The Chronicle’s annual list of the largest charitable donations from individuals or their foundations totaled nearly $6 billion in 2024, and half of that amount came from three contributions of $1 billion or more each. Two of those three donations went to medical schools to provide financial aid. In total, four of the top donations on the list, totaling $2.3 billion, went to support financial aid.
Three contributions were made to the donors’ own foundations, and those donations also totaled $2.3 billion. Three other donations supported medical research or treatment, and one donation each went to support civic engagement, arts and culture.
The list has 12 gifts, instead of 10, due to ties. Six of the donors are billionaires and their combined net worth is estimated at $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, donated 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 has primarily supported educational organizations, with a special focus for Hastings, who taught high school math while a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s and served as president of the Board of Trustees. California State Education in the early 2000s.
Hastings co-founded the video streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It started streaming movies and TV series in 2007 and then started creating its own content. He stepped down as co-CEO last year and currently serves as president of the company.
help for medical school
Next on the list is the $1 billion that Michael Bloomberg donated through Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins University to make medical school free for most students and provide more financial aid to nursing and nursing students. university public health.
Bloomberg, whose net worth according to Forbes is approximately $105 billion, earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the university in 1964. He then founded the Bloomberg financial news empire and served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013. Given his alma mater at least $3.5 billion since graduating 60 years ago.
Ruth Gottesman, professor emerita in the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, had the same goal as Bloomberg. In February he gave his former employer $1 billion to support free tuition in perpetuity for students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Gottesman had a long career in medical school. She joined the university’s Child Assessment and Rehabilitation Center in 1968 and began 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, ran the New York investment firm First Manhattan and was an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway and a protégé of Warren Buffett. He left his wife his valuable stock portfolio when he died in 2022 with instructions to do with it what she thought best.
buffet money
Berkshire Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett follows Gottesman and Bloomberg with a big gift. The famous financier donated 1.5 million Berkshire Hathaway shares valued at $716.1 million in November to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his first wife, who died in 2004.
Buffett, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $143 billion, created the donor in 1964 to manage the family’s charitable giving, and it remains a family affair. Two of his three children are part of its board of directors and it is directed by his former son-in-law. The foundation primarily supports women’s reproductive health. It also offers college scholarships for students in Nebraska, the family’s home state.
The donation is a special contribution Buffett announced in November in lieu of one of the annual contributions he makes to the foundation and several other donors, which are payments for multimillion-dollar pledges he announced in 2006.
The Chronicle’s annual ranking of the year’s largest donations is based on publicly announced donations. The count does not include contributions of artwork or gifts from anonymous donors. In March, the Chronicle will release its annual ranking of the 50 largest donors, a list based on philanthropists’ total contributions in 2024 rather than individual donations.
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THE LIST
1. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his wife Patty Quillin; $1.1 billion to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Hastings Fund
2. (tie) Michael Bloomberg, founder of the Bloomberg financial news empire and former mayor of New York, via Bloomberg Philanthropies; $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University for financial aid
2. (tie) Ruth Gottesman, professor emerita, Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine for financial aid
4. Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; $716.1 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation
5. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, and his wife Patty Quillin; $502.4 million to the Hastings Fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation
6. Roy Vagelos, retired president of the pharmaceutical company Merck, 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 Sciences
7. Alice Walton, heiress to the Walmart fortune, through her Alice L. Walton Foundation; $350 million to Mercy Health to establish cardiac care center
8. Jackie and Mike Bezos, the parents of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, through their Bezos Family Foundation; $185.7 million to Aspen Institute to establish Center for Rising Generations
9. (tie) Barbara Britt, the late widow of Glenn Britt, former CEO of Time Warner Cable; Bequeathing $150 million to Dartmouth College for financial aid
9. (tie) Hyatt Brown, a retired insurance executive, and his wife Cici; $150 million to the 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, president of merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners, and his wife Tina, through Trott Family Philanthropies; $150 million to STARS College Network to help small-town and rural students 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. La Crónica is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
