished a lot through different presidential administrations. In 2020, they launched an initiative to plant, conserve, and restore 1 trillion trees. He points out that President Trump endorsed it and even planted a tree in support. The Benioffs contributed important funding for Hawaii’s marine national monument, which was created by President George W. Bush and expanded by President Barack Obama.
“We can work with anyone whether it’s a Republican or Democratic administration,” he says. “I think we can work with anybody. Our issues, like trees, are bipartisan.”
Intellectual Challenge
Perhaps some of the biggest changes in philanthropy have taken place in the past several years. The enormous disruptions brought on by the pandemic spurred donors and grant makers to give nonprofits more flexibility in how they use grant dollars, says Buchanan, of the Center for Effective Philanthropy.
“There was more change in practice following the pandemic and more of a grantee, nonprofit-centric approach than I had seen in the previous two decades,” he says. “It happened because of that jolt and the way it got people to reconsider what they were doing.”
Foundations and nonprofits also embraced DEI policies in response to the murder of George Floyd and the demands for racial equity that followed. Internal policies began to change at some grant makers, and hiring practices became more inclusive at many organizations, although people of color remain underrepresented in leadership. Some grant makers sought out smaller nonprofits that work in local communities of color and groups focused on racial and social justice.
But that trend may not last. Last month, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative told employees it was ending its internal diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and its support of social advocacy.
Corporate America is pulling back on DEI, and race-based programs at universities have been under attack, says Enright, of the Council on Foundations. The Trump administration has targeted many of these initiatives, and it is hard to know what will survive legal challenges, she says.
At the same time, some donors are getting ready to push back, says Stephanie Ellis-Smith, CEO of the philanthropic advisory firm Phīla Engaged Giving. She has been involved in an increasing number of discussions with donors about addressing racial wealth gaps and ways to remedy harms caused by their ancestors. The attacks on racial justice are drawing some donors to the issue. Others are preparing to defend their programs.
“We’ve had conversations with foundations who are saying, ‘We’re ready to lawyer up. If someone wants to come at us, we’re ready to go. They can bring it and we’re prepared,’” she says.
For people who have been engaged in philanthropy and plan to be for years to come, one thing is certain — giving will always be a challenge, and it will always be fulfilling. That has been the experience of the Arnolds, who have contributed more than $4.4 billion to charity in the years they have been on the Philanthropy 50. They have come to appreciate how complex and demanding philanthropy is. Even with their experience, focus on data, and a staff of experts, change on the scale that they are pursuing is hard to come by — but the work itself is extremely gratifying.
“It is the best way to spend my time and the best example I could give to my children as to how they should spend their time. It’s an honor to be in a position to do this work,” Laura Arnold says. “Intellectually, it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Maria directs the annual Philanthropy 50, a comprehensive report on America’s most generous donors. She writes about wealthy philanthropists, arts organizations, key trends and insights related to high-net-worth donors, and other topics.
Jim Rendon is senior editor and fellowship director who covers nonprofit leadership, climate change, and philanthropic outcomes for the Chronicle. Email Jim or follow him on Twitter @RendonJim.
