Ranking America's Billionaires By How Much - Or How Little - They Give Away | Forbes

Hundreds of billions of dollars sit in Forbes 400 members’ private charitable foundations. But because the IRS effectively requires them to pay out only a tiny fraction each year, just a sliver of that sum is deployed annually to causes and communities in need. To shine a light on the billionaires who are putting their philanthropic dollars to work, we’ve changed the methodology for The Forbes 400 philanthropy score. Instead of counting the dollars that list members have put in their foundations over a lifetime, we tallied the grants made by those foundations (technically, “adjusted qualifying distributions”), plus direct gifts we could track, to estimate how much The Forbes 400 has actually given away.

We did not count money put into donor-advised funds. These tax advantaged accounts have neither disclosure nor distribution requirements; so while the list members may use their donations to get tax deductions, their dollars may not reach nonprofit beneficiaries for years. Forbes only took distributions from donor-advised funds into account when list members shared details about the grants that were actually paid.

Read the full profile on Forbes

Subscribe to FORBES

Stay Connected

Forbes newsletters

Forbes on Facebook

Forbes Video on Twitter

Forbes Video on Instagram

More From Forbes

Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.