Top 50 U.S. donors gave $14.1 billion in 2022

A large pile of one-hundred-dollar bills.

Giving by the 50 biggest donors in the United States totaled more than $14.1 billion in 2022, with 26 donors making their first appearance on the Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports.

The total represents a 49 percent decrease from the $27.7 billion given by the 50 biggest donors in 2021, when Giving Pledge co-founders Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates topped the list with a combined $15 billion, and is near the $15.8 billion contributed in 2019, when Giving Pledger Michael R. Bloomberg topped the list with $3.3 billion in giving.

In 2022, the top 10 donors included Bill Gates, who gave $5.1 billion; followed by Bloomberg, who gave $1.7 billion; Warren Buffett, who gave $758 million; the parents of Jeff Bezos, Jacklyn and Miguel Bezos, who gave $710 million to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center; John and Laura Arnold, who gave $617 million; the late Ruth DeYoung Kohler III, who gave $440 million; Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who gave $411 million, including $43 million to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research; T. Denny Sanford, who gave $333 million, including $150 million to the University of San Diego; Alice Clark, who gave $321 million; and Harry and Linda Fath, who gave $275 million.

Among the new donors on the list are Airbnb co-founder and Giving Pledger Brian Chesky, who gave $100 million to the Obama Foundation; FedEx founder and CEO Fred Smith, who gave $65 million to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation; and Edward Avedisian—a retired Boston Pops clarinetist who amassed a fortune trading stocks on the side—who gave $100 million to Boston University before his death in December. Jeff Bezos—who topped the list in 2020 with $10 billion in giving, and was 10th in 2021 with $510 million—is listed at 17th in 2022, having given $122 million. Absent from the list were Giving Pledgers MacKenzie Scott, who reportedly gave $5.82 billion in 2022, including $275 million to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Melinda French Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, both of whom did not share information for the survey, the Chronicle noted.

According to the Chronicle, contributions by the 50 biggest donors toward climate change mitigation and solutions, reached only $195 million—less than 10 percent of the more than $2 billion directed to conventional philanthropy that included scholarships and disease prevention. “The default setting for the biggest donors still seems to be to steer away from addressing some of the thorniest societal challenges related, for example, to inequity, racism, and the future of our planet,” said Center for Effective Philanthropy president Phil Buchanan.

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Kativ)

Maria Di Mento, Drew Lindsay. "New names join Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg on List of Charity’s 50 biggest donors ." Chronicle of Philanthropy 02/14/2023. Maria Di Mento. "The Philanthropy 50 ." Chronicle of Philanthropy 02/14/2023.