Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced this week that during their lifetimes, they will donate to philanthropic causes roughly 99% of their Facebook stock, currently valued at close to $45 billion. This stunning announcement was to celebrate the birth of their daughter.
This prompted an article from The New Yorker about “philanthrocapitalism” which remarked that charitable giving on this scale makes modern capitalism, with all of its inequalities and injustices, seem somewhat more defensible.
However, we are not here to debate that subject. Since Christmas is known as the season of giving, we thought of listing the most famous philanthropists in the world.
Business Insider and Wealth-X, a firm that does research and valuations on ultra-high net worth individuals, compiled a list of the 20 most generous people in the world, ranked by total charitable giving to date.
Wealth-X went one step ahead to determine each person's Generosity Index, which is the ratio of their lifetime donations to their current net worth. Some have indices over 100% because they have given away more money than they currently have.
The world’s 13 biggest philanthropists
3 people whose donations got them demoted from the ‘Billionaires Club’ to the ‘Millionaires Club’