MacKenzie Scott was the nation’s top philanthropist in 2025 and ranks third behind Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates in terms of lifetime giving.
MacKenzie Scott’s $26 billion giving sprint in seven years, including a record $7.2 billion last year, makes her the third-biggest philanthropist of all-time. She gave more in 2025 than Musk, Page, Ellison and her ex-husband Bezos have in their lifetimes combined.
Additional Reporting By: Asia Alexander, Elisabeth Brier, Sofia Chierchio, Zoya Hasan, Chris Helman, Monica Hunter-Hart, Luisa Kroll, Katherine Love, Simone Melvin, Andrea Murphy, Rich Nieva, Chase Peterson-Withorn, Justin Teitelbaum, Giacomo Tognini, Hank Tucker and Gigi Zamora.has stepped up for her principles, donating at least $760 million to 18 historically Black colleges and universities over three months late last year. As she has done since her 2019 divorce from Jeff Bezos, Scott gave the money without fanfare and with few strings attached. “Unrestricted funds of this size are beyond the ordinary,” a spokesperson for Howard University, which received $80 million from Scott, tellsnoting that the school found out about the grant only when someone from Scott’s Yield Giving emailed the university. In all, 186 organizations received a collective $7.2 billion in 2025 from Scott—enough to make her the world’s most generous philanthropist last year. It’s also the most donated in a single year since Forbes started tracking top givers in 2012. No one has ever given away more money as fast as Scott. In less than seven years, Scott, who has disposed of more than 75% of the Amazon shares she received from Bezos,Only Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, have donated more—but in both cases over a much longer time. Scott is also one of just four of the nation’s top 25 philanthropists who have given away 40% or more of their fortunes. Altogether, 17 of the top 25 givers have given away at least 10% of their net worth, but only one of the top 12 richest people in America has reached that threshold: In total, the nation’s top 25 philanthropists have donated $275 billion so far in their lifetimes, an uptick of $34 billion over last year. That’s a huge sum but represents just 14% of their combined fortunes, the smallest percentage since 2021. One notable fact: six of the top 25 are solo women; another 11 are husband and wife teams. That’s partly because women tend to give faster and more generously and partly because people who are not founders or primary creators of their wealth are open to taking “more risks” when it comes to philanthropy because in some ways they feel less ownership, according to Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change, a nonprofit that pools funds from wealthy givers, including Scott, Melinda French Gates and at least three other billionaires.: Our estimates factor in the total lifetime giving of Americans through the end of 2025, measured in dollars given to charitable recipients; we are not including money parked in a foundation that has yet to do any good. To that end, we also do not include gifts that have been pledged but not yet paid out, nor money given to donor-advised funds—opaque, tax-advantaged accounts that have neither disclosure nor distribution requirements—unless the giver shared details about what was actually paid out by such entities. For giving as a percent of net worth, we add lifetime giving to net worth and then divide lifetime giving into that total. This is a list of individuals and couples who are U.S. citizens. We also don’t list deceased individuals.America’s most generous person ever, Buffett retired as Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO at age 95 at the end of 2025, but his commitment to philanthropy remains strong. Last June, he made his annual summer donation of Berkshire-Hathaway stock - $6 billion this year, up from $5.3 billion a year ago – to the Gates Foundation and four Buffett family foundations. He donated another $1.3 billion to his family’s charities, three run by his three children and one named for his late wife, in November.The Gateses divorced in 2021, and Melinda left the Gates Foundation in 2024 to focus on her own philanthropy. For now,still counts the Gateses’ donations together, given how much the pair doled out during their marriage through the Gates Foundation mostly to nonprofits focused on global health and development. Bill Gates transferred at least $10.8 billion to Melinda’s Redmond, Washington–based Pivotal Philanthropies in 2024. French Gates so far has donated at least $540 million through Pivotal to nonprofits focused on social progress for women and girls, calling issues affecting them “unconscionably” underfunded.Scott gave away more than anyone else on Earth in 2025, and the most in one year since Forbes started tracking top givers in 2012. In less than seven years, Scott has donated $26.4 billion to more than 2,500 groups. Only Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates, have donated more. The 186 nonprofits that received her latest gifts—which were larger and featured more repeat grantees than in past years—include Forests, People, Climate; the Hive Fund for Climate; and Gender Justice. She also donated at least $760 million to 18 historically Black colleges and universities over three months late last year. Altogether, Scott has disposed of more than 75% of the Amazon shares she received from her ex-husband Jeff Bezos in 2019.Bloomberg, a climate envoy to the United Nations, announced a $100 million investment to cut methane emissions in November. The founder of financial data and media company Bloomberg LP granted over $502 million to HBCUs last year and earmarked $10 million to set up charter schools in partnership with HBCUs. He also launched the Lead Poisoning Prevention Initiative, which targets high-need countries in Asia, Africa, and South America and has already doled out over $91 million to organizations like Vital Strategies and Pure Earth.Chaired by his son Alex, Soros’ Open Society Foundations gave more than $1 billion in 2024 to groups promoting justice and human rights. Notable donations included $7 million to the Barack Obama Foundation; $16 million to Central European University, and $3.5 million to Senegal-based West Africa Democracy Radio. The foundations’ giving for 2025 has not yet been disclosed.In April, the widow of quantitative trading pioneer Jim Simons pledged $80 million to launch a new research initiative called the Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience.Last January, the couple’s Ballmer Group announced several grants aimed at providing support to children and families in California’s wildfire-affected areas of the Palisades and Pasadena, including Los Angeles County YMCAs and Boys & Girls Clubs. In November, it committed up to $170 million a year over the next decade to a Washington State pre-K program and $72 million to behavioral health clinics in Illinois, Kansas and Michigan.The couple, who now believe curing or preventing disease may be possible much sooner than originally thought thanks to AI advances, is going all in on AI-powered biology and their Biohub, donating over $400 million to the latter in 2025.The Google cofounder has donated $2.2 billion, including $477 million in 2025, to support research into Parkinson’s disease, which his late mother had. He also gave $345 million to climate change nonprofits last year and is taking on autism in his latest effort to direct most of his giving to conditions affecting the central nervous system.Their Bezos Earth Fund has donated $2.4 billion of the $10 billion it committed to combating climate change by 2030, funding innovations like AI-powered coral reef monitoring and low-methane livestock. The newly married couple also runs tuition-free preschools via Bezos Academy and provides temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness through the Day 1 Families Fund.The Nike cofounder and his wife pledged a record-breaking $2 billion to the Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute in August. It was said to be the largest single gift ever made to a U.S. university, college or academic health center. The Knights first announced a $100 million gift to the institute in 2008, followed by a $500 million challenge grant in 2013.Most of the couple’s giving happens through Coefficient Giving, which changed its name from Open Philanthropy in November. In 2025, the couple donated $100 million to AI-focused nonprofits, funding researchers, for example, to make AI safer by finding existing large language models’ weaknesses and assessing their cyberoffense capabilities. Historically, the Facebook cofounder and ex-journalist have heavily funded global health causes like malaria prevention.The widow of Jeffry Picower , the biggest beneficiary of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, donated over $400 million through her democracy-focused Freedom Together Foundation in 2025. Per Jeffry’s will, the foundation has also donated billions to medical research, environmental causes and poverty alleviation. Barbara Picower stepped down as acting president in early 2024.Longtime donors to Tulsa, Oklahoma and Jewish causes, the wife and daughter of oil billionaire Charles Schusterman , respectively, now back broader societal change including helping the formerly incarcerated.In April, The Broad museum in Los Angeles–funded by homebuilding and insurance tycoon Eli Broad and his widow Edythe–broke ground on a $100 million expansion set for completion in 2028. Prior to Eli’s death, the couple directed billions to science, education and the arts, including over $1 billion to the biomedical research-focused Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.In December, the Dells committed $6.25 billion to seed 25 million investment accounts for children under 10 as part of the president’s Invest America initiative, which kicks off on July 4. In 2024, they pledged $100 million to the Charter School Growth Fund, which has supported schools that serve more than 725,000 students, to help build new school facilities and provide other support.Their Omidyar Network co-chairs Humanity AI, which helps citizens shape AI. Hopelab, founded by Pam, published 11 reports last year on technology’s impact on youth mental health.The Schmidts are part of a group that pledged $1 billion to the European Organization for Nuclear Research in December to support the development of its Future Circular Collider, a particle accelerator meant to succeed the famed Large Hadron Collider, and advance physics research. The couple also donated to Princeton and The Mayo Clinic to support AI research.The foundation of Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus and his widow gave away $290 million in 2025, including $30 million to Stanford Medicine’s Department of Neurosurgery for the research and development of a brain-computer interface for stroke victims. It also gifted $19 million to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and $16 million to the Secure Community Network to promote safety and security for the Jewish community.In September, Griffin committed $50 million to help launch Success Academy charter schools in Miami, where he moved his hedge fund Citadel from Chicago in 2022. He also gifted $20 million to Miami’s Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. Ahead of the United States’ 250th birthday celebration this year, Griffin also gave $15 million to the National Constitution Center and loaned it his personal copies of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.The energy and banking magnate’s foundation donated $253 million in 2025 to improve education, health and economic mobility in his home city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In September, his foundation invested in CASSIE—an Oklahoma-based air filtration tech firm that graduated from its "Build in Tulsa" program for Black entrepreneurs—and also provided grants that helped launch Oklahoma University's new Oklahoma Center for Education Policy, which aims to improve the state's education system.Their Arnold Ventures employs more than 100 subject-matter experts to identify evidence-based public policy solutions.It awarded more than 900 grants last year, including $6.6 million to Recidiviz, a non-profit startup building a better system for consolidating and managing prisoner info in the criminal justice system. It also gave $5.7 million to the North Carolina community college system’s Boost jobs program to help students obtain high-paid, high-demand jobs.The Netflix cofounder and his wife gave $50 million to his alma mater Bowdoin College in March to launch the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity.America’s wealthiest real estate baron, who’s endowed more than 60 professorships at UC Irvine, Caltech and Marine Corps University, gave $11 million last year to schools and universities.In July, Koch and his Stand Together nonprofit network teamed up with Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Intuit founder Scott Cook and hedge fund investor John Overdeck to pledge $1 billion to boost economic mobility using AI. His Charles Koch Foundation doled out $68 million in 2024, according to its most recent tax return, including $30 million to George Mason University and its Institute For Humane Studies, which is focused on promoting classical liberalism.
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