Michael Bloomberg tops the list of America’s biggest donors for the second year in a row

For the second 12 months in a row, former New York Metropolis mayor Michael Bloomberg gave essentially the most to charitable causes, in keeping with the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s unique Philanthropy 50 checklist of the People who donated the biggest sums to nonprofits final 12 months.

In 2024, he gave a complete of $3.7 billion to help arts, schooling, the surroundings, public-health teams, and applications geared toward bettering metropolis governments. He provides on to charities and thru his Bloomberg Philanthropies, which final 12 months awarded a $1 billion grant to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins College, to make medical college free and to offer monetary support to nursing and public well being college students.

“I’ve by no means understood individuals who wait till they die to provide away their wealth. Why deny your self the satisfaction?” he wrote in an electronic mail to the Chronicle. “I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m decided to do what I can to open doorways for others and to depart a greater world for my youngsters and grandchildren.”

Bloomberg was certainly one of six donors who gave $1 billion or extra in 2024. The others have been Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his spouse, Patty Quillin (No. 2), Dell Applied sciences founder Michael Dell and his spouse, Susan Dell (No. 3), investor Warren Buffett (No. 4), Fb co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his spouse, doctor Priscilla Chan (No. 5), and retired professor Ruth Gottesman (No. 6).

The vast majority of these items went to foundations and donor-advised funds that help causes together with schooling, financial mobility, social justice, and scientific analysis. Gottesman, like Bloomberg, gave to make medical college free. She donated $1 billion to the Albert Einstein School of Drugs.

Collectively the 50 donors on the checklist contributed a complete of $16.2 billion to charity in 2024. The median quantity they gave was $100 million.

Whereas these numbers are sizable, not all the nation’s wealthiest individuals seem on the checklist. Solely 19 of the richest People on the Forbes 400 checklist donated sufficient to seem within the Philanthropy rankings.

Amongst those that gave large — however are much less well-known:

— Thomas Golisano, the billionaire founding father of Paychex, is No. 8. He gave away $500 million final 12 months. Virtually $400 million of that went to 123 nonprofits in New York and Florida with no strings hooked up. About 90 of these items have been $1 million to $5 million, typically to small teams that not often get contributions of that measurement. Many have been to organizations that serve individuals with developmental, mental, and bodily disabilities. The difficulty has nice which means to Golisano, whose son has a developmental incapacity.

— Retired insurance coverage government Hyatt Brown and his spouse, Cici, at No. 20, gave the Museum of Arts & Sciences, in Daytona Seashore, Fla., $150 million for a brand new constructing and to show its present residence right into a youngsters’s museum.

— Businesswoman and enterprise capital investor Michele Kang, at No. 28, gave $84 million final 12 months, together with $4 million to assist the USA Ladies’s Rugby Sevens crew put together for the Olympics.

Some large public debates have been swirling on this planet of philanthropy. Some donors — most notably hedge-fund billionaire Invoice Ackman — pushed again in opposition to the establishments they’ve supported, criticizing universities’ responses to the October 7 assaults in Israel and campus protests in opposition to the battle in Gaza; critiquing variety, fairness, and inclusion applications; demanding modifications; and pledging to halt help.

Some philanthropists imagine that politicized public debates about giving are unhelpful noise that may get in the way in which of doing efficient work. Ok. Lisa Yang (No. 34), a retired funding banker, gave $74.5 million this 12 months, a lot of that to MIT and Cornell College, the place she is a trustee.

Through the years, Yang has given massive sums to applications that assist people who find themselves bodily or cognitively disabled, and he or she advocates for people with disabilities and autism-spectrum issues.

“The people who find themselves affected by these issues, they don’t have the luxurious of time,” she says. “When you might have a uncommon illness and so they do politics, to the people who find themselves affected by the dysfunction, it’s completely irrelevant. They’re nonetheless struggling.”

However some donors are loath to get ensnared in high-profile polarizing points, says Renee Kaplan, CEO of the donor advisory agency Ahead World. Because of this, she says, some donors are staying out of the fray by making nameless items. Others are working collectively in donor collaboratives, each to spice up their energy and sources and to defend particular person contributors from criticism.

Donors are beginning to say, “I’ll do extra anonymously. I’m not going to place my identify on issues. I’m going to decelerate our basis for some time as a result of I’m fearful I’ll be a goal,” Kaplan says. “I feel there’s real concern and pause and concern that’s affecting donors.”

This 12 months’s checklist marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the Philanthropy 50 rating. Buffett was the highest donor over that interval, with cumulative items totaling $49.4 billion. Microsoft co-founder Invoice Gates and Melinda French Gates adopted, with the $34 billion they gave collectively. (Since their divorce, each have appeared on the checklist individually.) Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk spherical out the highest 5.

Buffett, Gates and French Gates, and Bloomberg collectively account for roughly one-third of the $314.5 billion in giving by Philanthropy 50 donors since 2000. The most important reward made throughout that point is Buffett’s 2006 pledge to the Gates Basis, valued on the time at $36.1 billion.

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Related Press protection of philanthropy and nonprofits receives help by means of the AP’s collaboration with The Dialog US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely accountable for this content material. For all of AP’s philanthropy protection, go to https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.