The Rich Continue to Give — A Little

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 3, 6:29AM EST

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The list of people who gave gifts of over $1 million includes 513 for 2011, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. That may not seem like many unless it is put in the context of how much money a person would need to make a donation of that size. Perhaps $10 million to afford a gift of $1 million. Or, perhaps some of the people who made the gifts have died. The most notable thing about the list is that it is dominated by $1 million gifts. Higher amounts are scarce, and they go to famous institutions.

Most $1 million gifts were given to small charities, which leaves large nonprofits to fight over those who are truly generous and really rich. A typical modest gift is the one given by Theresa Patnode Santmann. It was in the amount of $1 million and the recipient was Farmingdale State College. It is a small college on Long Island that probably could not survive without a few $1 million donations. Almost no one has heard of it. The Theresa Patnode Santmann gift may be more important in the scheme of things than a $100 million donation is to Harvard.

Most of the $1 million gifts were given to charities with names that most Americans would not recognize. That means these little nonprofits do not have access to the money that famous charities do.

And the rich nonprofits do get richer. Ohio State, the Mayo Clinic and, of course, Yale and Harvard were all on the list of institutions that received one or more gifts of over $30 million in 2011. Almost none of the nonprofits that benefited from $30 million or more has a name that many people would know. Branding is just as important in the world of philanthropy as it is in the world of consumer products. The wealthy would rather have their names on a building at Columbia than one at Farmingdale State College.

The year 2011 may have been a reasonably good one for philanthropic gifts, but most were given to charities that probably need them the least.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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.