Wealthy Donors

Charles Feeney concluded his 35-year philanthropic career last month the same way he started it—with a $7 million donation to his alma mater, Cornell University. This gift mirrors a donation of the same size in 1982—Feeney’s first donation to the University—which launched the Cornell Tradition, a program that awards 500 fellowships each year to Cornell…

As the stock market reaches new heights after the presidential election, more investors are looking at their portfolios to see which securities have gone up the most—and then donating them to charity. “We’ve seen an uptick in charitable giving using appreciated stock,” says Paul Stark, a wealth and estate-planning strategist at SunTrust Banks Inc. That…

Several years ago, a news piece on a poll by U.S. Trust and Phoenix Marketing gave us interesting insights into the giving of the wealthy and clues on how to unlock their giving to your organization. Those findings are still true today. But let's add to the list of reasons the wealthy don't give more...

When it comes to talking about estate planning—a topic that combines the ultra-awkward subjects of death and taxes—families with fortunes aren’t any more comfortable than the average American is. But when the older generation wants to leave a philanthropic legacy (and on average, the wealthy plan to give away 12 percent of their estate to…

Sheryl Sandberg is transferring $100 million of her Facebook stock holdings to a fund for charitable causes. According to her latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Facebook chief operating officer transferred 880,000 shares. Recode reported that the shares would go into a donor-advised fund, which allows Sandberg to direct money to causes…

Charities and nonprofits could hardly contain their enthusiasm leading up to #GivingTuesday. On social media, everything from National Geographic to the Kennedy Center has been promoting it for days. No shame there. Whole Whale, a consultancy for nonprofit organizations, estimates that the charitable-industrial complex can expect to end the day with a record haul of…

Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine that the Gates Foundation was instead called the Good Foundation, and nobody knew the donor behind this operation—even as its vast grantmaking affected the lives of millions of Americans school children and people in poor countries. Does that sound unnerving to you? It does to me. But…

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick pledged he would donate $1 million to organizations that work with communities in need across the country after he initiated his silent protest of the national anthem, and the first wave of charitable contributions was disclosed Friday. On his personal website, Kaepernick detailed the donations made in October as…

The last couple of years have been boom years for philanthropy. Total donations from individuals, foundations and corporations rose in 2015 to more than $373 billion, a 10 percent increase since 2013. But behind this statistic is a troubling trend. The charitable sector is getting a growing number of mega-donations from wealthy donors and experiencing…

Two recent studies revealed important information about trends in individual and family philanthropy. These findings help us understand the nature of philanthropy in the U.S. They are pertinent to philanthropists and nonprofit organizations alike. The 2016 U.S. Trust Study of High Net Worth Philanthropy is a survey of 1,435 U.S. households with a net worth…