‘Fortune’: a Ranking of 1997’s Top Donors
January 29, 1998 | Read Time: 2 minutes
With his $1-billion pledge to the United Nations, Ted Turner topped Fortune magazine’s (February 2) list of the country’s most-generous philanthropists in 1997.
The second annual ranking includes 40 donors, up from the 25 it named a year ago. The magazine said it decided to increase the size of its list because of an outpouring of big gifts in 1997. The top 25 on this year’s list gave a total of $3.3-billion, more than twice what the 25 donors named last year gave.
“Nowadays,” the magazine writes, “giving money away is trendy — almost as sexy as making it.”
Fortune speculates that Mr. Turner’s headline-grabbing gift — and his efforts to encourage the wealthy to increase their giving — “had a lot to do” with the spurt of large gifts.
Behind Mr. Turner in the top five:
* Kathryn Albertson, 89, widow of Joseph Albertson, a supermarket-chain owner, who gave $660-million to the J. A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation in Boise, Idaho, to support public education in the state.
* The financier George Soros, 67, who pledged up to $540-million, with as much as $500-million promised to philanthropic projects in Russia.
* Bill Gates, 42, chairman of Microsoft Corporation, who donated $210-million, with $200-million of it going to endow the Gates Library Foundation.
* Leonard Abramson, founder ofU S Healthcare, who donated $100-million to the University of Pennsylvania for a cancer-research institute.
This year’s list included 25 donors who made their fortunes by founding their own businesses. Six donors — including Mr. Gates, Mr. Soros, and Mr. Turner — were also on last year’s list.
Most of the gifts went to higher education, with colleges and universities receiving 60 per cent of them.
As generous as the top 40 donors are, Fortune observed, their donations are “a piddling 2 per cent of the $150.7-billion donated to charity in 1996 (the last year for which data are available).” Smaller gifts by middle-income people, the magazine says, remain the real force behind giving in this country.
