The Chronicle’s annual list of the biggest charitable donations from individuals or their foundations totaled nearly $6 billion in 2024, with half of that coming from three contributions of $1 billion or more each. Two of those three gifts went to medical schools to provide financial aid. Altogether, four of the top donations on the list, totaling $2.3 billion, went to support financial aid.
Three contributions were made to donors’ own foundations, and those gifts totaled $2.3 billion as well. Three other donations supported medical research or treatment, and one gift each went to support civic engagement and arts and culture.
The list has 12 gifts, rather than 10, because of ties. Six of the donors are multibillionaires, and their combined net worth is an estimated $365 billion.
Topping the list is a gift from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, whose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $5 billion. Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, gave 2 million shares of Netflix stock valued at $1.1 billion in January to their Hastings Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The couple started their fund in 2016 and have primarily supported education organizations, a special focus for Hastings, who taught high school math when he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s and served as president of the California State Board of Education in the early 2000s.
Hastings co-founded the video streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It started streaming films and television series in 2007 and later began creating its own content. He stepped down as co-CEO last year and currently serves as the company’s chairman.
Medical school aid
Next on the list is the $1 billion Michael Bloomberg gave through his Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins University to make medical school free for most students and provide more financial aid to the university’s nursing and public health students.
Bloomberg, whose net worth Forbes pegs at roughly $105 billion, earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the university in 1964. He went on to found the Bloomberg financial-news empire and served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013. He has given his alma mater at least $3.5 billion since graduating 60 years ago.
Ruth Gottesman, a professor emerita of Albert Einstein College of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, had the same goal as Bloomberg. She gave her former employer $1 billion in February to support free tuition in perpetuity for Albert Einstein College of Medicine students.
Gottesman had a long career at the medical school. She joined the college’s Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center in 1968 and started the center’s adult-literacy program in the early 1990s. She was later named founding director of the Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning Disabilities.
Her late husband, David Gottesman, led the New York investment firm First Manhattan and was an early Berkshire Hathaway investor and a protégé of Warren Buffett’s. He left his wife his valuable stock portfolio when he died in 2022 with instructions to do whatever she thought best with it.
Buffett money
Berkshire’s chairman and CEO, Warren Buffett, follows Gottesman and Bloomberg with a big gift of his own. The famous financier gave 1.5 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock valued at $716.1 million in November to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his first wife, who died in 2004.
Buffett, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $143 billion, created the grantmaker in 1964 to manage the family’s charitable giving, and it remains a family affair. Two of his three children serve on its board, and it is led by his former son-in-law. The foundation primarily backs women’s reproductive health. It also provides college scholarships for students in Nebraska, the family’s home state.
The donation is a special contribution that Buffett announced in November rather than one of the annual contributions he makes to the foundation and several other grant makers, which are payments toward multibillion-dollar pledges he announced in 2006.
The Chronicle’s annual rankings of the year’s biggest donations are based on publicly announced gifts. The tally does not include contributions of artwork or gifts from anonymous donors. In March, the Chronicle will unveil its annual ranking of the 50 biggest donors, a list based on philanthropists’ total contributions in 2024 rather than individual gifts.
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THE LIST
1. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his wife Patty Quillin; $1.1 billion to Hastings Fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation
2. (tie) Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg financial news empire and former mayor of New York, through his Bloomberg Philanthropies; $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University for financial aid
2. (tie) Ruth Gottesman, professor emerita of Albert Einstein College of Medicine Department of Pediatrics; $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for financial aid
4. Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; $716.1 million to Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
5. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his wife Patty Quillin; $502.4 million to Hastings Fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation
6. Roy Vagelos, retired chairman of the Merck pharmaceuticals company, and his wife, Diana; $400 million to Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons to establish the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Science
7. Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, through her Alice L. Walton Foundation; $350 million to Mercy Health to establish a cardiac care center
8. Jackie and Mike Bezos, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s parents, through their Bezos Family Foundation; $185.7 million to Aspen Institute to establish the Center for Rising Generations
9. (tie) Barbara Britt, the late widow of Glenn Britt, a former Time Warner Cable CEO; $150 million bequest to Dartmouth College for financial aid
9. (tie) Hyatt Brown, a retired insurance executive, and his wife Cici; $150 million to Museum of Arts and Sciences for a new building
9. (tie) Emmet Stephenson Jr., a financier, and his daughter Tessa Stephenson Brand, an event planner; $150 million to City of Hope for pancreatic cancer research
9. (tie) Byron Trott, chairman of BDT & MSD Partners merchant bank, and his wife Tina, through their Trott Family Philanthropies; $150 million to STARS College Network to assist students from small and rural towns graduate from college
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Maria Di Mento is a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article, including the list of donors. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
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