Richest Donors to Give Nearly $30 Million During Their Lives

Title: “Changing Philanthropy: Trend Shifts in Ultra Wealthy Giving”

Organization: Wealth-X and Arton Capital

Summary: Over the course of their lives, more than 200,000 very wealthy individuals around the globe — those with a net worth of $30 million or higher — will donate an average of $29.6 million each to charity, according to the report.

Educational institutions and health-care organizations will likely have the best shot at attracting that money: Forty-seven percent of wealthy donors’ money went to educational causes — primarily higher education — in 2015, while 20 percent went toward health-care needs.

The study is based on data from Wealth-X, a market-research company that focuses on the “ultrawealthy,” and interviews with rich donors commissioned by Arton Capital and conducted by Wealth-X researchers.

Among the findings:

• An estimated 212,615 people have a net worth of $30 million or higher, but only about 18,500 have given a total of $1 million or more to charitable causes.
• Those who have given more than $1 million have an average net worth of $292 million, more than twice the average of all very wealthy people.
• Most donors who have given more than $1 million tend to hold most of their money in liquid assets; on average, they donate roughly half of their cash holdings during their lives.
• Women accounted for 10 percent of very wealthy donors in 2015, up from 8 percent in 2014.
• Less than 1 percent of the very wealthy — about 2,180 individuals — are under age 30. Young wealthy donors are more likely to mix traditional philanthropy with profit-making activities and social enterprises.