Top 10 American Charitable Donations Total $3.3 Billion

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 2, 7:22AM EST · Published Jan 1, 7:34AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, total donations by the top 10 givers in America have not returned to the record level of 2007. But they are getting closer, reaching $3.3 billion last year.

The largest giver is dead. Ralph Wilson Jr. donated $1 billion to his estate. How the money will be given out has not been determined. The money came from the proceeds of selling the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. Wilson passed away last year at the age of 95.

The next largest give was also made by an older American:

No. 2 was a $650-million pledge from the 83-year-old businessman Ted Stanley, who made one of the biggest commitments ever to mental-health research with a donation to the Broad Institute.

While the surge in the stock market probably caused some of the donations, Harvard and other non-profits were trying to increase endowments or solicit specific gifts:

Among the other reasons big gifts are surging: Many nonprofits are running ambitious capital campaigns. Harvard, which is trying to set a new record by raising $6.5-billion in a single drive, received two of the donations on the list. The financiers Gerald and Ronnie Chan, along with other relatives who make up one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families, gave $350-million to its public health school. Another financier, Kenneth Griffin, provided $150-million for financial aid.

Not to be bested, some young Americans and entrepreneurs also made the list of the top-10 donors:

While the two biggest gifts in 2014 were from men over 80, the top 10 list again reinforced the important role young technology wealth is playing in changing the face of philanthropy. Nicholas Woodman, 39, and his wife, Jill, 38, who founded the GoPro camera company, were No. 3 with their $500-million donation to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Larry Page, the 41-year-old co-founder of Google, made the fifth-largest gift, with more than $175-million donated to his family fund.

The 2007 record total was $4.1 billion. If the stock market continues to surge in 2015, and there are more record financings of private companies, and IPOs, this year may be the year when the 2007 record is broken.

ALSO READ: States With the Most Student Debt

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.