Learn about the billionaires who donate the most in 2022‎

The year 2022 saw successive announcements from billionaires pledging large sums of money to foundations – often their own foundations – created to address the world’s greatest challenges from combating climate change to eradicating poverty.

This list reviews the largest donations made by the richest people in the world this year, and includes those who donated more than a billion dollars, while it does not include Bernard Arnault and Elon Musk, who are considered the richest in the world.

Warren Buffett

In June, Warren Buffett announced that he had donated nearly $4 billion more in stock in his Berkshire Hathaway group—the 17th time Buffett has made this annual gift.

At the time of the announcement, the donation brought Buffett’s total lifetime commitment to philanthropy to $48 billion

Buffett pledged in 2006 to donate 99% of his entire fortune to charities, making donations each year to the same five foundations: the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

In November, Buffett made another surprise donation of $750 million in Berkshire Hathaway stock on Thanksgiving eve — the first time the 92-year-old billionaire made a second major gift in the same year.

Bill and Melinda Gates

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates joined Buffett this year in planning to give away his entire fortune.

“As I look to the future, I plan to give nearly all of my wealth to the foundation,” Gates wrote in a tweet in July, when he announced he would donate another $20 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Gates and his ex-wife Melinda have already pledged more than $50 billion to the foundation since 1994, and for Bill to achieve his lofty goal of giving away his entire fortune would mean allocating another $116 billion to his charitable foundation, which fights disease and poverty around the world. ..

In a blog post in July, Gates wrote that his foundation — which he founded with his wife in 2000 — plans to increase its annual spending by 50% — to $9 billion by 2026, up from $6 billion now.

Jeff Bezos

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has joined the list of the world’s richest people who have decided to give up their entire fortune, as Bezos announced in November that he plans to give up the majority of his $122 billion fortune – after years of being criticized for his lack of charitable contributions. ..

It is worth noting that Bezos did not sign the Giving Pledge, a campaign founded by Buffett and Gates that encourages the world’s richest people to donate half of their net worth to charity.

Bezos did not specify how he plans to distribute his wealth and did not provide any details about the reasons that are likely to be his greatest focus.

Bezos is under increasing pressure from the public and very broad philanthropic efforts of his ex-wife Mackenzie Scott after her divorce from the 58-year-old billionaire.

Mackenzie Scott

Since getting her fortune after her divorce from Bezos, Scott has shed more than $12 billion of her $27 billion net worth in just two years.

When the story of her massive donation first broke, Scott revealed in late March that she had given another $3.9 billion since June 2021.

After the shock of her massive donation subsided, she did it again, announcing in November that it had given another $2 billion to more than 300 organizations in the past seven months.

Gautam Adani

Gautam Adani – the third richest man in the world – pledged in June to donate 600 billion rupees ($7.7 billion) to a range of social causes to celebrate his 60th birthday and to commemorate the centenary of the birth of his father, Chantilly Adani.

India’s richest people have been criticized in the past for not giving more to charity, and the 2021 Indian Philanthropy Report by global consulting firm Bain and Co found that, on average, the rich with a net worth of more than 500 billion rupees donated 0.5% of their wealth

Adani’s donations – which will be managed by the Adani Foundation – will go towards healthcare, education and skills development with a special focus on rural India.