Netflix’s Reed Hastings’ billion-dollar donation tops the list of the biggest gifts of 2024

The Chronicle’s annual list of the largest charitable giving by individuals or their foundations totaled nearly $6 billion by 2024, with half of those contributions coming from three contributions of $1 billion or more each. Two of those three gifts went to medical schools to provide financial aid. In total, four of the top donations on the list, totaling $2.3 billion, went to provide financial support.

Three contributions were made to the donors’ own foundations, and these gifts also totaled $2.3 billion. Three other donations supported research or medical treatment, and one gift was to support civic engagement and arts and culture.

The list has 12 gifts, instead of 10, because of the ties. Six of the donors are billionaires, and their combined net worth is about $365 billion.

At the top of the list is a gift from the co-founder of Netflix Reed Hastingswhose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $5 billion. Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, donated 2 million Netflix shares valued at $1.1 billion in January to their Hastings Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

The couple started their fund in 2016 and has primarily supported educational organizations, a special focus for Hastings, who taught high school math while a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s and worked as president of the California State Board of Education in the early 2000s. .

Hastings co-founded the video streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It started streaming movies and TV series in 2007 and later started creating its own content. He stepped down last year as co-CEO and currently serves as the company’s president.

Aid to the Faculty of Medicine

Next on the list is a billion dollars Michael Bloomberg gave through his Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins University to make medical school free for most students and provide more financial aid to the university’s nursing and public health students.

Bloomberg, whose net worth Forbes pegs at roughly $105 billion, earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the university in 1964. He founded the Bloomberg financial news empire and served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013. He has given his alma mater at least $3.5 billion since he graduated 60 years ago.

Ruth Gottesmanprofessor emeritus in the Department of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, had the same goal as Bloomberg. He gave his former employer $1 billion in February to support free tuition in perpetuity for Albert Einstein College of Medicine students.

Gottesman had a long career in medical school. He joined the university’s Center for Child Assessment and Rehabilitation in 1968 and began the center’s adult literacy program in the early 1990s. She was later appointed founding director of the Fisher Landau Center for the Treatment of Learning Disabilities.

Her late husband, David Gottesman, ran the New York investment firm First Manhattan and was an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway and a protégé of Warren Buffett. He left his valuable stock portfolio to his wife when he died in 2022 with instructions to do with it as she saw fit.

Buffett money

Chairman and CEO of Berkshire, Warren Buffetthe follows Gottesman and Bloomberg with a big gift of his own. The famous financier donated 1.5 million Berkshire Hathaway shares valued at $716.1 million in November to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after his first wife, who died in 2004.

Buffett, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $143 billion, created the donor in 1964 to manage the family’s charitable giving, and it remains a family affair. Two of his three sons are on its board, and it is run by his former son-in-law. The foundation mainly supports women’s reproductive health. It also offers college scholarships for students from Nebraska, the family’s home state.

The donation is a special contribution Buffett announced in November in lieu of one of the annual contributions he makes to the foundation and several other donors, which are payments on multibillion-dollar pledges he announced in 2006.

The Chronicle’s annual ranking of the year’s largest donations is based on publicly announced gifts. The count does not include contributions of artwork or gifts from anonymous donors. In March, the Chronicle will announce its annual classification of the 50 major donorsa list based on philanthropists’ total contributions in 2024 rather than individual gifts.

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THE LIST

1. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin; $1.1 billion to the Hastings Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation

2. (tie) Michael Bloomberg, founder of the Bloomberg financial news empire and former mayor of New York, through his Bloomberg philanthropies; $1 billion to Johns Hopkins University for financial aid

2. (tie) Ruth Gottesman, Professor Emeritus, Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine for financial aid

4. Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; $716.1 million to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation

5. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin; $502.4 million to the Hastings Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation

6. Roy Vagelos, retired chairman of the pharmaceutical company Merck, and his wife, Diana; $400 million to Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons to establish the Roy and Diana Vagelos Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences

7. Alice Walton, heir to the Walmart fortune, through her Alice L. Walton Foundation; $350 million to Mercy Health to establish cardiac care center

8. Jackie and Mike Bezos, parents of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, through their Bezos Family Foundation; $185.7 million to Aspen Institute to establish the Center for Rising Generations

9. (tie) Barbara Britt, the late widow of Glenn Britt, a former CEO of Time Warner Cable; $150 million bequest to Dartmouth College for financial aid

9. (tie) Hyatt Brown, a retired insurance executive, and his wife Cici; $150 million to the Museum of Arts and Sciences for a new building

9. (tie) Emmet Stephenson Jr., financier, and daughter Tessa Stephenson Brand, event planner; $150 million to City of Hope for pancreatic cancer research

9. (tie) Byron Trott, chairman of commercial bank BDT & MSD Partners, and his wife Tina, through their Trott Family Philanthropies; $150 million in STARS College Network to help small-town and rural students graduate from college

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Maria Di Mento is a senior reporter for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where you can read the full article, including list of donors. This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. La Crònica is solely responsible for the content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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