How America’s richest donate their money

Billionaires don’t give the same way we do.

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Every year, publications like Forbes release lists detailing the generosity of society’s richest philanthropists. But the raw numbers of their donations don’t tell the whole story of how ultra-wealthy charitable giving tends to work. We took that data and put it on a big chart that highlights exactly how much of each billionaire’s personal wealth is going toward charitable giving.

This video outlines how wealth inequality creates a distorted view of the generosity of America’s billionaires. We examine the causes their money goes to support, like education and public health. And we break down the actual methods they use to move massive amounts of donated money around, like foundations and secretive donor-advised funds.

Measuring wealth and philanthropic giving is difficult and subjective. We relied on Forbes’s specific methodology for our chart, but lists like the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s “The Philanthropy 50” use their own methods. https://www.philanthropy.com/article/the-philanthropy-50/#id=browse_2022

Correction: In a previous version of this video, the equation at 1:05 was incorrectly flipped. We've updated the animation.

Here is the original Forbes list we mention in the video:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2023/01/23/americas-top-givers-2023-the-25-most-philanthropic-billionaires/?sh=320dd0692e9e

If you’re wondering why Elon Musk isn’t on the Forbes list despite a $5.7 billion donation of Tesla shares in 2021, it’s probably because it was speculated that the money went to a donor-advised fund:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/elizahaverstock/2022/02/15/elon-musk-reports-donating-57-billion-to-charity-but-there-is-no-trace-of-that-gift-yet/?sh=4d2dd8fd2782

They also do their own guide on “giving scores”:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2022/09/27/the-forbes-philanthropy-score-2022-how-charitable-are-the-richest-americans/?sh=6bfe3b14a098

The inspiration for this chart came from this Reddit post using numbers from a previous Forbes list:
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ym3ddi/oc_forbes_2022s_most_philanthropic_us_billionaires/

Here is a list of all the Giving Pledge signatories:
https://givingpledge.org/pledgerlist

For more reading on the rise of donor-advised funds:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/business/donor-advised-funds-philanthropy.html

We interviewed Vox senior reporter Whizy Kim, who recently covered Jeff Bezos’s philanthropy:
https://www.vox.com/recode/23553730/jeff-bezos-philanthropy-giving-pledge-charity

She also covered the ways everyday Americans give that aren’t captured in charitable tax deduction data:
https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/27/23373134/philanthropy-giving-decline-billionaires

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