Meet The 8 Richest Men and How They Give Back

How much do the 8 Richest men in the world give to charity?

Net Worth

Bill Gates- $75 billion
Amancio Ortega- $67 billion
Warren Buffet- $61 billion
Carlos Slim Helu- $50 billion
Jeff Bezos- $42 billion
Mark Zuckerberg- $44 billion
Larry Ellison- $43.6 billion
Michael Bloomberg- $40 billion

Charitable Giving- Do not Judge

Note that this is not a dissection of what is ultimately done with of the donations, the strings attached to the gifts (Zuckerberg), the efficiency of the charities who benefit, and any soft dollar quid-pro-quo expectations (Helu). One of the writers in the Soren Group had at one time a small charitable fund. He offers the following from personal experience:

Just having people know of it generated self-serving opportunities for me and increased pressures to give. The ethical pressures are great. But the temptation to be self-serving had to be counterbalanced by making sure your gift got to its intended cause. The idea was to set up a scholarship for kids in my old neighborhood to go to a good high school. The other use was mostly for my own children's school.
In the end, control of that fund was given to a different administrator who stopped giving to my children's school. It is likely fund donation choices thereafter were in part weighted by the acquired status that came with each gift.
When one starts giving, it is important to inspect how much of each dollar given actually gets to the cause. So many charities are loaded with expenses/leeches that reduce the % of your dollar that actually gets to the cause.
Having been on the receiving end of charity at one point in my life too, it was very hard to take money knowing that the giver may have had an agenda. I once asked for and received money from a person's charitable fund in order to support my family until securing income. It was not easy taking charity knowing that person's ethical standards and mine differed.

So imagine the work that goes into giving from these people before judging if it is not enough, or too controlling, or to the wrong charity. The point is, there is a lot of drilling down into each giver's donations to be done before one heaps praise or judges them harshly.

Ok, Judge a Little

But that wont stop us from calling Carlos Slim Helu a likely Clinton crony. Who gives to a charity that returns something like 5% a year of its intake? Especially when Helu's major contributions are to charities he can direct to make sure the money is used properly. What, he gets dumb with the Clintons?

The Givers List

Bill Gates

Bill Gates, the world’s richest man who dropped out of Harvard to co-found Microsoft in the mid-70s, is worth $75 billion. Mr Gates promised to give the majority of his fortune to charity, and has donated more than $30 billion to his philanthropic foundation since it was created. To date, the foundation has given $35 billion in grants to causes aimed at fighting global issues from disease to poverty, Bloomberg reports.

Amancio Ortega

The richest person in Europe, Amancio Ortega is worth $67 billion. He set up the Amancio Ortega Foundation which bought 25 oncology radiotherapy linear accelerators for Andalusia’s public health system, through a donation of around €40m.

Warren Buffet

Warren Buffett is worth $60.8 billion. Mr Buffet’s giving is at $25.5 billion so far, with his annual giving set at $2.8 billion, according to Forbes. He also started the Giving Pledge with Mr Gates, which encourages the world’s wealthiest people to donate the majority of their money to charity.

Carlos Slim Helu

The telecommunications mogul is worth $50 billion. Forbes reports he has donated a total of $4 billion to his own charitable foundation. Outside of the foundation, he has worked with Bill Clinton and has personally donated between $1m and $5m to the Clinton Foundation.- refund?

Jeff Bezos

The Amazon founder is worth $42.2 billion. Mr Bezos’ total philanthropic giving is reportedly $100mm according to December 2016 data from Forbes. The Bezos Family Foundation, which is run by Mr Bezos’ parents, has given around $30m to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre since 2009, Geekwire reports.

Mark Zuckerberg

The Facebook founder is worth $44.6 billion. Mr Zuckerberg has given $1.6 billion to charity in his lifetime, Forbes reports, with his annual giving set at $126 mm.

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