Largest Charitable Donations in History: Top 10 Ranked

The largest charitable donation ever announced is Warren Buffett’s 2006 pledge of 10 million Berkshire Hathaway Class B shares to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, worth about $31 billion on the day and delivered in annual instalments ever since. By June 2023 the foundation had received $39.3 billion of it, more than any other single gift in history has even promised.

Ranking the largest charitable donations is harder than it sounds, because a pledge, a share transfer to a donor’s own foundation, and a cheque to a hospital are three different things. The table ranks the ten biggest single gifts or pledges by an individual or couple at their announced value, and the last column says which kind each one was.

The 10 Largest Charitable Donations Ranked

1. Warren Buffett to the Gates Foundation: About $31 Billion

Announced: June 2006 | Form: 10 million Berkshire Class B shares | Delivered by 2023: $39.3 billion

Buffett’s pledge letters, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, earmarked 10 million Class B shares for the Gates Foundation, paid at 5 percent of the remaining balance each year for as long as Bill or Melinda Gates stayed active in running it. The same letters set aside smaller blocks for four Buffett family foundations.

Because Berkshire stock has risen for two decades, the gift has grown while being paid out. The Gates Foundation said in 2022 that Buffett’s contributions made up roughly half of its total resources. Whether you count the $31 billion announcement value or the $39.3 billion delivered, nothing else on this list comes close.

2. Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates: $20 Billion

Year: 2022 | Recipient: Gates Foundation endowment | Effect: Payout raised to $9 billion a year by 2026

In July 2022 the two founders transferred $20 billion into the foundation’s endowment, taking it to about $70 billion. The foundation’s announcement tied the gift to a plan to lift annual grant-making from about $6 billion to $9 billion by 2026, aimed at pandemic recovery, food security and the war in Ukraine.

This is a transfer into the couple’s own foundation rather than a gift to an outside charity, which is why some rankings leave it out. It is included here because the money left their personal control permanently.

3. Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates: $15 Billion

Year: 2021 | Recipient: Gates Foundation | Context: Announced during their divorce year

The 2021 commitment topped the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of that year’s biggest gifts, ahead of Elon Musk’s share transfer. Together with the 1999 and 2022 gifts it means the Gateses hold three of the six largest single donations ever made, all to the same institution.

4. Jeff Bezos to the Bezos Earth Fund: $10 Billion

Year: 2020 | Cause: Climate change | Granted so far: $2.4 billion across 371 grants

Bezos announced the fund on Instagram in February 2020 as a $10 billion commitment to scientists, activists and organisations working on climate. The fund’s own site reports $2.4 billion granted to date, which leaves most of the pledge still to be paid out and is the reason the table marks it as a pledge rather than a completed gift.

5. Michael and Susan Dell: $6.25 Billion

Announced: 2 December 2025 | Cause: $250 seed deposits into Trump Accounts for up to 25 million children | Status: Pledge

The Dells’ pledge, announced on GivingTuesday 2025, would fund a $250 opening deposit in the new federal children’s savings accounts for every eligible child aged 10 and under in lower-income households. It is the largest gift ever aimed at children’s savings, but the Chronicle of Philanthropy declined to rank it in its 2025 list because it was unclear whether deposits into individual government accounts count as charity in the usual sense. It appears here with that caveat.

6. Bill and Melinda Gates: $6 Billion

Year: 1999 | Recipient: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation | Record: Guinness, largest single private charitable donation

The gift that built the foundation into the world’s largest still holds a Guinness World Records title, because Guinness has not revised the category for the later Buffett and Gates transfers. In 1999 dollars it was without precedent, and it set the template every gift above it on this list has followed.

7. Elon Musk to the Musk Foundation: $5.74 Billion

Dates: 19 to 29 November 2021 | Form: 5,044,000 Tesla shares | Disclosed: SEC filing, February 2022

Musk’s gift only became public through a securities filing three months later, and the recipient was not named in it. Reporting later identified the Musk Foundation, his own grant-making vehicle. The transfer placed him second on the Philanthropy 50 for 2021, behind the Gateses’ $15 billion.

8. Phil and Penny Knight to OHSU: $2 Billion

Announced: 14 August 2025 | Recipient: Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health and Science University | Record: Largest gift to a US university or academic health centre

The Nike co-founder and his wife had already turned a $500 million challenge pledge in 2013 into $1 billion by 2015. Their 2025 commitment, described in OHSU’s announcement, will restructure the institute into a self-governing Knight Cancer Group led by Brian Druker. It beat Bloomberg’s Johns Hopkins gift as the biggest ever to an academic institution and topped the Chronicle’s list of 2025’s largest gifts.

9. Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins: $1.8 Billion

Announced: 18 November 2018 | Purpose: Undergraduate financial aid | Effect: Need-blind admissions, loans replaced with grants

Bloomberg graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1964 and made his first gift, $5, the year after. The 2018 donation was the largest ever to a US university at the time and allowed the school to admit students without regard to their ability to pay and to replace loans in financial-aid packages with grants.

10. Joan Kroc to The Salvation Army: $1.5 Billion

Received: 2004, after her death in October 2003 | Purpose: Kroc community centres across the US | Record: Guinness, largest single charitable donation

The widow of McDonald’s chief Ray Kroc left the bulk of her estate to The Salvation Army to build and endow a network of community centres. It remains the largest bequest to an operating charity, and Guinness still lists it as the largest single charitable donation, a separate category from the Gates record above.

Pledged Money and Paid Money Are Not the Same List

Four of the ten entries are commitments still being paid: Buffett’s annual share instalments, Bezos’s climate fund, the Dells’ account deposits and the Knights’ cancer commitment. Only the Gates transfers, Musk’s share sale, Bloomberg’s gift and Kroc’s bequest were completed at the time. A ranking of money actually received would still start with Buffett, because two decades of instalments have already passed $39 billion, but Bezos would drop well down the order at $2.4 billion granted.

There is a second split between gifts to outside charities and transfers into a donor’s own foundation. Strip out the latter and the ordering changes sharply: Buffett stays first because the Gates Foundation is not his, then the Dells, the Knights, Bloomberg and Kroc, followed by Reed Hastings’s $1.1 billion in Netflix shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2024 and Ruth Gottesman’s $1 billion to Albert Einstein College of Medicine the same year, which made tuition free for every student in perpetuity.

Why No Official Record Exists

No body keeps a definitive all-time table. Guinness holds two separate records that have not been updated for the largest gifts of the past twenty years. The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes an annual list of the biggest gifts each year, which is the closest thing to a running record, and its 2025 edition put the year’s total at $5 billion, led by the Knights, a $746.7 million Buffett gift to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, and $500 million from Jackie and Mike Bezos to UNICEF USA.

Cumulative giving is different again. MacKenzie Scott has given more than $26 billion since 2019 through hundreds of separate grants, none of them large enough individually to make this list, which measures single gifts. Businesses that want to structure their own giving face similar definitional questions, which is one reason business insurance and liability planning tends to come before a foundation is set up.

Where the Money Goes

Global health and education dominate the top of the list through the Gates Foundation, which received five of the ten gifts. Medicine takes the next tier: the Knight and Bloomberg gifts and the Gottesman donation just outside the top ten all went to universities or hospitals. Climate has one entry, Bezos, and religion-linked social services one, Kroc.

Almost every donor made their money in technology, finance or a single consumer brand, and most gave shares rather than cash. That matters for the recipients, because a gift of stock is worth whatever the stock is worth when it is sold, which is why Buffett’s pledge has grown and why the Musk transfer is valued at the share price on the days it was made. Anyone comparing payment processors for a charity’s own fundraising will notice the same principle: what arrives is what counts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the largest charitable donation ever made?

Warren Buffett’s 2006 pledge of 10 million Berkshire Hathaway shares to the Gates Foundation, worth about $31 billion when announced. It is paid in annual instalments and had delivered $39.3 billion by June 2023, more than any other gift.

Who has given the most money to charity overall?

Measured by single gifts, Bill and Melinda Gates, whose 1999, 2021 and 2022 transfers total $41 billion. Measured by cumulative giving in recent years, MacKenzie Scott, with more than $26 billion granted since 2019 across many smaller gifts.

Does a pledge count as a donation?

Only once it is paid. Several entries on this list are commitments still being fulfilled, including the Bezos Earth Fund at $2.4 billion granted against $10 billion promised. The table marks each entry as pledged or paid for that reason.

What is the largest donation to a university?

Phil and Penny Knight’s $2 billion commitment to Oregon Health and Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute in August 2025, which overtook Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins in 2018.

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