How the Chronicle Compiled Its Annual List of Top 50 Donors

The 20th annual Philanthropy 50, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of America’s biggest donors, is based on gifts and pledges of cash, stock, land, and real estate to nonprofit organizations.

The Chronicle talked to dozens of nonprofits, philanthropists, and their representatives to find out more about large donations that were made public in 2019, as well as the philanthropy of big donors who gave quietly last year. However, not all philanthropists publicly disclose details about their giving, and they are not legally required to do so.

Gifts made to donors’ family foundations were counted; however, disbursements from those foundations were not included in our rankings to avoid double-counting.

The Chronicle counts only gifts that donors make to organizations with charity or foundation status under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Multiyear Gifts

Some of America’s biggest donors don’t appear on the current Philanthropy 50 even though they may have given a big gift to a nonprofit last year. That’s because the Chronicle’s rankings count multiyear pledges only once, as a lump sum in the year the commitment was made.

For example, Warren Buffett is absent from this year’s list even though he gave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation stock in his Berkshire Hathaway investment firm valued at more than $2.7 billion.

The donation was an annual installment on his 2006 pledge of more than $36 billion in Berkshire shares to the foundation. That same year he also made multibillion pledges to the foundations of his late first wife and his three children.

Here’s how much Buffett gave to charity last year:

• More than 12.8 million shares of class “B” Berkshire stock valued at more than $2.7 billion to the Gates Foundation — the latest installment of his 2006 pledge.

• Nearly 1.3 million shares valued at more than $275.4 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation — named for his first wife, who died in 2004. To date, he has contributed nearly $2.6 billion of the approximately $3.6 billion he has pledged to the fund.

• Almost 900 shares (valued at about $192.8 million) apiece to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, which funds agriculture, clean-water, and anti-poverty programs; the NoVo Foundation, co-founded by Peter Buffett and his wife, Jennifer, which focuses on the well-being of girls and women globally and supports economic and education programs; and daughter Susan Buffett’s Sherwood Foundation, which backs social-justice work and early-childhood education.

Warren Buffett originally promised about 17,500,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the three foundations and doubled the original pledge in 2012. To date, he has given his children’s foundations more than $1.5 billion each.