Category:American philanthropists

Andrew Carnegie sold his steel company to J.P. Morgan in 1901 and spent the rest of his life giving the money away. The libraries, the concert hall, the endowment for peace, the foundation for teaching: the template he set, often summarized by his phrase about dying rich being a disgrace, still shapes how American wealth and charitable giving fit together. The figures grouped here are heirs to that template in some form. They include industrialists, financiers, retail magnates, technology founders, entertainers, real estate developers, and a handful of professional philanthropists who built careers running the foundations the wealthy created.

Background

Organized large-scale private giving in the United States took recognizable modern shape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and similar vehicles introduced the idea of permanent endowments dedicated to broad public purposes rather than the donor's personal charities. Federal tax law, particularly after the introduction of the income tax in 1913 and later revisions creating the charitable deduction and rules governing private foundations, gave the activity a legal architecture. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 set the modern framework for private foundations, including the payout requirement and excise taxes.

The postwar era expanded the field. Ford, Mellon, and other industrial fortunes seeded major foundations. The growth of finance and technology from the 1980s onward generated a new wave of donors operating at large scale, often while still active in business. The launch of the Giving Pledge in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates formalized a public commitment among billionaires to direct the majority of their wealth to charitable purposes, and many of the individuals in this category are signatories or have made comparable public commitments. Donor-advised funds, university capital campaigns, and named gifts to hospitals, museums, and performing arts centers are the most visible vehicles through which contemporary American philanthropy moves.

Notable members

The category spans more than a century and several distinct fortunes. The classic industrial donors are represented by Andrew Carnegie and Andrew W. Mellon, whose names remain attached to universities, libraries, and the National Gallery of Art. Their model, building permanent institutions that outlast the donor, recurs in later generations.

Retail and consumer fortunes form a large cluster. The heirs of Sam Walton, including Alice Walton, Christy Walton, and Ann Walton Kroenke, have directed giving toward art, education, and rural health, with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville as the most visible single project. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, cofounders of The Home Depot, built separate foundations active in autism research, veterans' services, aquariums, and Atlanta civic projects. Chip Wilson, the founder of Lululemon, supports medical research connected to muscular dystrophy. Bob Toll of Toll Brothers gave to legal education and Jewish causes.

Finance is the other dominant pool. Charles Schwab established a foundation focused on learning differences and youth services. Charlie Munger, the longtime partner of Warren Buffett, made large architectural gifts to universities including Michigan and Stanford. Hedge fund principals are well represented: Carl Icahn, Bill Ackman, Daniel Loeb, David Einhorn, and Bruce Karsh have all funded medical research, education reform, and cultural institutions, often through family foundations that also engage in policy advocacy. Barry Sternlicht of Starwood Capital is active in environmental and medical giving. Andrew Beal, the Texas banker, has given to scientific research.

The Koch family fortune is represented by Charles Koch, whose giving combines large gifts to higher education, particularly in economics and law, with policy organizations. The pattern of pairing institutional gifts with ideological infrastructure is one of the more discussed features of contemporary American giving on both the right and the left.

Media and entertainment figures form another set. David Geffen has given to medical schools, performing arts, and AIDS research, with named buildings at UCLA and Lincoln Center. Barry Diller funded Little Island, the public park on the Hudson River in Manhattan. Bob Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, supports medical research, Jewish causes, and programs combating antisemitism. The category also includes several figures whose public profiles come primarily from television, including Bethenny Frankel, whose BStrong initiative has organized disaster relief, and Aviva Drescher and Billie Lee, who are associated with smaller-scale advocacy and charitable activity.

Technology wealth appears through figures such as David Filo, cofounder of Yahoo, and Brian Acton, cofounder of WhatsApp, who funded the Signal Foundation as a vehicle for encrypted communications as a public good. Their giving illustrates the pattern of technology founders directing money toward digital infrastructure, scientific research, and policy questions tied to their original industries.

Two unusual cases are worth noting. Anne Scheiber was a retired IRS auditor who lived modestly and left roughly $22 million, accumulated through quiet stock investing, to Yeshiva University on her death in 1995. She is one of the recurring examples of the so-called secret philanthropist, whose scale of giving was unknown until the estate was settled. Darren Walker is included not as a donor of a personal fortune but as president of the Ford Foundation, a role that places him among the most influential figures in directing institutional philanthropy in the United States. Abbas Saeedi represents the smaller end of the category, where local and community giving is the basis for inclusion.

Forms of giving and recurring causes

A few patterns recur across the membership. Higher education absorbs an outsized share of named gifts, particularly to business schools, medical schools, and engineering programs at private research universities. Academic medical centers, cancer research in particular, attract donors across political and industry lines. Art museums, symphony orchestras, and opera houses receive large gifts from finance and real estate fortunes concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, and a handful of other cities. Jewish federations, evangelical organizations, and Catholic charities each draw substantial sums from donors aligned with those communities.

Policy and advocacy giving is a more contested category. Foundations associated with Charles Koch, with progressive financiers, and with figures such as Bill Ackman fund research institutes, advocacy groups, and university centers whose work has direct political implications. Disaster relief, often organized rapidly through donor-advised funds or ad hoc initiatives such as the one created by Bethenny Frankel, represents a more episodic strand.

The mechanisms vary. Some donors operate through large staffed foundations with professional grantmaking programs. Others use limited liability companies, following the model popularized by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which allows political contributions and for-profit investments alongside grants. Donor-advised funds at Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard have absorbed a growing share of contributions. The individuals in this category, taken together, illustrate the range of vehicles, motives, and causes that define American private giving in its current form.