Charity: Bill Gates made 2022's biggest donation
The Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of the 10 largest charitable gifts announced by individuals or their foundations totaled nearly $9.3 billion in 2022. The contributions went to large, well-established institutions, three of them private foundations and three universities to support environmental sustainability, children's mental health, and stem-cell research. The other gifts backed cancer research and treatment, housing efforts, youth programs, and reproductive health.
Two of the gifts exceeded $1 billion, and six of the eight donors (one donor made three gifts) are multibillionaires. The combined net worth of those six donors is just over $325 billion.
Topping the list is Bill Gates, who gave $5 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to back the grantmaker's work in global health, development, policy and advocacy, and U.S. education. Gates, whose net worth is estimated at $104 billion, attracted attention in July when he announced he was giving $20 billion to the foundation he runs with his former wife, Melinda French Gates. However, foundation officials confirmed in December that three-fourths of that $20 billion went toward paying off the $15 billion he and French Gates had pledged in July 2021. The remaining $5 billion was a new infusion to the foundation.
Ann and John Doerr came in second with a $1.1 billion donation they're giving through their Benificus Foundation to Stanford University to launch the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, an effort to tackle the world's most urgent climate and sustainability challenges. The new school will focus on eight areas of scholarship: climate change, Earth and planetary sciences, energy technology, sustainable cities, the natural environment, food and water security, human society and behavior, and human health and the environment.
The new school will house several academic departments and interdisciplinary institutes. It will also be home to a “sustainability accelerator,” which, among other efforts, will award grants to researchers and others to develop new technologies in environmental sustainability and related arenas, advance new policies, and support partnerships.