![]() ![]() There are pluses and minuses to that approach, which is taken by Forbes in its own philanthropy rankings: It would, in the eyes of some, rightly recognize philanthropists that get money out the door to nonprofits so that it could make a difference today, rather than parking the money in a financial warehouse in order to address some future problem. Bill and Melinda Gates, one of America’s most consistent biggest distributors of cash, would mostly get credit for the roughly $5 billion that their foundation donates each year - rather than just being tagged with the estimated $160 million that they personally donated to their foundation in 2020. The $350 million that Zuckerberg and Chan donated to support American election officials would now be included, rather than being ruled out as a double-count. Bezos would get credit for his Earth Fund donating $790 million to climate groups. It divorces the moment of peak publicity from the opportunity for accountability.”Īlternatively, analysts for the Chronicle or elsewhere could look at the amount of money that actually went out the door to nonprofits directly in a year. The high profile philanthropic pledge is the embodiment of this problem. ![]() “The other is that a new crop of megadonors are embracing publicity in giving - but are doing so outside the bounds of traditional philanthropic organizations and so without any formal degree of accountability. One is that we don’t have a shared understanding of how to define and measure giving,” said Ben Soskis, a historian of big philanthropy. They didn’t return a Recode request for comment on Tuesday.Īnd if you excluded the Bezos pledge, this year’s headlines about American billionaires’ generosity during the pandemic would look a lot different. Bezos’s representatives have consistently declined to share information on the Earth Fund’s structure. Is the money actually placed in a charitable vehicle like a foundation, a donor-advised fund, or a limited liability company? Or is it more of a rhetorical pledge, similar to Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s commitment in 2015 to set aside 99 percent of their money to philanthropy (and which wasn’t counted on the list)? ![]() The $10 billion promise to the Bezos Earth Fund is counted as a donation to a charitable vehicle.īut the fact is that we don’t even know where that $10 billion sits. It sometimes prioritizes donations to charitable vehicles - such as foundations that in turn donate to nonprofits - as part of an admirable attempt to avoid double-counting. The reason that matters is because the Chronicle’s list doesn’t always focus on donations to nonprofits. ![]() Bezos announced in February that he was promising that sum for grants but has not answered any details about the structure of that gift, including whether the commitment has been irrevocably set aside in some unique pool of money. But its work has self-acknowledged limits that illustrate a bigger trend: The lack of transparency in the philanthropic sector makes it difficult to come to a common set of facts to even debate those policy questions.įor starters, the 50 biggest donors in 2020 would not have broken any records if the $10 billion commitment from Bezos - which is very different from the other donations - wasn’t included on the list. The publication collects available records and interviews philanthropists’ aides. 2020 was the first year with five $1 billion-plus commitments, according to the Chronicle (the other two came from former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Nike founder Phil Knight).Įvery year, the Chronicle attempts to meticulously monitor gifts, and therefore plays a key role in informing our democracy on questions like the best way to solve income inequality and whether to raise taxes. And Twitter founder Jack Dorsey set aside $1 billion worth of stock primarily to fund responses to the pandemic. MacKenzie Scott, Bezos’s ex-wife, donated almost $5 billion to hundreds of nonprofits. Jeff Bezos pledged $10 billion to combat climate change through the Bezos Earth Fund, one of the largest charitable commitments ever. These biggest donors gave away $16 billion in 2019. Amid a historic health crisis that was a call to arms for the nonprofit sector - and during a renewed reckoning over racial inequities in the US - these billionaires made some of the largest donations they have ever made. The 50 largest donors donated almost $25 billion to charity in 2020, according to the annual report from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which offers the best yearly snapshot of the largest donations in America. But there’s a catch - one that underscores just how hard it is to follow the money in the world of mega-charity. America’s billionaire philanthropists gave away more of their fortunes during the Covid-19 pandemic than they ever have before. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |