Billion-dollar donation from Netflix's Reed Hastings leads 2024's list of biggest gifts
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg made the largest contributions in 2024, and financial aid, especially for medical students, got most of the money
The Chronicle’s annual list of the biggest charitable donations from individuals or their foundations totaled nearly $6 billion in 2024, with half of that coming from three contributions of $1 billion or more each. Two of those three gifts went to medical schools to provide financial aid. Altogether, four of the top donations on the list, totaling $2.3 billion, went to support financial aid.
Three contributions were made to donors’ own foundations, and those gifts totaled $2.3 billion as well. Three other donations supported medical research or treatment, and one gift each went to support civic engagement and arts and culture.
The list has 12 gifts, rather than 10, because of ties. Six of the donors are multibillionaires, and their combined net worth is an estimated $365 billion.
Topping the list is a gift from Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, whose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $5 billion. Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, gave 2 million shares of Netflix stock valued at $1.1 billion in January to their Hastings Fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
The couple started their fund in 2016 and have primarily supported education organizations, a special focus for Hastings, who taught high school math when he was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1980s and served as president of the California State Board of Education in the early 2000s.
Hastings co-founded the video streaming platform in 1995 as a DVD subscription service. It started streaming films and television series in 2007 and later began creating its
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