To Give, Divine
Investing guru Warren Buffett -- above right, with Bill and Melinda Gates -- announced last week that he will gradually transfer more than $30 billion of stock in his Berkshire Hathaway firm to the Gates Foundation, which works to improve global health and U.S. education. Each installment must be spent in the year it's given; the $1.5 billion pledge for 2006 will double the foundation's current spending--and boost its already powerful impact.
The donations and pledges made by Warren Buffett--and Bill and Melinda Gates, who have given nearly $26 billion to their foundation so far--eclipse those of other great U.S. philanthropists
Andrew Carnegie $7.2 billion
John D. Rockefeller $7.1 billion
John Rockefeller Jr. $5.5 billion
Amounts adjusted for inflation
If the Gates Foundation were a country, its global-health spending in 2005 would place it just behind Finland in foreign-aid giving
The foundation fights more than AIDS and malaria. Some of its recent grants are being used to battle these lesser-known diseases
GUINEA WORM DISEASE $25 million to combat illness caused by a parasitic worm, which lives in fleas that infest standing water, mainly in Africa
DIPHTHERIA and other common diseases: $1.5 billion for vaccinations to save up to 12 million lives
KALA-AZAR $30 million to fight this usually fatal illness caused by a parasite spread by sand flies in South Asia
Most Popular »
- JC Penney and Ellen, Lowe's and All-American Muslim: A Tale of Two Bigotries
- Four Ways the U.S. Could End Up at War with Iran Before the Election*
- The Art of Nazi Hunting: How Israel's Mossad Found Adolf Eichmann
- Study: Zapping the Brain Boosts Memory
- College Endowments: Why Even Harvard Isn't As Rich As You Think
- Bradying: The Poor Man's Tebowing
- Pentagon Rules 'Shift' on Women in Combat
- Twimmolation Alert: Roland Martin Gets His Ascot in Hot Water at CNN
- House Pulls the Plug. Too Soon or Too Late?
- Why We Need a New Definition of 'PC'
- The Upside Of Being An Introvert (And Why Extroverts Are Overrated)
- The Brain: How The Brain Rewires Itself
- Egypt's NGO Crisis: How Will U.S. Aid Play in the Controversy?
- Friends With Benefits
- Why Is Your Boss Moving to Brazil?
- New York City: 10 Things to Do
- Seoul Searching
- Pentagon Rules 'Shift' on Women in Combat
- Haiti Papers Over the Past: The Rebranding of 'Baby Doc' Duvalier
- In Singapore, Finding Peace Among the Pain of Thaipusam




