Items14The creator’s order
  1. 1Alfred NobelAlfred NobelBorn 21 Oct 1833The 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,…0i
  2. 2Andrew CarnegieAndrew CarnegieBorn 25 Nov 1835In 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…0i
  3. 3Julius RosenwaldJulius RosenwaldBorn 12 Aug 1862Rosenwald 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…0i
  4. 4Chuck FeeneyChuck FeeneyBorn 23 Apr 1931Feeney, 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…0
  5. 5Ted TurnerTed TurnerBorn 19 Nov 1938The 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,…0i
  6. 6Warren BuffettWarren BuffettBorn 30 Aug 1930Buffett 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…0i
  7. 7Bill GatesBill GatesBorn 28 Oct 1955The 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…0i
  8. 8Melinda French GatesMelinda French GatesFrench 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…0i
  9. 9MacKenzie ScottMacKenzie ScottBorn 7 Apr 1970After 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…0
  10. 10Azim PremjiAzim PremjiBorn 24 Jul 1945Premji, 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…0i