Wealthy Americans have become more charitable as the economy has improved, but giving has yet to reach pre-recession levels, according to a new study.
The annual Philanthropy 50 list reveals that donors gave $10.4bn in 2011, up from $3.3bn the previous year – the lowest level of giving since the Chronicle of Philanthropy began publishing the report in 2000.
The median of level of giving in 2011 was $61m, 54% higher than the median of $39.6m recorded the previous year, but almost 19% lower than 2007 median of $75m.
Agribusiness heiress Margaret A Cargill far and away topped the list of America's most generous donors, with an estimated $6bn donation to the Anne Ray Charitable Trust and Margaret A Cargill Foundation, which she set up to support the arts, environment, disaster relief and other causes. Although Cargill passed away in 2006, her foundations only liquidated her assets last year. This is the first time she has made the list.
Ranked second was steel tycoon William S Dietrich II, who left $500m to his eponymous educational foundation, followed by Microsoft co-founder Paul G Allen, investor George Soros, and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated $372m, $335m and $311m respectively.
Also new on the list is Google co-founder Sergey M Brin, and his wife, who gave $62m to the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Brin and his mother both have a gene mutation that is commonly associated with Parkinson's.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were absent from the rankings, as was media mogul Ted Turner, as the the Philanthropy 50 doesn't include payments based on pledges made in previous years. Gates donated about $68m last year toward a pledge he and his wife made to their eponymous foundation in 2004.
Among other donations he made last year, Buffett gave over 19m shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock worth close to $1.5bn to the Gates Foundation, as part of a pledge he made to the foundation in 2006, reports the Chronicle. Turner gave $50m to the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund in 2011 through the Turner Global Foundation, towards a $1bn pledge he made in 1997.
The list also does not record gifts from anonymous donors, which the Chronicle has previously reported totaled $546m in 2011.
Apart from Margaret Cargill, only two other donors of the 50 were women: Barbara Dodd Anderson, who pledged about $35m to a Quaker boarding and day school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and the late Nina Ireland, a long-term donor to the University of California, who bequeathed $48m from her estate to the university. Several other women were ranked, but in conjunction with their husbands.
"We're still on the cusp of seeing women with self-made wealth being rich enough to get on this list. I think we'll see that in the next decade," says Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle.
Oprah Winfrey, who made the Chronicle's 2009 list (published in 2010) with donations of $41m, did not feature on the list this year.
Notably, by the Chronicle's metrics, California ranks as the nation's most generous state – by far. Fourteen of the top 50 donors reside in California. The next most generous state is Florida, with four givers. California was also the biggest beneficiary, followed by Missouri.
"It's a trend we've been seeing over time as technology wealth becomes more important. First of all there's more money and also people are starting to talk about giving it away in really serious sums. I think we'll see California continue to grow in importance," says Palmer.
Only three of the 50 donors came from New York, while several states saw no donors at all, a fact that Palmer says points to the fact that there is "a wealth divide as well as a giving divide" among states.
Eleven of the donors on the list made their money from the finance industry (16 did pre-recession in 2006), followed by seven from real estate and five from inherited wealth.
Twelve donors have signed the Giving Pledge, started by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to get billionaires to commit at least half their wealth to charity.
The most popular beneficiaries were universities and colleges – of these Duke University did best, receiving gifts from three donors. Of the 19 donors who donated to educational institutions – giving a total of $1.5bn – 10 gave to colleges that were not their alma maters.
Excluding Cargill's $6bn, 36% of the dollars from benefactors on the Philanthropy 50 went to higher education; 35% went to private foundations; 15% to hospitals, medical centers, and medical research; and 7% to museums, libraries, and historic preservation.