Top donor: Amazon boss Bezos gifted £7.3bn to the fight against climate change
THE world’s richest person made the largest charitable contribution last year, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top donations, with a 10 billion dollar (£7.3 billion) gift intended to help fight climate change.
Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, whose “real-time” worth Forbes magazine estimates at roughly 188 billion dollars (£138 billion), used the contribution to launch his Bezos Earth Fund.
The fund, which supports non-profit organisations involved in tackling the climate crisis, has paid 790 million dollars (£582 million) to 16 groups so far, according to the Chronicle.
Setting aside Mr Bezos’s gift, the sum total of the top 10 donations last year – 2.6 billion dollars (£1.9 billion) – was the lowest since 2011, even as many billionaires vastly increased their wealth in the stock market rally that catapulted technology shares in particular last year.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies, from March 18 to December 7, Mr Bezos’s wealth surged by 63%, from 113 billion (£83 billion) to 184 billion dollars (£135 billion).
Phil Knight of Nike, who with his wife Penny made the second and third-largest donations last year, according to the Chronicle. The couple gave more than 900 million dollars (£663 million) to the Knight Foundation and 300 million dollars (£221 million) to the University of Oregon.
Fred Kummer, founder of construction company HBE Corporation, and his wife June gave 300 million dollars (£221 million) to establish a foundation to support programmes at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, delivered the fourth-largest donation: a 250 million dollar (£184 million) gift to the Centre for Tech and Civic Life, which worked on voting security issues in the 2020 election.
In the fifth spot was Arthur Blank, co-founder of Home Depot.
Mr Bezos and the Zuckerbergs made up the next spots on last year’s top 10 list. They were followed by Stephen Ross; David Roux and his wife Barbara; George and Renee Karfunkel; Bernard Marcus; and Charles Schwab and his wife Helen.