Marty Levine
March 11, 2025
The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently released its annual list of the nation’s 50 largest donors for 2024, “Philanthropy 50”. After years of writing about how American charity (aka philanthropy) it didn’t surprise or shock me that these 50 donors were so wealthy that they could give away a total of $16.2 billion, an average of $324 million per donor, with little personal sacrifice required. Yes, that is a staggering amount of money for individuals to be able to give away, but it is not the real story of this list. Beyond how wealthy these people have become in our out-of-balance country, there are other more interesting things to note.
Surprisingly, little is given to working charities that directly serve people at risk. Even before the new administration took office and drastically began to reshape the national safety net, we were a nation facing serious social problems. Poverty, food insecurity, homelessness, medical deserts are all words that describe the plight of millions of our neighbors who are struggling to live secure and comfortable lives. We are a country, even under more “progressive” leadership, that struggled to publicly fund a strong safety net of supports for people at risk. Yet those who gave the most last year did not see it as a personal responsibility to help fill this gap and make life easier for those with less financial security than they are blessed with.
Michael Bloomberg, the largest donor on this list, gave 3.7 billion in “grants [which]included $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater, to make medical school free for most students and to provide more financial aid to the university’s nursing and public-health students. Other large awards included three grants of $175 million each to boost the endowments of the historically Black medical schools Howard University College of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Morehouse School of Medicine. Charles R. Drew University of Medicine & Science, another historically Black medical school, received a $75 million grant.”
The 49 other donors combined to direct more than $7 billion to foundations and Donor Advised Funds. While that meets the IRS definition of making a charitable gift, it does not mean that any of those “donations” will find their way to an operating charity in the coming months if ever. What it does guarantee is that these donors do get the public acclaim of being seen as being generous, community-minded men and women. They are to be lauded as “good people” helping make this world better. And it does mean that they get the immediate tax benefits that come from making a charitable donation.
By placing these funds in what might be called “charitable parking lots,” these donors also allow themselves to retain control. When and if funds are ultimately distributed remains their decision. It is a gift in name only.
Much funding was also directed toward colleges, universities, and medical organizations. Far be it from me a lover of books and learning to look askance at education; and I am very blessed to have access to high quality medical care, so I have nothing bad to say about strengthening our care system. But I do think that when weighed against more pressing societal needs, these choices for donations would not have ranked at the top of the list.
Living in a moment when those in power are seeking ways to shrink government’s role in helping those in need . They argue that it is not government’s role to help those in need. Rather, they say, each of us individually can decide who and how we want to help others. As noted in a classic Atlantic essay by Mike Konczal:
Their story is about the way people were able to insure themselves against the risks inherent in modern life. Back before the Great Society, before the New Deal, and even before the Progressive Era, things were better. Before government took on the role of providing social insurance, individuals and private charity did everything needed to insure people against the hardships of life; given the chance, they could do it again.
This vision has always been implicit in the conservative ascendancy. It existed in the 1980s, when President Reagan announced, “The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern,” and called for voluntarism to fill in the yawning gaps in the social safety net. It was made explicit in the 1990s, notably through Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, a treatise hailed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and William Bennett, which argued that a purely private nineteenth-century system of charitable and voluntary organizations did a better job providing for the common good than the twentieth-century welfare state. This idea is also the basis of Paul Ryan’s budget, which seeks to devolve and shrink the federal government at a rapid pace, lest the safety net turn “into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.” It’s what Utah Senator Mike Lee references when he says that the “alternative to big government is not small government” but instead “a voluntary civil society.” As conservatives face the possibility of a permanent Democratic majority fueled by changing demographics, they understand that time is running out on their cherished project to dismantle the federal welfare state.
So it becomes significant that Elon Musk, the nation’s (and the world’s) wealthiest man, didn’t make this list. While he found it affordable and wise to plow more than $300 million from his fortune into the 2024 election, he has not found the $50 million for charities, a number which would have placed him at the bottom of the 50. Musk is joined by four other individuals who make the top 10 of Fortune’s list of our nation’s wealthiest people.
To make the wealthiest list, your wealth would have to be estimated as at least $3.4 billion. Donating $50 million represents giving away less than 2.5% of your riches! And in an era when just investing in staid old government bonds would earn you at least 4% your net worth and would actually increase that net worth despite being a leading giver!
All this list of super “generous” men and women tells us is that their model will not create a humane society. It will not ensure that there is equity across our land. And it should not be celebrated.
