March 4, 2025 (Washington, DC) – For the second year in a row, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave the most to charitable causes in 2024, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s exclusive list of the 50 Americans who donated the largest sums to nonprofits last year, the Philanthropy 50.
Bloomberg’s giving totaled $3.7 billion in 2024. Among the grants awarded through Bloomberg Philanthropies last year was $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater, to make medical school free for most students and to boost financial aid to nursing and public health students, and three grants of $175 million each to increase the endowments of the Historically Black medical schools Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Morehouse School of Medicine. Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science, another Historically Black medical school, received a $75 million grant.
Bloomberg is followed on the 25th annual Philanthropy 50 list by Reed Hastings and Patty Quillin, the Netflix co-founder and his wife; Dell Technologies founder and his wife Michael and Susan Dell; financier Warren Buffett; and Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook co-founder and his pediatrician wife.
Of note, Melinda French Gates donated more than her former husband Bill Gates – she’s at #7 on the list and he at #18. Marc and Lynne Benioff (#14), the Salesforce founder and his wife, donated $235 million largely focused on healthcare in Hawaii.
Donors chose to support a variety of causes and organizations, including:
- Their own foundations and donor-advised funds: Total 2024 giving by Hastings and Quillin ($1.6 billion), the Dells ($1.5 billion), Buffett ($1.14 billion), and Chan and Zuckerberg ($1.11 billion) was directed to foundations, their own or a family member’s, or to donor-advised funds.
- Higher education: Colleges and universities remain among the largest recipients of donations with a particular focus on financial aid. Ruth Gottesman’s (#6) contribution of $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine made the medical school free. She is an expert on learning disabilities and a professor emerita in the college’s Department of Pediatrics. Other examples of big giving to higher education include Barbara Britt (#17), a former staff photographer at Time, Inc., who left an estimated $200 million bequest to Dartmouth College dedicated to financial aid, and retired financier William Miller III (#22) who donated $132 million to Washington and Lee University to allow his alma mater to implement a need-blind admissions policy for all undergraduate students and provide loan-free financial-aid packages.
- The future of American democracy: The University of Southern California received $59 million from Leonard and Pamela Schaeffer (#35) to establish the Leonard D. Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Institute will produce research that informs policymaking and provides students with government service fellowships and programs that teach them how to be responsible and engaged citizens. And Los Angeles businessman Meyer Luskin and his wife Renee (#31) donated $25 million to the University of California at Los Angeles for the Meyer and Renee Luskin Department of History to expand public programs because they believe that the study of history is vital to helping people better understand the present and helps to create well-informed citizens.
- Women and girls: Businesswoman and majority owner of women’s soccer teams Michele Kang (#28) launched the Kynisca Innovation Hub with a $50 million gift to advance evidence-based training methods for women athletes. She also gave $30 million to the U.S. Soccer Foundation for women’s and girls’ programs and $4 million to USA Rugby to help the USA Women’s Rugby Sevens team prepare for the 2028 Olympics. Ronda Stryker and William Johnston (#25), the Michigan businesswoman and her financier husband, are longtime supporters of the Historically Black women’s Spelman College, donating $100 million to the school in 2024.
- Health care and health research: Herb Chambers (#24), a Boston businessman who owns dozens of car dealerships, gave $100 million to Massachusetts General Hospital for a new cancer-care center. And Hilarie and Mitchell Morgan (#44), a former psychologist and her real estate management husband, donated $50 million to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to support construction of the hospital’s newly named Morgan Center for Research and Innovation.
Most of the nation’s wealthiest people do not appear on the list. Only 19 of the richest Americans on the Forbes 400 list donated enough to appear on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s rankings.
The Philanthropy 50 is based on gifts and pledges of cash, stock, land, and real estate to nonprofit organizations in 2024. The Chronicle talked to dozens of nonprofits, philanthropists, and their representatives to find out more about large donations that were made public 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. As a result, some major donors may not appear on this list.
Among those who gave big there are many compelling personal stories, reflecting the diverse reasons people engage in philanthropy and decide how to target their giving:
- Thomas Golisano (#8): A health scare prompted the Rochester, N.Y., area businessman to give $500 million to 125 nonprofits in N.Y. and Florida. All of the donations were unrestricted, and 91of the gifts were in the $1 million to $5 million range, a windfall for many of the charities who rarely get seven-figure gifts. About 40 percent of his gifts supported groups that help people with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities, a cause close to Golisano’s heart; he has a developmentally disabled son.
- Pagidipati Family (#42): Brothers Sidd and Rahul Pagidipati and their sister, Srujani Pagidipati, donated $50 million to St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital Foundation as a way to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of their parents, Devaiah and Rudrama Pagidipati, physicians who founded the insurance companies Suncoast Labs and Freedom Health, and to mark their parents’ emigrating to the United States 50 years ago.
- Carole and Daniel Kamin (#27): The couples’ $90 million in gifts to the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Science Center and Carnegie Museum of Natural History reflect Daniel’s childhood love of science. The real estate developer visited the science center often in his youth and vividly remembers building a small working telescope during one of his visits there, which he still has.
“This is a challenging time for many nonprofit organizations. They are confronting a diminishing share of Americans who donate, the effects of inflation, and, most recently, potentially significant cutbacks in government support,” said senior reporter Maria Di Mento, who directs the Philanthropy 50. “The Philanthropy 50 demonstrates that even America’s wealthiest donors, who generously back a range of different causes and organizations, will never be able to give enough money to replace the vital role of government funding or meet the needs of the nonprofit sector.”
Among the donors on this year’s list, nine made their money in technology, nine in finance, and five from family wealth. Twelve live in California, seven in Florida, and six in New York. None is under 40 years old, and 20 are 80 or older.
Among the organizations receiving donations of $1 million or more, 35 are disability services groups (receiving a total of $133 million), 31 are institutions of higher education ($2.9 billion), 22 are foundations ($4.8 billion), 19 are animal welfare organizations ($27.5 million), and 13 are hospitals and medical centers ($610 million). Eighty-six are located in New York, 29 in Florida, and 16 in California.
Across 25 years of the Philanthropy 50, the top donors are Warren Buffett ($49.4 billion), Bill and Melinda French Gates jointly ($39.5 billion), Michael Bloomberg ($20.2 billion), Jeff Bezos ($12.8 billion), and Elon Musk ($7.7 billion).
The Chronicle’s extensive online coverage of the Philanthropy 50 includes an analysis of trends, highlights from 25 years of data, and a focus on young donors. On March 11 at 2p ET, a free online forum, Ultrawealthy Donors: How They Give and What’s Next, will dig into the exclusive data and explore forces shaping the future of big giving.
For more than 35 years, the Chronicle has been the premier source of news, information, analysis, and opinion in the nonprofit world. Nearly 350,000 nonprofit professionals, foundation executives, board members, fundraisers, donors, and others working to advance the common good rely on it to stay informed, learn, and broaden their perspective. As part of its bold plan to innovate and expand its coverage of the rapidly growing social sector, the Chronicle became an independent nonprofit organization in 2023.
The Philanthropy 50 is supported by presenting sponsors DonorPerfect, CCS, and AWS Nonprofits.
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Media contact:
Andy Solomon, andy@stratfordcommunications.com, (202) 841-9049