Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items14
1
Alfred Nobel
Born
The inventor of dynamite reportedly read a French newspaper's premature obituary in 1888, which confused him with his dead brother and called him a merchant of death. Whatever the trigger, his final will of 1895 left most of his fortune to fund annual prizes for physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace, cutting out relatives who contested it. The Nobel Foundation was set up in 1900 to manage the money.
More about Alfred Nobel2
Andrew Carnegie
Born
In his 1889 essay known as The Gospel of Wealth, Carnegie argued that the rich should give their fortunes away in their lifetimes and that a man who dies rich dies disgraced. He then did largely that, selling Carnegie Steel in 1901 and giving away around 90 per cent of his wealth before he died in 1919. What he could not give away himself went to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which still operates.
More about Andrew Carnegie3
Julius Rosenwald
Born
Rosenwald rejected the idea of perpetual foundations, warning that they become cautious and serve their founder's views long after they are relevant. He required his Rosenwald Fund to spend all its money within 25 years of his death, and it closed in 1948. The sunset model he pioneered has since been adopted by others on this list.
More about Julius Rosenwald4
Chuck Feeney
Born
Feeney, co-founder of Duty Free Shoppers, secretly transferred almost his entire stake to his Atlantic Foundation in 1984 and lived modestly while it gave around eight billion dollars to universities, health and human rights work, often anonymously. He then decided to spend the foundation down while he was alive; Atlantic Philanthropies made its final grants in 2016 and closed in 2020. He died in 2023.
More about Chuck Feeney5
Ted Turner
Born
The CNN founder announced in 1997 that he would give one billion dollars over ten years to United Nations causes, a sudden change that set up the United Nations Foundation and prodded other billionaires to give more openly. Falls in his AOL Time Warner shares meant he had to stretch the payments, but he completed the pledge, and the foundation continues with other donors. He died in May 2026.
More about Ted Turner6
Warren Buffett
Born
Buffett changed course more than once. For decades he planned to leave his fortune to his wife's foundation; after her death, in 2006, he pledged most of it to the Gates Foundation in annual gifts. In 2024 he said those gifts would stop at his death, with his estate going to a trust run by his three children, and in 2026 he dropped the Gates Foundation from his annual gifts altogether, pledging to pass his remaining shares to his family's four foundations by 2034.
More about Warren Buffett7
Bill Gates
Born
The Gates Foundation was originally designed to close within decades of its founders' deaths. In May 2025 Gates brought that forward, announcing that it will spend around 200 billion dollars and shut down by 2045, and that he will give away virtually all his fortune during that time. It turns the world's largest private foundation into a twenty-year spending plan rather than a permanent institution.
More about Bill Gates8
Melinda French Gates
French Gates co-chaired the Gates Foundation for over two decades, then resigned in 2024 under the terms of her divorce agreement, taking 12.5 billion dollars to spend on her own priorities. She has directed it through Pivotal Ventures, her company, towards women's and family causes, including a one billion dollar commitment announced in 2024 with grants given outright to individual leaders to distribute.
More about Melinda French Gates9
MacKenzie Scott
Born
After her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, Scott signed the Giving Pledge and chose an unusual method: large unrestricted gifts to organisations her team researches quietly, with no application process, no foundation and few reporting demands. She has given away more than 26 billion dollars since 2019, about 7 billion in 2025 alone, though rising Amazon shares have kept her net worth high. Her Yield Giving website now publishes the gifts.
More about MacKenzie Scott10
Azim Premji
Born
Premji, who built Wipro from his father's vegetable oil company into an IT services giant, moved from occasional giving to transferring shares at scale: in 2019 he announced that a further 34 per cent of Wipro, worth about 7.5 billion dollars, had gone to his foundation, bringing its holdings to the bulk of the company's economic value. The Azim Premji Foundation runs schools, teacher training and a university in India.
More about Azim Premji11
George Soros
Born
Soros transferred about 18 billion dollars to the Open Society Foundations in 2017, shrinking his own fortune to a fraction of its former size, and in 2023 handed control of the foundations to his son Alexander rather than to a professional board. The network has since restructured and cut staff. Its political grants make it a target for criticism, but the transfers themselves are documented and complete.
More about George Soros12
Mark Zuckerberg
Born
In 2015 Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan pledged to give 99 per cent of their Facebook shares during their lives, but chose to do it through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company rather than a charitable foundation, so it can invest for profit, lobby and keep its spending less transparent. The pledge is a lifetime promise; only part of the shares has been transferred so far.
More about Mark Zuckerberg13
Yvon Chouinard
Born
Chouinard said he considered selling Patagonia or taking it public before deciding in 2022 to give it away: voting shares to a family-guided trust and all other shares to a non-profit that spends the profits on climate work. Because the non-profit is not a charity, the family paid gift tax and claimed no deduction, a deliberate trade-off that also lets it fund political causes.
More about Yvon Chouinard14
Ratan Tata
Born
Tata, who never married, made a will that came to light after his death in October 2024: most of his personal estate, including shares in Tata Sons, went to the Ratan Tata Endowment Foundation and a charitable trust, with provisions for staff, his brother and his dog. Since the Tata trusts already controlled Tata Sons, his will strengthened charitable ownership of the group rather than creating a family stake.
More about Ratan Tata
