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A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
America’s top 50 philanthropists gave a whopping $22.4 billion to charity in 2025, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s latest annual ranking. Media titan Michael Bloomberg led the Philanthropy 50 for the third year in a row, donating $4.3 billion to support the arts, public health and other causes.
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is notably absent from the ranking. Scott announced on her blog in early December that she had given away nearly $7.2 billion to about 225 organizations over the past 12 months. She has donated more than $26 billion to nonprofits since 2020, according to a website for her philanthropic organization, Yield Giving.
Maria Di Mento, senior editor at the Chronicle, told Inside Wealth that Scott was excluded because her representatives declined to confirm how much she had contributed to her donor-advised funds, which are popular financial vehicles for charitable giving. The Philanthropy 50 counts donations to donor-advised funds, or DAFs, and foundations, but it doesn’t include disbursements from those funds in order to avoid double counting, Di Mento said.
While Scott publicizes her giving, ultra-wealthy philanthropists have become increasingly secretive about their charitable giving, according to Di Mento, who has worked on the rankings for 21 years.
“I do think the desire for privacy has grown in recent years because the ultra wealthy are under so much more scrutiny than they used to be,” she said. “While I think there has always been some resentment towards the ultra rich, that resentment, particularly very recently, has grown by leaps and bounds.”
She added that philanthropists regularly tell her that they are wary of being hounded by nonprofits eager for funding.
“Donors tell me this all the time: When they attach their name to a gift, they will get bombarded by major gift fundraisers from other organizations,” she said. “That’s a very real concern. Some of these people, believe it or not, do not have a lot of staff.”
Only 19 members of the Forbes 400, a list of America’s wealthiest people, made the Philanthropy 50. Elon Musk and Larry Ellison, last year’s Forbes 400 frontrunners, do not appear on the Chronicle’s ranking despite their status as centibillionaires.
Di Mento noted that this proportion has stayed consistent even as the ranks of the country’s richest have gotten richer.
“I think there are two ways of looking at that, and they’re both true,” she said. “I think a lot of the ultra wealthy are not giving as much as they could be, but the other part is that there’s no law that says they have to disclose their giving.”
While many members of the Forbes 400 are likely giving away money, the Chronicle often requires billionaires’ cooperation to verify how much they gave or who they gave to. For instance, Musk disclosed in a regulatory filing that he gifted about 210,000 Tesla shares worth nearly $100 million in December to “certain charities.” Without knowing the recipients and whether they were affiliated with lobbying or political campaigns, the Chronicle could not count the donation toward the list, Di Mento said.
While Ellison has appeared on the list in the past, his representatives have not cooperated with the Chronicle for years, according to Di Mento.
The Oracle billionaire pledged in 2010 to give away at least 95% of his net worth. Last summer, he amended his pledge to focus his resources on technology research instead of traditional nonprofit organizations.
“It’s not really clear what he’s giving to or what he’s giving anymore,” Di Mento said of Ellison.
