‘Slate’: Ranking Charity Donors
March 9, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Ever since Ted Turner suggested in 1996 that philanthropists should have their own equivalent of the Forbes 400 — a prestigious ranking that would honor people who give their money away — the press has been trying to figure out how best to compile such a list.
One such effort is the Slate 60, the online magazine’s list of America’s biggest donors. Its 1999 edition was released last week, with Bill and Melinda Gates as No. 1, followed by James Clark, founder of Netscape. The rankings were compiled by S. Ann Castle, a prominent major-gifts researcher who died of cancer last month.
A few days after Slate issued its 1999 list, it posted an amended version — based on a new rating system suggested by the political commentator Arianna Huffington. Ms. Huffington based her generosity rankings not only on the total dollars given away, but also on the merits of the causes receiving support.
She wrote that her formula for ranking donors would “dock all givers of self-aggrandizing, pointless, and redundant gifts” and reward “all philanthropists whose gifts are selfless, humanitarian, and desperately needed.”
Among the elements that Ms. Huffington said should cause the value of a gift to be downgraded: “Investing in buildings — not people. Let’s discourage philanthropists who give money to a $100-million war monument while the veterans of that war go homeless or hungry.” She also knocked points off for “self-referential giving directly connected to your business interests.”
Gifts that were worth more than their total dollar amount, she wrote, were those that went to elementary and secondary schools, because that is “where the crisis is, not higher education where the prestige and big bucks already reside.” She also upgraded donations to grassroots organizations and to those that fight poverty.
Applying Ms. Huffington’s formula to those on the Slate 60 didn’t cause the Gateses to lose their top ranking. But Mr. Clark, who gave $150-million to Stanford University to construct a biomedical-engineering center, fell to No. 7.
Slate magazine is available at http://www.slate.com.
