December 13, 2001 | Read Time: 1 minute
Bill and Melinda Gates, by donating $2-billion in Microsoft stock to their namesake foundation, receive top billing in the November Town & Country magazine’s coverage of the year’s most generous philanthropists. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s endowment now totals $23.5-billion and remains the largest in the country.
Jim Stowers, who founded the mutual-fund company American Century Investments, also broke the billion-dollar mark in 2001 by giving $1.114-billion to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo., for genetics research.
Anonymous donors also attracted the magazine’s attention. Town & Country says that while it appreciates modesty, it also “thinks withholding one’s name from a gift doesn’t help a cause,” because “a donor’s name often inspires other gifts too.”
