Michael Bloomberg kept his No. 1 spot on The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 50 ranking of the biggest donors of 2025 for the third year in a row, the Chronicle reported. The founder of Bloomberg’s financial-news empire and former New York mayor gave $4.3 billion last year for a mix of arts, education, the environment, public health and efforts to improve city governments.
The Chronicle’s list ranks donors by their giving during 2025 and places Bloomberg ahead of three other donors who each gave at least $1 billion, including Bill Gates, the late Paul Allen and Warren Buffett. Gates, according to the Chronicle, placed second with $3.7 billion to the Gates Foundation. Allen ranked No. 3 after leaving a $3.1 billion bequest intended to start a foundation focused on science and technology, and Buffett ranked No. 4 after donating $1.3 billion across four family foundations that support a range of causes.
Across the full Philanthropy 50 list, the Chronicle said the donors contributed a total of $22.4 billion to charity in 2025. It reported that the median gift among those donors was $105 million. The Chronicle also said the financial industry generated wealth for most donors on the list, with 20 philanthropists giving a total of $4.1 billion, while technology accounted for 12 donors contributing $10 billion, and real estate included four donors giving $466.7 million.
The report highlighted geography and access as well as money. The Chronicle said more donors live in New York and California than in any other state and that nonprofits in those states received the most gifts, according to the Chronicle’s tally.
For some donors, the Chronicle reported, philanthropy is closely tied to personal experiences and hands-on involvement. Jon and Mindy Gray, ranked No. 34 with $63.6 million, said their giving focuses on research on inherited cancers linked to BRCA mutations and on empowering young people in New York City. The Chronicle reported that Mindy Gray’s sister died at age 44 from BRCA-related ovarian cancer, and it said the couple’s Gray Scholars program provides scholarships to 10 New York City students per year to attend a historically Black college or university. Mindy Gray told the Chronicle, “We’re very hands-on people — we enjoy it,” adding that other people often ask what they should do and that “it really is what you feel in your heart. You should not be doing this work in areas that don’t move you.”
The Chronicle reported that only 19 of the richest Americans on the Forbes 400 list donated enough to appear in the Philanthropy 50 rankings this year. It also said that high-profile philanthropist MacKenzie Scott did not appear in the list, despite donating about $26 billion to charities since 2020; the Chronicle said it was likely her donor-advised-fund giving met the threshold but that Scott and her representatives declined to provide information about how much money she was funneling to grantmakers.
The Chronicle said long-term relationships drove many of the biggest gifts. It found that more than 35 of 51 donors on the list had long-term relationships—often lasting five to 10 years or more—with the charities to which they gave the most in 2025. Jeff Schreifels, a fundraising consultant at Veritus Group, told the Chronicle that donors often try to connect with their own goals for changing the world and match those interests with what nonprofits do. “It’s about building relationships,” Schreifels said. “It’s being that bridge between the donor and their desire to change the world and matching that up with everything that the nonprofit does. That’s what everyone is trying to do.”
The Chronicle also described breadth in how donors directed their giving. It reported that foundations and donor-advised funds created by donors and colleges and universities received the biggest shares of last year’s gifts. It also said donors supported science and technology with more than $3 billion, including Allen’s bequest and a $60 million donation to support the quantitative science program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. For health care and medical research, it reported total gifts of $1.5 billion, including a $500 million donation from Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, for cancer research and treatment, plus other large gifts to support pediatric health care and dementia research and care.
The Chronicle reported that athletics received $871 million, including two donations of $300 million apiece for university athletics and a $100 million gift providing financial aid to Olympic athletes. It also pointed to other examples lower on the ranking, including Robert and Karen Hale at No. 25, who gave nearly $111 million last year and made a $100 million gift to Boston Children’s Hospital, and James and Patricia Anderson at No. 39, who gave $50 million to Wayne State University and more than $8 million to charities supporting the elderly and people with special needs.