October 2, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
In its annual ranking of the 400 wealthiest Americans, Forbes magazine (October 10) puts the spotlight on the philanthropy of the people on the list.
Of those people who rank in the top 10, most have given tens of millions of dollars or more to charity. And as in past years, two of the nation’s biggest philanthropists, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, landed the first and second spots on the list of wealthiest people in the country, with Mr. Gates’ wealth pegged at $59-billion and Mr. Buffett’s at $39-billion.
The issue features a conversation betwen Mr. Gates and Dustin Moskovitz, the 27-year-old co-founder of Facebook and the youngest person on the Forbes list (worth $3.5-billion).
The two men discuss how they decided to devote at least half of their wealth to charity. Mr. Moskovitz, who established the Good Ventures foundation with this girlfriend, Cari Tuna, says that he has no plans to pass on his wealth to any children he might have. Instead, he and Ms. Tuna plan to spend the next decade educating themselves about philanthropy. Many people have advised him to focus his giving on just a few causes, but Mr. Moskovitz disagrees.
“We should go after a hundred big things, and if two or three of them succeed, that would be great,” said Mr. Moskovitz. “Philanthropists a magnitude smaller than us cannot take that kind of risk.”
