The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of the biggest charitable donations from individuals or their foundations totaled more than $3.5 billion in 2023. Four universities received big gifts in 2023, along with four scientific research institutes and a health-care system. The other gifts went to a family foundation and a racial-justice group.
The list has 11 gifts because of ties. Eight of the donors are multibillionaires, and their combined net worth is $305.1 billion.
Topping the list is a gift from the investment guru Warren Buffett, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at roughly $119 billion. He gave 1.5 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class “B” stock valued at $541.5 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his first wife, who died in 2004.
Buffett created the grantmaker in 1964 to manage the family’s charitable giving, and it remains a family affair. Two of his three children serve on its board, and it is led by his former son-in-law. The foundation primarily backs women’s reproductive health. It also provides college scholarships for students in Nebraska, where the family is from.
The donation is a special contribution that Buffett announced in November rather than one of the annual contributions he makes to the foundation and several other grant makers, which are payments toward multibillion-dollar pledges he announced in 2006.
Buffett’s gift is followed on the list by a donation from the mathematician and hedge-fund founder James Simons and his wife, Marilyn. The couple gave $500 million through their Simons Foundation to the State University of New York at Stony Brook to support the university’s endowment and to boost scholarships, professorships, research, and clinical care.
The Simons, who have an estimated net worth of $30.7 billion, have deep ties to the university. James Simons was chairman of its mathematics department from 1968 to 1978, and Marilyn Simons earned two degrees there: a bachelor’s degree in 1974 and a Ph.D. in economics in 1984. They have given the institution nearly $600 million through their foundation over the last 10 years.
Tying for third on the list is a contribution from Ross Brown, the founder of Cryogenic Industries, an industrial equipment manufacturer. In November, Brown gave the biggest gift to science in 2023 when he pledged $400 million to the California Institute of Technology. The gift will be fulfilled through his family foundation and a donor-advised fund; the money will be used to launch the Brown Institute for Basic Sciences.
The center will support scientific research at other universities and will house the Ross Brown Investigators Award Program, a fellowship program Brown started in 2020 that until this year was operated out of his foundation. The program provides five-year, $2 million awards to midcareer, tenured faculty working on chemistry and physics research.
Brown told the Chronicle in November that he no longer wanted to house the program at his foundation because he was worried about mission drift and controlling the costs of the program. A Caltech alumnus, he said the university seemed like the best fit for the fellowships.
Now that Brown has moved the program over to Caltech, university officials are in charge of awarding the $2 million grants to at least eight researchers each year. To avoid conflicts of interest, only researchers at other universities will be considered for the awards. However, Brown is directing some of this donation — about $1 million a year — toward other fundamental physical science research efforts at Caltech. There are three other donations on the list that support scientific research.
Nike cofounder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, made a $400 million pledge to the 1803 Fund. The commitment from the Knights, whose net worth is pegged at $43 billion, will establish Rebuild Albina, an effort to revive the economic and cultural prosperity of Albina, a historic area of Portland, Oregon, that was once a thriving Black neighborhood but fell into neglect in the 1970s.
Black families in Albina were displaced by a ruinous mix of predatory lending, discriminatory government practices, and huge, long-term construction projects that shuttered businesses and destroyed the neighborhood. It was a pattern that played out in many U.S. cities during that era. Rebuild Albina officials plan to renovate the area, pay for education programs and education-related services for children and their families, and support a range of projects meant to deepen the area’s cultural roots. The Knights are giving the money both personally and through their Knight Foundation.
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