Chuck Feeney, the James Bond of philanthropy. Founder of Atlantic Philanthropies. (Photo credit: David Cantwell)
By Kerry A. Dolan
The biggest charitable gifts of 2015 came from well-known billionaires such as hedge fund manager John Paulson and Intel INTC -3.03% cofounder Gordon Moore, as well as from lesser known business people.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy released a list on Dec. 31 of the biggest charitable gifts and pledges announced in 2015. Though Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan made headlines in early December 2015 when Zuckerberg announced that the couplewould be dedicating 99% of their Facebook stock to changing the world – potentially a gift of $45 billion if it were all given to charity – none of the funds have been pledged to specific nonprofits yet, so the announcement didn’t qualify for The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s ranking.
At the top of The Chronicle’s list is a $605 million bequest from the estate of Texas businessman John Santikos, who died in 2014. Santikos, who ran Texas’ largest movie theater chain, left the bequest to the San Antonio Area Foundation. Santikos never appeared on the Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires.
Second on the list is a $400 million pledge by billionaire John Paulson and his wife Jenny to Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The gift — the largest in the university’s history – is an endowment to support the school of engineering & sciences. Paulson, who is perhaps best known for successfully betting against subprime mortgages in 2007, is a 1980 graduate of Harvard Business School. Forbes estimates Paulson’s net worth at $11.4 billion.
Coming in third: a $177 million pledge from Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies to University of California at San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin to create a Global Brain Health Institute. Feeney made a fortune as a cofounder of Duty Free Shoppers and then, for many years, quietly gave most of it away via his Atlantic Philanthropies. Forbes called Feeney “the James Bond of philanthropy.” (Read more about Feeney’s generous gift, which is aimed at stemming dementia, here.)
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Feeney makes The Chronicle’s list of biggest gifts two times in 2015. His Atlantic Philanthropies made a separate $100 million gift to UC San Francisco to support its medical center at Mission Bay.
Other big gifts on The Chronicle’s list:
$150 million pledge from billionaire David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, to Memorial Sloan Kettering for a new cancer care center
$150 million pledge from billionaire Steven Schwarzman, cofounder of investment firm Blackstone Group, to Yale University to create a new arts, culture, and student center
$100 million pledge from billionaire David Geffen (founder of Geffen Records and cofounder of Dreamworks Studio) to Lincoln Center
$100 million pledge from David Geffen to University of California at Los Angeles for a new college-preparatory academy
$100 million pledge from Intel cofounder Gordon Moore to California Institute of Technology for its endowment
$100 million pledge from late billionaire Jim Moran and his widow Jan to Florida State University
Follow me on Twitter at @KerryDolan
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