Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2013; it was published on 2 January 2013, and this year refers to 2012. All figures, including 5.1 billion dollars for the top 15 gifts, come from that year’s Chronicle of Philanthropy ranking.
As it does every year around this time, The Chronicle of Philanthropy has published the figures for the largest donations made by wealthy Americans.
Total giving was higher than in 2011, but if we add up the 15 biggest gifts, the figure comes to 5.1 billion dollars, somewhat lower than in 2011, and lower still when you consider that more than half of that money came from a single person: billionaire Warren Buffett.
Warren Buffett gave 1 billion dollars to each of his three children’s foundations, so his contribution came to 3 billion dollars.
Second on the list was Mark Zuckerberg, who donated 498.8 million dollars to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to support education and health.
In third place was Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, who donated 300 million dollars to the Allen Institute for Brain Science so it could expand its programmes and hire more staff.
The full list of the 15 largest gifts is in the Chronicle of Philanthropy‘s report.
Further reading
Featured image: Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
